A/N: This contains spoilers for "Are You My Mother" chapter 33. Warnings for coarse language and innuendo.
The Malfoys had lived in Wiltshire for a thousand years. Hell, they were there when it was christened Wiltshire. Muggles were looked upon fondly as an opportunity for gain back then … Until Nicholas. Malfoy tradition began with Nicholas Malfoy, whom Draco's father talked about as though he achieved sainthood. An obsession with purity was the inevitable fallout from the Statute of Secrecy, as separate is never equal. Draco wished he learned that earlier.
The crowd in the Gringotts lobby parted immediately upon his entrance. He walked up to the nearest Goblin and glared at the small wizard in front until the unfortunate man determined his time was better spent in another line. Draco slammed the key down onto the counter and the Goblin took it without a word.
There were two Malfoy vaults: one held a not-insignificant amount of their fortune and the other held their sentiment. The Goblin turned the key and Draco heard the sickeningly familiar ticking of the locks before the door swung open. He stepped inside and headed toward the back wall.
The urn was lit from underneath, making it the brightest object in the room. It was silver, with a black metal snake wrapping up from the base, around to the top where its mouth opened, fangs bared and ready to attack anyone who dared disturb its occupant. Not that the bastard deserved any peace.
Draco stared at it for a long while. He sat on the floor of the vault, crossed his legs, then stared some more. Perhaps there were answers in there. What he said to Hermione crossed a line, but how the hell could she be so reckless? The last woman he got pregnant died, for Merlin's sake! If Hermione died—
No. I will not allow it.
But Draco had the chance to carry on the legacy. His father always said Draco was his biggest failure even before he was outed. Before he was disowned and cast away like an elderly house-elf. Draco could have proven him wrong. He had a Pureblood son, after all. He could have done it, but this changed everything. He would have a child with a Mudblood, the second-greatest sin Lucius Malfoy could have ever imagined.
Second only to marrying one.
He had no idea why he was so angry. Draco wanted to marry Hermione as long as she would have him. He wanted a child with her, hell, he'd have several if she wanted. Little blond boys with their noses buried in books just like their mother. His heart did a strange skip at the thought. But Draco wanted desperately to prove his father wrong and prove that he wasn't a failure.
"This is all your fault," he said to Nicholas. "You said blood purity was important, so you made it important. Why? Why would you choose something so cruel? Look at what it did to me!"
He swallowed thickly and forced back the tears Nicholas Malfoy didn't deserve.
"You would have liked my father. He loved you, had a bloody portrait of you in his study. I burned it as soon as he died. You would have been there next to him calling me those filthy things, saying I was unworthy of my name. I filed paperwork with the Ministry to have it changed but Bastien convinced me to keep Malfoy. Said it was an inextricable part of me and he was right. Before you, Malfoys acquired their power by other means, took pride in their name over blood. It is up to me to restore that, I suppose."
Draco pulled his knees up to his chest. The Goblin had remained soundless outside and he was grateful.
"I have a son now. Pureblood, so you would love him. Walking at eight months, talks for ages even though he cannot form actual words, has a smile that makes everyone else want to smile. It makes me wonder if my father knew I was a failure after a year. Maybe it happened when I was six and I accidentally spilled pumpkin juice on his desk. Perhaps it was when I was eleven and Potter did not want to be my friend. I know by the time I was sixteen my father realized I did not share his beliefs and thus," Draco opened his arms, "failure."
There was a photograph of Abraxas Malfoy on the floor to Draco's right. He glanced toward it and lifted his middle finger. Draco chuckled darkly at the thought of doing the same to his father. He wondered whether that would be more cathartic than just ripping it down the middle.
"You are probably wondering why I am here," he said, returning his attention to his eighteen-times-great-grandfather. "Why would I spend the evening of my son's first birthday with you? Well, it turns out, I am a colossal fuckup. My father would say that is of no surprise, but I am having another son. This one … This one will be different. Scorp's mother was my friend and she was kind. I see kindness in Scorp, but Hermione, I admit I wondered what our child what be like. She and Astoria would not have gotten along, not at all. See, Hermione is the sort of person who has a commitment to what she believes is right. You and I, if we want something, we can admit it is unjust but still do it because it is what we want. Hermione always believes she is right and her actions are justifiable.
"For example, she knew about our child for three weeks before she told me. She said, well, implied I was unprepared for the news. As though she does not understand the fact that I have been in love with her for more than a decade, she saved my bloody life, cared for my son when she had no goddamn reason to! Merlin, I should be following behind her kissing the bloody ground that she walks on! And through all of that you and my father and the other eighteen of you fucking Malfoys would say she is unworthy because she is Muggle-born!"
Draco ran his fingers through his hair. He tugged at the roots, hoping the pain would distract from the issue at hand. It didn't. He stood up and paced the length of the vault.
"Why the hell do I care so much about pleasing you anyway?!" he shouted. "You're all dead! Malfoy after Malfoy gone, buried, in the fucking ground! And yet you still exist in my head!"
Draco dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. He took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, like he always told Hermione to do.
"Maybe I will name him Nicholas so that when people think of Nicholas Malfoy they no longer think of you. Instead, they think of me and my Muggle-born girlfriend. And, Merlin-willing, someday my Muggle-born wife!"
Draco turned on his heel and strode out of the vault with a defiance that lasted about ten seconds before he collapsed into the cart.
.oOo.
Draco knocked on Bastien's door. He should be at home with his son and his girlfriend, but the longer he was away from the manor the more Draco started to realize what he said to Hermione was not something he could merely apologize for. There would be groveling involved.
Bastien opened the door and raised his eyebrows. He nodded, stepped out of the way, and shut the door once Draco walked through. Bastien was safety. Bastien was judgement-free. His flat was chaos: books tucked into sofas, specimen jars on the mantle above the fireplace, and a lamp upside-down in the corner.
"How the hell Padma tolerates this is impossible for me to understand," Draco quipped. Bastien shrugged in reply.
"When she's over, the time from the door to the bedroom is about twenty seconds. No reason to clean if she only sees it coming in and going out."
Draco's reply died in his throat once he entered the kitchen. Blaise was at the table while Pansy was perched on the countertop, legs crossed, popping Bertie Botts beans into her mouth three at a time. Draco collapsed into one of the chairs.
"I'm thinking Pansy if it's a girl, and Parkin if it's a boy. Parker, perhaps …" Pansy said. She curled one leg beneath her and waited for Draco's comeback that never came.
"It was an accident," Bastien said. Draco kicked his feet up onto another chair. "She checked the wrong box on a form and didn't check the bottle so she was taking weeklies once a month instead of monthlies. She came to me in February—"
"There were eight weeks then where we could have caught this before …?" Draco asked.
"Are you okay?" Blaise asked. Pansy and Bastien leaned forward as they waited for Draco to answer. He wondered whether that was a good idea. The honest answer wasn't a flattering one. He sank lower into the chair and closed his eyes.
"I wanted to prove my father wrong," Draco admitted. "I wanted to raise my Pureblood son in a traditional Malfoy family so my father would be wrong about me. I am not the failure he claimed I was."
"You're not," Bastien insisted. "You're a melodramatic prat but that doesn't make you a failure."
"But I am," Draco countered. "Aren't I?"
"Why did you go see Ol' Saint Nick?" Pansy asked. "That always puts you in a down mood. Like, further down than usual which is pretty far down on its own."
"Because I have to choose between being the Pureblood patriarch and having the family I want," Draco replied. "All these people who look at my blood status like it's something to be proud of made me believe I should be proud of it, too. The Noble, Most Ancient House of Black and the Malfoy dynasty combined to make a bisexual train wreck who can't even get Hermione Granger to trust him. Pride is the furthest thing from me, at the moment."
"You don't think Granger trusts you?" Bastien asked, surprised. Draco shook his head.
"Why would she?" Pansy asked. "You know what your family did to her, hell, what you did to her. Every time the two of you seem like I will finally get to design a wedding gown one of you fucks it up spectacularly. And now you walk out on your son's birthday party?"
Draco groaned.
"I had to leave, Pans. If I stayed another minute Weasley would have left my house with fewer limbs than he walked in with. Do you know what he said?"
"No, I wasn't invited," Pansy snapped. She tossed another bean into her mouth.
"Weasley said he 'had tasted a lot of Hermione.'"
Blaise and Pansy snickered. Pansy said,
"Men like Ronald Weasley don't go down on their girlfriends, Draco. At least, not well."
"Wait, what do you mean not well?" Bastien asked. He pulled the chair from beneath Draco's feet and sat in it with the back to his front. "Is that a straight joke?"
Blaise looked at him with faux pity and said, "It is okay that you are heterosexual, Bastien. We all have our flaws and we will not judge you."
Pansy tossed a bean at his head.
"The sex is fantastic, by the way," Draco interjected. He looked at Blaise and said, "No offense."
"No need to apologize," Blaise said with a shrug. "Unlike you, Dean rarely tops, thank God. I think he spends so much of his time loving other people that when we are together he does not want to do the bulk of the work. I get to use him, appreciate him in all manner of ways …" He trailed off with a lecherous smirk.
"Katie is quite bendy," Pansy said. She clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Yoga."
"Can we get back to the situation at hand, please?!" Draco shouted. "I'm going to be a father to a Half-blood child with the most well-known Muggle-born on the planet. My Pureblood status is gone unless I cast them out like my father did to me."
"Why the hell do you care, Draco?" Bastien snapped. "Honestly! Who the hell are you trying to impress? Hermione Granger is a good person who loves you and you love her. Why can it not be that simple?"
Draco let out a long sigh.
"Who am I trying to impress, you ask? My father. Nicholas Malfoy and the eighteen Malfoys between them. But they are dead, aren't they? Which means I am the Malfoy heir and I get to decide what is and is not important."
"Is tradition important, then?" Pansy asked.
"Why should it be?" Draco said. "God, I would never give Hermione up for the sake of tradition. Nor my son. I would never do that! The thought of life without the two of them and—holy fuck, I suppose the three of them, now … Merlin almighty." Draco let his face fall into his hands. "She gave me a family. She turned my entire bloody life around and did not even need me here to do it."
"Well, you definitely contributed to the second one," Blaise quipped. Pansy threw another bean at his head so he rummaged through his braids to find it. He complained, "You know those are going to get stuck!"
"Then quit being a twit," Pansy snapped.
"I still don't understand why you're having trouble here," Bastien said. "Hermione and I aren't friends, but she's a good customer."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Pansy asked.
"The only person who knows more of wizarding England's secrets than me is Madam Rosmerta. Hermione doesn't have any. Her secrets are out for the world to see. Her breakup with Ron Weasley was hard on her. She came in for her monthlies after that and told me she didn't know why she was buying them. She works hard even though the world has always told her that she shouldn't. That she should shut up, that she shouldn't date you, or that she shouldn't have dumped Ron's arse like she did. We aren't friends, but I know enough about Hermione Granger to know that she is the right person for you. So what the bloody hell are you even thinking about here?"
"I just thought that to prove my father wrong I had to be what he wanted me to be," Draco answered. "But that isn't true, is it? I need to redefine failure because having a child with Hermione is more happiness than I deserve."
"You're wrong," Blaise insisted. Pansy nodded her agreement. "It is exactly the happiness you deserve."
"Anger at Hermione is what my father would have expected," Draco said. He slammed a fist on the table and insisted, "I am done holding onto that part of my life. Pureblood society can go to shit because I will love our son just as much as I love Scorpius. I am the head of the Malfoy estate and I value my name more than the supposed purity of my blood. My sons will be Malfoys in equal measure and I will live my life trying to be a good father and a good partner. That is what will make me a true Malfoy."
"Great!" Bastien said. "So … Go back to the manor and tell her that."
Draco deflated.
"I cannot."
"Why not?" Pansy asked. "You just did a whole soliloquy there for us and I'm sure Granger would appreciate hearing it. She's done the same for you; I've seen it. Told all her friends to fuck off when Alicia said Granger was only with you because of Scorpius."
"But I left, Pans," Draco admitted. "I can't just show up and say, 'Hermione, I'm sorry I was a complete arse and I love you and, by the way, will you marry me?'"
Draco had never heard Bastien's flat go silent. There was always something or someone making noise, but not at that moment. Bastien lifted his head off the chair and even Blaise looked like he'd just seen one of those Wrackspurts Loony Lovegood is always on about.
"You … You want to marry her?" Pansy asked, hopeful.
"I asked my mother for the ring two months ago," Draco admitted. "Last month, I asked her father for his permission. I just have to ask her."
"Jack said yes?!" Blaise asked, stunned. He leaned forward and said, "Really? Abby hasn't said anything."
"He said yes," Draco nodded. "And I think I just gave Hermione every reason in the world to say no."