Summary: Where Draco makes amends for a generation past. Involves a lot of flowers.
A/N: Some douses of humour and pretty much dialogue-it's my crutch, or maybe my legs. (I've not proofread this yet so uh tenses. I typed 3/4 of this out on my phone at 3am in a bout of insomia.) Goodnight, school tomorrow!
Disclaimer: The Queen Rowling owns the characters and the world. Nature owns the flowers. Writing is mine & the Malfoy handbook is a joke, maybe.
Draco Malfoy's palms were sweaty. Along with many other things that had happened to him after a war, this little problem simply wasn't something a Malfoy was supposed to have; it was unheard of, at least, as listed in Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Trajan Malfoy's The Malfoy Book, Article #4c.
Then again, the Great-to-the-power-of-seven had been a Muggle 'sympathiser'. His knowledge about 'squares' was something he had acquired in his Arithmency classes, though he had glanced (once) at this Muggle primary school Math workbook that demonstrated the rule of powers—or something like that—he had found at the Castle Combe which effectively had him breaking Rule #2b as made in an amendment by Great-to-the-power-of-six Grandfather Ethelminos who had been decidedly disdainful of Muggles—'Malfoys shall not lower themselves' where the clause added 'Malfoys shall not lower themselves, especially to consort with Muggles in any form that belittles a Wizard's knowledge'.
Well, even if he had grown up reading the book and committing the clauses (even those crossed out) to heart, he still succeeded in breaking a whole strong of them. Cheers.
Draco wiped his hands quickly on his silken robes. He took a deep breath before knocking on the door, firmly.
No time like the present. Maybe he should receive an honorary position in Gryffindor; this task would take some guts. Then again, liquid courage was his best friend.
The door opened to reveal a woman who looked a near carbon copy of his dearest Aunt Bella, who was stuck in a mass grave under piles of dead Death Eaters, praise Merlin's purple spotted silk pants. Nonetheless, before his mind registers the lighter brown eyes that weren't the deceased aunt's once enigmatic (from what he gathered from photos) and later maniacal dark sandstorm-like pools, the softer facial features, neater curls of hair, the lack of hard lines around her mouth, he jumped.
Ah, flouting Article #25. He would have to amend the book.
He quickly composed himself, schooling his face into the mask as required by #3 in the Book.
He bowed lowly for a long moment. Andromeda Tonks has not offer her hand for him, and he wasn't about to offer his—he believed himself of lower status than she, especially since he's here to make amends, not the other way round.
He straightened himself. "Draco Malfoy." He held out a white rosebud, stolen from his mother's collection and offers it to the sister of the flower's former owner. She won't miss it anyway. The slight wilting in her black roses was occupying her days as of late.
Andromeda Tonks did not move. She watched him critically, no, scrutinised him, such that he stiffened further. He wants so desperately to fidget, but he's going to have a hard time when he's dearly departed (would anyone consider him dear?) because his forebears would have his ghostly head—Article 4 was marked with a red-ink-drawn-star.
"I brought you a flower, from my m— gardens," he explained. He averted his eyes from that pair of brown, so unlike his mother's in colour, but too alike in spirit.
Oh, let it never be said that the Blacks raised their children to be namby-pamby spineless dolts.
He cleared his throat awkwardly. Then, thank his constellation in the sky—which was obviously named after him, thank you very much for suggesting otherwise—a child's sharp cry rang out and shattered the tense moment. Andromeda Tonks' eyes leave him, but he saw them widening in concern as she left him standing at the porch as she bustled into the house to attend to the child.
If it suited him, Draco wasn't big on rules. Or manners.
He followed her with his long strides. Upbringing be damned, he wasn't a vampire.
He laid eyes on Edward Remus 'Teddy' Lupin for the first time in the child's three year existence, marvelling at his blue hair before quickly growing concerned at the child's (badly) bleeding forehead. The ruckus Teddy Lupin was making didn't faze him the slightest. Andromeda's wand was already out, ready to summon some potion or other, but Draco could handle this.
From his pocket, he pulls out some Dittany. It was always handy to keep some around him; wizards and witches were all too happy to slug him for his family's former allegiance.
Ignoring Andromeda's look, he pours 2 drops on the boy's wound. The wound seals quickly, and even though it would most definitely have stung, the boy merely stares at Draco, before giggling happily and reaching for his second cousin's pale hair. Teddy smiled winsomely as he successfully fists a handful of the platinum strands and tugs lightly at them.
"I'm Draco Malfoy."
"Me Teddy!"
"I'm Teddy," Andromeda corrected absently as she appeared deep in thought.
Teddy was sheepish. "Thought I could get away with it." Aha, this kid with perfect (though childlike) enunciation might just end up in Slytherin. Or maybe it was Gryffindor for pushing the limits. Either way, it would be alright.
"Hey Teddy. Didn't that hurt?"
"The dee-tah-nee?"
"Yes." He was surprised that Teddy knew what it was.
"Little bit. But..." His hair changed to Draco's silver blond, though he would call it 'fairy blond' on Teddy. Cherubs came to mind. "I likes your hair."
"Like."
Teddy pouted. "Man with nice hair isn't that nice."
"Your grandmother corrects you about these things."
Another giggle. "Can I have the flower? I like flowers."
"Absolutely, little man." He handed the flower to Teddy, who beamed more widely than before, if possible. The boy scrunched up his forehead before his little nub of a nose sharpened. Draco raised his brows, and Teddy emulated that too, his black brows changing into a pair of slightly-darker-than-platinum shade, one that appeared to have been plucked. It made the slightly pudgy face look comical.
Considering Andromeda didn't accept the flower earlier, it wouldn't be terribly rude to gift it to Teddy anyway. That's another person who wouldn't miss a flower. He almost laughed, but floriography wasn't everything and Teddy wasn't about to become a girl.
Anyway, he doubted Andromeda held on tightly to the old traditions that his mother had tried instilling in him rather unsuccessfully, for the most part, so he didn't bother with an entire arsenal of the floral representatives of reconciliation and remorse, even if the Malfoy gardens did grow them. He didn't think Aunt Andromeda would appreciate being handed brambles either. The world was changing, morphing into a new butterfly at long last and he wasn't about to remain an ugly little caterpillar. His parents could remain in their pupas if they so wished, but he wanted his wings in this new world; he was Draco after all.
"Draco," Aunt Andromeda finally said. "I apologise—I was terribly rude for leaving you at the doorstep earlier, and for not welcoming you in. You've done nothing wrong to me, after all." She then turned to Teddy and dismissed him with this 'shooing' motion.
"To be fair, I've been a right git to your uh…" he wanted to say that he was once a 'right git' to his Professor Lupin, the only decent DADA instructor he ever had the joy of learning from (Snape was an exception—that man was more than a mere professor to him), but he caught himself. It wouldn't be appropriate, considering the man was dead. "Sorry."
Andromeda raised a single brow, and once again, he was struck by how uncanny that look was. His mother's scepticism was displayed in the same manner.
He gathered himself. Oh, he hated this. But he had put his resolve to do this, and he wasn't about to back down like the coward he had been in the earlier half of his youth. Please, he wasn't old.
He took a deep breath and looked his mother's long-time estranged sister in the eye. That glint might be one of approval, but he wasn't sure. At least there wasn't any trace of Firewhisky in his breath.
Before he loses it, he began his little verbal tirade that was his version of an apology. "I had this all planned out weeks ago, really. You know, I never knew I had an 'Aunt Andromeda' till I stumbled across your photo in an old, old album surprisingly devoid of dust—unlike the album's neighbours—while I was trying to rid the Manor's library of the most incriminating books. That's to say that I was trying to place the books about dark magic in the dungeons, cast wards around it such that no one would ever get to read them unless they wanted to pay some ridiculous price for it in terms of their anatomy, rather hefty price that…"
"Anyway, imagine my surprise when I found a picture of three girls. One that was my mother, the only blonde, and two others that looked rather similar to each other. I stared at your picture for a long time, wondering if Aunt Bella was somehow born in two halves, one that carried all that was inherently good in genuine smiles and thrilling laughter—you were laughing so freely in that picture, your head thrown backwards—and the other born with bottled rage and sadism. Mother always impressed on me that Aunt Bella wasn't always insane; no one is really born bad, save a certain Dark Lord and all other Amorentia produced babies."
Another raised brow. "Apologies, you might think that all Malfoys are born bad. But that isn't fair, is it? I do my version of humbly lowering myself before you and you inwardly scoff at me? Tch, that isn't very nice of you isn't it? You are a Slytherin after all. Up Slytherin, remember, dear Aunt Andromeda? I'm pretty sure you had cheered for the Quidditch Slytherin team in your days, never once imagining that some of them would become mass murderers. No one is ever all bad, not even the Slytherins in our house. Just terribly misguided."
"And that's what it comes to—mother was terribly misguided for too many years, she turned herself away from you, closed her eyes to her dearest sister who she worshiped for years because of familial loyalty, and loyalty to my father."
Her brow went higher, but he could see that her resolve faltered. There was that little softening around the eyes, again, like his mother would do when he was about to win an argument.
"I know that you might be thinking, 'why isn't she here apologising instead?' or something along those lines. Mother doesn't know I'm here, I won't tell her that I had been her either, unless you accept my apology. You see, when I brought that album to her, pointed at the girl with hair the colour of Chocolate Frogs—forgive my analogy, but they're my favourites and mother knows it—her eyes just widened and the frost in them…" He tried to give a casual shrug. "I said you looked like the Mask of Thalia. Mother took the picture from me and never gave it back, but I found it with her once—inside her table where she placed all her paper filigrees."
"Potter," was his explanation. "We made… good, as far as people with our kind of history could go. "I dug deeper, of course. If there's one thing I learnt from the war, is that I shouldn't ever leave anything unresolved. That leaves me at another point. The previous generations left a mountain of old grudges and grievances unsettled, allowing them to snowball into a giant Muggle Yeti of hate to terrorise our world. It's over, but there's lots of residue damage left, scattered pieces left to pick up. I'm here to make amends for my parents. I don't want it to continue, not the grievances, not the feuds… Slytherins pride themselves in plots, not petty catfights or the excessive flaunting of dirty linen."
"So here I am. I want to be able to extend an olive branch, to make amends. I don't want any of my children asking their grandmother if she ever had a sister, and that she'd look away with the sadness and bitterness that took a lifetime to collect. I don't want to be separated from you either, my aunt that doesn't have hair like Medusa, one that doesn't enjoy killing as a Lamia would. I don't want my children to not know who their cousin is—even if it's a second cousin. I want to know my first cousin once removed," he finished with an affected wave of his hand.
"You can choose to accept the offer, and I'll be back. You can reject it, but I'll be back again too. Family is important," he added, sotto voce. "If desired, I would retrieve the entire collection of brambles, hyacinths and whatever petals you desire the next time. I'll bring lupin."
Aunt Andromeda didn't comment. She didn't look at him. He knew that her face would be brimming with emotions, her feelings being so conflicted that her mask was impossible to conjure. He was shown to the door and he Apparated back to his Manor without looking back.
True to his word, he returned the next day with stalks of lupin in his hand. Malfoys weren't supposed to grin like an idiot, but sod outdated traditions to hell.
There were pots of wisteria by the door, and they were beautiful.