A/N: Follow-up to Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall. Anyone who's read that will know it's written just for fun. I was only ever going to write one-shots in future, but never mind. This is just the intro. I should have the next chapter up perhaps tomorrow or Sunday when I've edited. After that, I've no idea how frequent the updates will be. I don't intend the fic to be very long, however. Hope you find it amusing. :D
***chapter 1***
***Intro***
***Return of the Play-Daters***
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Of recent times, it was probably the most terrifying day of Draco's life. His life was divided into two phases, you see: BBH and ABH. Before the Battle of Hogwarts and After the Battle of Hogwarts. BBH had been a terrible time of war and death. ABH settled into some sort of normality. He couldn't say definite normality – oh, no, that went right out of the window after Scorpius was born.
He'd been pinning his hopes on things improving as his son got older but this proved to be a forlorn hope. As Scorpius got older, things got worse. Much, much worse. There was no longer any logic left in the world. Perhaps there never had been. Perhaps they – grown-up witches and wizards - had always been wrong about everything and they – little witches and wizards – had always been right. The moon might really be made of cheese, ice, coconut, glass, biscuits or even apple pie, like they claimed. Perhaps it was possible to hop backwards from Wiltshire, England, UK to Detroit, Michigan, USA if you were allowed to use a broomstick to cross the Atlantic Ocean. No, that wasn't cheating, but if you really, really, really wanted to hop all the way you could always hop backwards on to one of those muggle aeroplane things – oh, you could just borrow Dad's invisibility cloak if the muggles objected to you not wearing a seat-belt – and hop backwards off again until you...well, you'd have a big breakfast before you left England so you wouldn't get hungry...okay, okay, you're allowed to stop for lunch as long as you keep standing on one leg and…
Oh, dear Godric, they hadn't even arrived yet and already he was being brain-zapped by their previous debates. Their powers were great. Why, why, why did it have to be today that Astoria went into hospital? Her admission wasn't anything at all to worry about – it was simply felt a short period of rest was needed – and the upside was, being a Healer, he had been given full access to one of St Mungo's staff recreation family chalets for the day. This had two pluses: one, he didn't have to try and fit the little witches and wizards into the two-up, two-down Malfoy muggle home; two, he was as close to Astoria as it was possible to be. The downside was, Astoria was not here to save his sanity…
Our reluctant hero paced the garden and ran his fingers through his hair for the thousandth time that day. He would willingly have postponed the return play-date except Scorpius had been so crestfallen – nay, heartbroken - at the very idea and he couldn't bear to disappoint Scorpius.
The sudden crack of Apparation snapped him out of his musings and alerted him to the fact the dreaded moment was here. The scarily grinning face of Ron Weasley materialised together with a deliriously happy Hermione Granger-Weasley. And, oh, God, their offspring were already striding on ahead!
Eldest Granger obviously had something important to discuss to judge by her determined expression while Mad Professor was for some reason staring fixedly at the top of his host's head. A split second later another ominous crack heralded the arrival of the Potter-Weasley clan. Like the previous two Gryffindors, Harry Potter and Ginny Potter nee Weasley looked positively ecstatic. Small wonder. They were getting rid of their kids for the day. A whole wonderful, wonderful, stress-free, delightful day.
Two little Potters and a little Potteress immediately whirled free from their landing place and made a beeline for him. From the excited squealing coming from somewhere behind him, he deduced that Scorpius had returned from the play-broom area. This was further confirmed by a small blond child that closely resembled the youngest Malfoy running in frantic circles around the group while chanting some kind of war cry. "Wa-heyyy! Rose! Alb! James! Lils! Hugo! Wa-hey! Wa-hey, heyyy!"
The Gryffindors of course expressed due concern for the Slytherin's welfare.
"It's lucky that you're great with kids, Draco!"
"They haven't stopped talking about you since Scorpius's play-date!"
"Have a fun day, guys, I'm sure you all will!"
"Thank you sooo much!"
They were gone in a flash before he could change his mind. And then he was alone. All alone. With Them...