(A/N: Thanks to my beloved Alpha-Wolf for beta-ing. And thanks to the late Marc Bolan for the title. You know I'm just a jeepster for you, my dears.)

Chapter Two: Don't You Know You're Just Like Robin Hood

"But that's impossible." Snape said, incredulous. "Granger has been stuck to that Weasley boy like a leech to a hemophiliac since year one. And besides, I thought Draco was going to marry Parkinson, or at the very least Zabini."

"I know, I know." Lucius said, wiping powerlessly at the tears that were streaming down his face. "Where did I go wrong, Severus? Where? Have I been such a bad father, that he should repay for the many years I've cared for him, comforted him, and taught him the Dark Arts, with this?"

"Ah, er." Snape said, thinking of the ever dubious relationship between the Malfoys senior and junior, and the countless moments during the life of the latter when he had thought a more, er, healthy distance between the two should have been maintained. "I… really cannot say, Lucius."

"It doesn't matter anymore, anyway. The damage is done. My only son, for whom I'd dreamt of a beautiful, golden future is going to marry an over-eager, humourless Mudblood book-fancier."

"There must be something we can do." Snape said thoughtfully. "July 21st, that's still at least two months away.

"Two months, four days and… eighteen hours." Lucius said. "I am crossing out the days in my own blood." He pulled out a few calendar leaves from his robe pocket, on which he had indeed put large, wavering crosses in a thick brownish red through a small number of days.

"Oh dear." Snape said, raising his eyebrows. "That's rather dramatic."

"Considering the circumstances, I think I'm being blasé to the point of callousness." Lucius said. "Don't forget that this is Granger we're talking about. Granger." His eyes filled with tears again as he spat the name.

"I am sure I can come up with something." Snape said, soothingly. "How did Granger get her hands on him, anyway?"

"Well, Draco's at a very impressionable age, you know." Lucius said. "Last year, when Crabbe and Goyle announced their engagement, nothing would do for him to get a boyfriend too. I suppose, now that he found out Zabini is going for that Mudblood singer, he thinks it is the thing." Lucius' eyes narrowed. "I knew we should have kept our band together. You would have been just the thing for Draco, and if he could have gotten the singer part right, he would not have bothered about the Mudblood part."

"But Lucius, our band was…well…" Snape said, trying to find words and failing. "You know." Images of festivals in the nineteen sixties assailed his brain.

"Well, there is no point in considering what might have been now." Lucius said, shaking with paternal grief. "It is all beyond repair, and my son is marrying a Granger."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Snape said, looking smug. Lucius looked up at him, eyes glistening with an emotion nearly close to hope, laying a trembling hand over Snape's.

"Oh, Severus…" he said, voice breaking, "I know you would pull through." And he collapsed in the safety of Snape's bony embrace.