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Chapter Two—The Scarred Soul

Draco winced as a blinding headache exploded behind his eyes. He put down the book he'd been trying to read—it had something to do with the history of pure-blood families who had died out in the nineteenth century, but he'd been staring at the same page for an hour and absorbed none of it—and walked into the corridor. The headache was the result of an alarm ward, but the last thing he wanted to do was give his wife the sense that he considered her actually important.

Moving at a leisurely pace, he finally halted near the door of the nursery and peered into it. Scorpius was sleeping, his face turned into his pillow and one hand flexing open and shut around the small animated dragon that was his current favorite toy. Draco's wife stood silent above him, staring. The thick net of wards cast over the bed ensured that she couldn't touch the boy, so looking was all that was left to her.

"Still hoping that I'll change my mind and trust you again someday?" Draco drawled, stepping into the room. His steps sank so deeply into the carpet that he wasn't worried about waking Scorpius, and he kept his voice low. "Coming here and showing how badly you want to snatch him up will not help that effort."

Marian whirled around and stared at him in turn, and then a dark scowl took over from the blankness on her features. She said nothing, though, just folded her arms and moved a few steps away from Scorpius. Draco's headache subsided, and he took her place, partially because he really wanted to see his son and partially because he wanted Marian to take note of the fact that he could reach through the wards and feel soft skin and hair under his fingers.

"I don't understand how you ever expect me to trust you again," he murmured. "If you wanted continued access to Scorpius, you should not have tried to abduct him."

"I wasn't abducting him," Marian said in a clenched voice, staring at the far wall. "I was trying to take him away from this loveless hulk of a place, to one where he could be reared with all the care and attention he deserves."

Draco shuddered delicately. Marian's surname before they married had been MacFusty, and she'd come from the clan of Dragon-Keepers that tended the Hebridean Blacks on their native islands. That clumsy, graceless heritage still showed in the burns on the left side of her face, and her ragged black hair, and her accented English. Draco would have wondered why either of them had married the other, but he knew the answers. Marian had wanted to escape the weather in the northern islands and the heavy work of Dragon-Keeping that involved all the members of her family, no matter their age, and he had wanted a pure-blood wife who wouldn't care too much about her standing in southern English society.

And they might have got on well together, politely ignoring each other's peccadilloes, but Marian had committed far more than a peccadillo when she'd tried to snatch Scorpius and flee to the Hebrides a year-and-a-half ago. Draco had never assumed he'd have to protect his son against his wife. If not for the vigilance of a house-elf, he might have lost the only person he'd ever loved besides his parents.

"We've discussed this, Marian," he said. "And we won't come to any satisfactory resolution as long as you insist on being hysterical."

She glared at him. If Draco did not have the Malfoy name and pride to maintain, he might have considered her formidable. The burns didn't make her pretty, by any means, but they lent an intimidation factor to her face in the way that scars could. "I'm not being hysterical when I wish to protect my son," she said. "And need I remind you what the catalyst for my running was? You used magic on a baby. Someone five months old, who might have died when—"

"And it didn't hurt him, did it?" Draco asked. He had to concentrate to quell his fury and despair. Sometimes he thought he would do nothing more than remain in Malfoy Manor and have these pointless arguments with Marian forever. The recent confinement because of the murder accusations did nothing to help. "He survived intact, and he looks like a proper Malfoy heir now. No son of mine was going to have dark hair."

His wife didn't bother responding, but simply turned her head and stalked out of the room. Draco let out a small sigh of relief, which he wouldn't have dared if his mother had been there to hear it. Narcissa didn't understand Draco's feelings towards his wife. She had been the one to choose the name Scorpius for the baby, over Marian's strong protests, and to suggest the magic that had made Scorpius's black hair and uncertainly-colored eyes turn the Malfoy blond and gray.

She didn't understand because she wasn't bonded to the woman, Draco thought mutinously. It made all the difference in the world when someone had spoken the words "bonded for life" over you, and so the magic of one's wedding vows was yanking and pulling, trying to force the reluctant spouses back together.

Draco had long known that he preferred to sleep with men. And yet he still felt uncomfortable each time he visited a male lover, and having one in the Manor was impossible. It wasn't anything so simple as a craving for Marian; he could have dealt with that, since he had learned to ignore and devalue so much of what he desired in the name of appearances in the past ten years. Instead, itching built across his skin, until he couldn't help scratching it and looking no better than a dog. And no one else knew how to twist the knife in his soul like Marian did.

Although, Draco had to admit, as he stroked his son's hair and watched Scorpius's lips part in a baby pout, I don't think that's the bond. She's just the only one who both knows me well enough to hurt me and is cruel enough to do so.

He crouched down so that he could touch Scorpius from a more comfortable position, and let loose a gusty sigh. Everything was to have been a success, just a short time ago. His father had earned a seven further years in Azkaban, but he might have been out soon. Draco was to marry and have an heir, and gradually secure the Malfoy legacy and work his family back into society. His mother had made all sorts of grand plans, dreaming up a dozen different careers for Draco before breakfast. She was sure he could be Minister by the time he was fifty, at the very latest, and that was the idea she returned to most frequently.

And then one of the pure-blood supremacy groups had decided that a free Lucius Malfoy would make for a fine iconic name to put on their calling cards, and a frightened Ministry had determined that his freedom wasn't a priority after all. And Draco's wife had turned out to be someone who just couldn't be contented with escape from her horrendous family; she had demanded a hand in raising her child, and then thrown fits when she didn't get her way. And nothing Draco tried seemed to come to fruition. There were children's legends about careless wizards who turned objects into gold and silver when they touched them. Draco's only gift seemed to be turning them to dust.

His melancholy broke when he noticed a gleam of something hard and metallic from the floor. Narrowing his eyes, he called, "Eleeny!"

There was a sharp flash, and a house-elf appeared, bowing from the waist but not speaking aloud. Draco was grateful for that. The high-pitched voice would surely have awakened his son. He jerked his chin towards the gleam, being careful not to look directly at it. "Take that away and destroy it," he said. "And then search my wife's quarters, and if she has any other mirrors, relieve her of them."

The elf bowed again, and vanished once more, taking the small hand-mirror with her. The crack of her departure did wake Scorpius, but before his boy could do more than loose a moody hiccough, Draco scooped him up and held him against his chest, burying his nose in his hair. It still smelled faintly of magic when he didn't concentrate on something else, but that wasn't his fault, was it? The Malfoy heir should look like a Malfoy. On that, he agreed with his mother. It had been his misfortune to take a dark-haired wife and expect his blood to breed absolutely true, but that was one reason magic existed, to correct the mistakes of nature.

"Daddy?" Scorpius blinked up at him and dropped his objections in favor of snuggling into the warm human arms that contained him. Draco knew he was smiling like a fool, and permitted it. No one else was about to see him, after all, and Scorpius was still too young for Narcissa to complain that such attentions were spoiling him.

"Yes, Scorpius," he murmured, and carried his son across the room to drop into a chair. The chair immediately deepened its softness and began to rock beneath them, making Draco shift so that he could block any possible contact between his boy's head and the back of the seat. Scorpius was agreeable to this, and popped a thumb in his mouth to suck on for a few moments. Draco did not think he would ever really call himself happy, not since the war and what he'd learned about himself during it, but this was the closest he came to contentment nowadays. He used his feet to give them an extra little push off the floor whenever the rocking slowed down, but mostly the chair moved by its own magic.

"Why can't I go outside?" Scorpius asked at last, taking his thumb out of his mouth. "Wanna go outside."

"I know," Draco said, and feathered his fingers through the blond hair again. Was this softness what his father had felt, when Draco had been the same age? He could no longer scorn Lucius, as he once had, for putting family flesh and blood ahead of family pride. And he hadn't done much better, had he, given the chance to earn some glory for the Malfoys?

Old wounds. I shouldn't pick at them. Marian does that for me well enough.

"Wanna," Scorpius insisted. His gray eyes had tears forming in the corners now, and he tugged at Draco's shoulder with his free hand.

"I know," Draco said softly. "It won't be much longer." He wasn't about to explain to a two-year-old that he'd been accused of murder, and so it was dangerous for any of the Malfoy family to be outside the wards these days. That included Scorpius playing in the gardens or hovering on the back of the larger toy dragon Draco had enchanted for him. "The Aurors will let us out of the house soon."

Scorpius's face brightened up at the mention of Aurors; currently, Draco thought, he believed they were the heroes of the wizarding world and that his father was one whenever he wasn't home to be Daddy. "Good," he said. "And now, want a story." His free hand wriggled, and he frowned. "And Kneazle."

Draco waved his wand and Summoned the dragon Scorpius had slept with, which his son had named Kneazle for some unknown reason. Kneazle animated as soon as he touched Scorpius's hand, and nuzzled at him, and blew small rings of smoke. Draco settled further back in the chair and asked, "What kind of story do you want?"

Scorpius gave him the superior stare of a two-year-old who can't believe he has to explain these kinds of things to his parents, and said, "A real one."

"Once," Draco began, "there was a time when your Grandmother Narcissa saved everything. The whole world and all the people in it."

Scorpius blinked, perhaps at the mere thought of putting his grandma in the same category as Aurors. But he settled easily in for the rest of the story, and though Draco made it simple, he told his son why Harry Potter had reason to owe his mother a life-debt.

Scorpius seemed satisfied with that as a real story, and went to sleep curled up against him. Draco sat there, holding his son, and feeling far more fear for him than for himself, and hating the fact that that was so.

Becoming a parent makes you vulnerable on all sorts of levels. And I don't even have the glory that should come from successfully facing that vulnerability.

I'm trapped in a loveless marriage I shouldn't have entered—or at least that I should have entered with a different kind of bonding. I'm a coward, and not ambitious enough to live up to the title of Slytherin let alone the title of Malfoy, and my life as I know it might still get worse because of these accusations. And I'm cursed whenever I look into a mirror or see a picture of Harry Potter.

He closed his eyes and refused to let himself sense anything for a few moments but the warmth against his chest and the faint scent of sour milk in his nostrils.

This is all I have.

Self-pity was an old and familiar friend. Draco only wished it did not lacerate him so.

Draco halted with one foot just barely across the threshold into the small room—more a study than an eating area—where he and his mother usually dined together. Narcissa had looked up from the table with a faint flush on her face, and she'd started to shove a piece of folded parchment away from her before she forced her fingers to relax. Those were bad signs. She'd certainly done something that he wouldn't approve of, and it might actually be something that worsened their situation at the moment.

Draco couldn't think of what that would be, but he was certain that it existed. A decade of the entire wizarding world conspiring to kick his family while it was down had taught him there was always a lower level to fall to.

He folded his arms, even though the last thing he wanted after a fight with Marian was a fight with his mother. He loved Narcissa, but God, she irritated him so. She wouldn't accept that some things—like the old prestige of the Malfoy name and the political machinations which Lucius had been good at but Draco had inherited no talent for—were simply gone. She was always urging Draco to do this or that thing which she thought would result in glory in a few years. And the years would pass, and she would only weave new plans, undaunted.

She made him tired.

"Draco," she said after a moment. "It's good to see you. I felt the alarm ward ring a short time ago. Did Marian try to touch Scorpius?"

"She did," Draco said sharply, stepping away from the doorway with a firm motion, to show her that she couldn't get around him just by talking about his son. "And Marian left a mirror on the floor, no doubt hoping I'd look into it."

Narcissa's hand twitched towards the parchment again, and smoothed out a tick later, but the motion had been enough to tell Draco everything he needed to know. His mother had mentioned it a few days ago, after all, even if it was just as an aside in a conversation about which Mudblood-loving group might have tried to frame Draco.

"You did it?" he asked, feeling a bit dazed. "You really wrote to Harry fucking Potter, of all people?" His voice had risen into a shout near the end.

"I did," said Narcissa, lifting her chin. "He owes me a life-debt, and he's rather good at discovering the truth of mysterious situations, if your tales of your Hogwarts days are true. So—"

"That was ten years ago, Mother." Draco was fighting not to close his hands into fists; he had enough pain in his left palm, thanks to the last time a mirror had exploded on him a few weeks ago. The cuts were healing, but slowly. And they had begun to buzz with that strange warmth now, the same kind that infested the Sectumsempra scars on Draco's chest whenever he thought about Harry Potter too long, or forgot himself and stared into a mirror. "He's worked for the Blood Reparations Department since the war. Why would he help us? He'd rather leave us to twist in the wind and keep trying to save his precious Mudbloods."

"He's famous for not doing things like that," Narcissa said, and it was her turn to sneer. "He could have lied to me about your being in the castle that day—I wouldn't have known whether he was telling the truth—but he didn't."

"That's a stupid metric to use to judge someone's behavior," Draco said sulkily, tucking his stinging hands under his arms. "And I know him better than you do, Mother. I knew him for six years. You knew him for, what, fifteen seconds?"

"More than that," said Narcissa, leaning back in her chair and giving him that infuriating stare she'd perfected a few years after Lucius went to Azkaban. It said that Narcissa was perfectly in the right and pitied you for being in the wrong, but not enough to let the pity show. It was the major reason that Marian no longer bothered arguing with her mother-in-law. "And the life-debt won't give him a choice, son, as you once knew before you decided to turn your back on your expensive wizarding education. He hasn't made an offer to fulfill it in any other way. I can choose my request, and I choose to force him to investigate our troubles. It's perfect. The Mudbloods see him as a hero, even though he hasn't done anything significant in a decade. They'll be on the verge of judging us innocent the moment he joins the hunt."

Draco made an effort to control his voice and speak very quietly. Any yelling would just convince Narcissa he was behaving irrationally. "You know why I don't want him here, Mother." His palms felt half-painful and half-numb now, as if he had gone to sleep with his hands folded beneath him and had just moved them.

"I do," said Narcissa.

"And?"

"And I think it's time that you got over this silly fear, Draco," Narcissa said, standing up with the letter to Potter in her hand. Draco stared at it as if he could make it burst into flames just from his gaze. Of course, it didn't do what he wanted it to—a minor failure in a life full of them. "The pains you're experiencing obviously come from the curses that—that Bellatrix cast on you during your time here in the Manor that terrible year." Her voice had trembled for a moment, but it was strong again now. She dealt better with those memories than Draco did. "Just because you have visions of Potter doesn't mean that his mere presence here will harm you."

"You say that, but you don't know," Draco muttered fretfully. He knew that he'd already lost the battle.

Narcissa realized it, too. She took a step forwards so that she could pat his cheek. Draco avoided the letter as if it were the Dark Lord's snake. "I do. Frankly, I think the curses my sister used encouraged obsessive behavior and brooding, and you happened to choose Potter as the object of your brooding. It would explain why you see him in the mirror, and why you feel pain in the scars he inflicted. It explains everything, Draco. You only want another explanation because you don't like the one I'm offering you, God knows why, and because all sons want their mothers to be wrong once in a while."

Draco kept his gaze averted from her face. He was afraid that he would scream if he had to look at her right now. "I suppose you're right," he said, and hated the weakness in his voice, hated the fact that he couldn't come up with enough of an explanation to convince his mother that having Potter come to the Manor was a terrible idea, hated the fact that Narcissa thought she had to be the driving force behind his actions because he couldn't do anything for himself—

Hated that she was right.

Narcissa kissed him on the cheek. "I have to go to the Owlery and post this," she said, holding up the hateful letter, "but I'll return shortly, and I'm sure Eleeny will have something delicious for us to eat, as always."

Draco nodded, and his mother swept out of the room. Draco sat down at the table and put his hands over his head, trying to calm his breathing.

His mother just didn't understand. It might sound like the sort of thing any sulky adolescent said to her, but to him it was real. His life had continued in a holding pattern for a decade because he couldn't find any true interest outside the Manor, and it was easier to live with what he'd learned about himself during the war—

Coward.

Sniveler.

Incapable of killing, incapable of fighting back, used as a torture instrument by the Dark Lord—

--if he could lick his wounds in private.

But the constant images of Harry fucking Potter in any mirror he was so careless as to glance at—the images of Harry fucking Potter holding on to his waist, whispering into his ear, gazing at him with adoring eyes—did not help.