Draco and Scorpius sat on the sofa in the living room. A lingering silence waited for a while until Draco piped up.
"Did you really say that you wanted to be like me?" He asked his son, who looked up from the hot chocolate his father had just prepared for him.
"Um... Yeah..."
Draco suddenly seemed shocked, taken aback that his son really had no idea. He wondered whether it would have been correct to talk about himself earlier than this.
"Son... Would you like to know a bit more about how I was before I married your mother?"
Scorpius nodded.
Draco sighed, and started to look quite distant for a while. "My Dad – Your Granddad..." Draco struggled to find the correct words. "He was good at getting what he wanted, but making it so he seemed right. If that makes sense."
Scorpius nodded again, even though he wasn't really following.
"My Dad... He used to spoil me... Quite a bit... I was actually a bit of a brat. I was eventually raised to become quite materialistic, I suppose. But, since he had given me everything that I thought I could ever want, I looked up to him, perhaps in a sort of unhealthy way. I'm not sure if I've shown you this," Draco murmured as he rolled up the sleeve of his left arm.
'A scar. So?'
"What's that?" Scorpius asked. Draco started to understand the innocence of his son, something he could never recall having.
"It's a Dark Mark. Or, well, what's left of one. See, if you look closely..." He moved his arm closer to Scorpius' face, but still keeping a distance, as though it was an infection that his son would not survive if he caught it.
The pale boy moved closer, his smoky eyes lively with disbelief as he scanned the markings again and again. On closer inspection, it did look... Foreboding.
"It's a sign of a Death Eater," Draco told his son, avoiding eye contact. "My father, of course, he was a Death Eater, and he raised me to believe that their views were right; their intentions, pure, and for a better tomorrow."
Draco pulled his sleeve down. "But now I understand how wrong that was." Scorpius looked at his father, who seemed near tears. 'Am I really going to tell all this to a 12 year old?"
"By my sixth year... I was not... Mentally well. I probably should have spoken to someone about it. But there was no-one to trust... Not even my own father seemed like a father anymore. He seemed more of a slave to the Dark Lord, something no true Slytherin should ever be." He looked his son in the eyes finally at this point. "Remember, son. No matter who says what, Slytherins are not the 'Bad Guys'. Just because we use our abilities differently, and to different advantages, we should not be cast aside from the rest. We are powerful... But some chose to use that power incorrectly, besmirching the Slytherin name." Draco sighed, then realised he had missed something. "And I did try to kill Harry Potter, but I didn't have a choice."
Scorpius was wide eyed. Never had he realised that his father had been through so much.
"Do you think that answered your friend's questions?" Draco asked softly. Scorpius nodded again in response, still not wanting to talk. Just as his father was about to get up, he realised something.
"Dad?"
Draco turned. "Yes?"
"What did you mean...? Like her mother? Were you friends?"
Draco swallowed and sat back down. "Uhh... No. We weren't friends. You might have heard that she was born to Muggles, and as I've said, I was too prejudiced to really bother with her. But, uh, about my sixth year... I think all the breakdowns and stuff sort of made me go a bit... Soft on her. She had some qualities that I didn't understand the point in, and of course, we had never liked each other, our little social groups clashing and all, but... She was alright, for a mud- uh, Muggleborn."
Draco remembered what he had promised his wife after their first year as a couple. He even remembered her exact words. 'No more prejudice... Especially no using the term Mudblood. We're all equal, Draco, and you need to remember that if you want a better tomorrow.'
It was that that had made him fall in love with Astoria much more.
"So... So you fancied Rose's Mum?" Scorpius asked, taking away the cloak that Draco had shrouded it in.
Draco sighed for the hundredth time. "To put it simply, yes. But that was a long time ago. I barely knew your mother existed then."
"Oh. Okay." Scorpius wasn't really sure what to say now.
"Is that all your questions?" Draco joked.
Scorpius nodded solemnly again, and drank his hot chocolate deep in thought. He couldn't wait to see Rose again.
