One and only Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned and created by JK Rowling.

Music Recommendations:
The Cinematic Orchestra & Patrick Watson - 'To Build a Home'

Prologue

The door to the private quarters had slammed harder than he had intentioned. His anger was too far gone, and his poor wife awoke with a great start, their newborn in the hospital cot screeching with fright.

Draco's head fell into his hands, his despair to have been so clueless mixed with his incredulity of the situation.

Things had been a dire mess from the first minute of labour. He didn't know if he would ever catch a break, or worse, it would catch onto everyone else around him in a domino effect.

Astoria slightly glared at him after the shock subsided. She flicked her wand through her fingers before her baby was in her arms, as she sat up to better cradle her. As she comforted her daughter, Draco peeked through his long bone like fingers, only to see Astoria paler than him, so much gaunter looking than she had been 48 hours prior, soothing their daughter. The coaxing had the newborn relaxed and barely whimpering into her mother's soft embrace.

Astoria sighed carefully, brushing the newborn's pink face gently and admiring her little features. Draco could practically feel her gentle spirit echoing in the room, her willing stronger than her heart could ever possibly effect.

'I don't know if I will ever be good at this,' he said quietly, staring at her embrace of their newborn daughter.

Being a mother was natural to Astoria. Nature didn't run and hide from Astoria, it confidently trusted her to lead it the right way. She lit up rooms and feared very little, for she knew her worth and would not falter under those who attempted to wrangle her soul into obedience.

Draco's whole being to life and life that needed to be nurtured to better it – it simply didn't exist. Some self-preservation techniques, maybe, but that was nothing short of selfish in the realm of fatherhood. Truthfully, Draco didn't know how to nurture, only how to be nurtured.

He was completely unprepared. And she was the one who nearly died giving birth to their baby. As always, she came back like a whip in response.

'You've not actually attempted anything yet darling,' Astoria said, her vision never leaving her daughter, her eyes soft and warm on her little being. Expectedly, as their newborn girl had truly settled into her mother's arms into a new snooze, she raised her eyes to look at her husband, cowering and in a panic. This was not the first time she had witnessed him falter at his role in all of this, under the weight of those who envisaged different things for him and his family, for them to represent a dying breed of witch and wizard.

'If I'm correct, the man I married was back in that room, arguing his father out of my vicinity, not the one giving up on his position in this family.'

'I'm sorry, Astoria.'

'Don't apologise Draco,' Astoria held back the roll of the eyes. It wouldn't be useful at this moment. 'The words you spoke out there mattered more when you finally needed to make our plans clearer to your parents. What this family implicitly needs right now, are your actions.'

Draco removed his hands slowly from his face.

Astoria could always see him for what he was, a scared little boy who needed reminding of how old he actually was. What actually mattered now, and that he had a choice. To fall and stagger in fear of what society would think of him, despite the war being finished for some time. Or be the pillar of strength his very weak wife was currently being for him, in a time when she needed him most.

Her eyes flickered between him and the baby in gesture, quite obviously after a few seconds. When he didn't quite catch on, she didn't become frustrated but merely communicated her desires differently.

'Just as you told him, you will play an active part in her upbringing. Which means you can hold her too darling.'

Draco moved toward her and their daughter as she held the bundle out to him expectantly.

He adjusted whenever Astoria made a new suggestion to make the baby more comfortable, as well as himself.

'You see, she's not crying,' Astoria gently encouraged.

'This time,' Draco evenly spoke.

Her brow rose in very little disappointment but with a sense of amusement. 'The problem with fatherhood Draco is that you sort of should stride into it with some pride, and not totally bring yourself down on her second day on this earth,' she teased him.

Draco glared slightly at her words, but she simply smiled, in a way she had from when they met, as though she knew more than him, and truly, he believed she did.

Draco's index finger gently brushed the little wisp their daughter had that was defined as her hair and felt the softness of her skin admiringly.

'Children can mirror what they see their parents doing, even when its negative behaviour,' Astoria said quietly. 'I'm not saying to be so proud your inept Draco…but have some pride in yourself and in her, and she will reflect that in the times when she will need it most.'

Draco didn't look to his wife this time. He was merely wrapped up in what his daughter professed in her little garbles and whines. Her squished little face and her closed eyes didn't say much to most but he could see with the rose coloured lenses that parenthood had now allowed him to see through, a chance to finally become the father he never thought he could be, the one Astoria believed he could be, the only person to see that he could be greater than what was foreseen to be of a Malfoy.

His pupils practically dilated at the sight of her first yawn.

Despite how much he hated the emotion that was drawn from him, his eyes teared up.

'She's perfect.'

There was an instrumental track playing over his head while the occasional beeping noise clashed through the bustle of a relatively quiet supermarket, different temperatures, one of the Arctic and one of natural room temperature was felt throughout. It was called Waitrose, and he'd just seen a child wearing a vest with his hair slicked back, supposedly his Sunday best, while a grandmother wearing sunglasses and distinctive colour lipstick in a plaid two-piece strode behind him, calling to him occasionally to "Behave Westley!"

Draco wasn't quite sure what to make of the Muggle world and its oddities, but he felt strangely at home with the equally uncomfortable upper-class muggles to be inside this store selling groceries. Often, he found himself getting distracted, and thankfully his son Scorpius was present to be as enamoured as he was by muggle life in passing. But while Draco questioned so much and squinted at the confusion he felt, his son was growing far more fascinated whenever a trip was warranted within the muggle world, although he hadn't quite grasped it as well as a child brought up with actual muggle parents.

His eldest child, and only daughter Cassiopeia however, had taken to it like a fish to water.

While this should have upset a past Draco greatly considering how much he had deeply rooted himself within the Wizarding World as a virtue bestowed upon him by his parents, he knew that with everything that had occurred these last few years in his small family unit, this was possibly the best outcome for his daughter; a squib.

Getting lost in those terrible moments of despair was a consequence of seeing her utterly bloom within this foreign environment because no matter how proud Draco was of his daughter, there was still much pondering and shame of his own accord to fester through. Would she have been better off in a family that wasn't tied to an evil entity only decades gone? Would she have had magic had it not been for his actions as an immature and vastly privileged young wizard? Did he curse her, or were the fates giving her an out from their reputation?

He had been ordered by his eldest to take control of a "trolley" and to wheel it wherever she went, snapping him out of his deeper train of thought. As he looked to his son, who gazed upon the items with such attention to detail, he realised that maybe fate had offered the latter to his daughter.

Scorpius had very few friends, but they were highly valued in his eye, despite Draco's curiosity as to how he managed to gain them in that of Albus Potter and Rose Weasley. But he recalled that he'd never had the natural charm that his son's actual personality, dipped in thousands of books, a barrage of odd facts and his own sense of "pop culture" because he'd never been given the opportunity to have one in his childhood. His wife insisted he had a snarky sense of humour that had softened since the war and his guilt was lightened. That he loved his children and his wife. That distancing himself from his parents over the years had given him a chance to wear less black.

'You look like you're in constant mourning.'

It was the most honest thing she'd said of his general attire after their fourth outing as a couple. Astoria was the most brutally honest woman he'd ever met, but she was softer when she knew it was an area of pain, and always offered advice or better options. He'd worn less black over the years and more deep blues and his shirts consisted of whites and lights blues and moss greens. Somehow his wife had managed to get him to wear "casual clothes" after some heavy persuasion. Casual had never been uttered within Malfoy Manor, and his mother nearly lost her soul the minute she saw him with his sleeves rolled midway and a pair of light grey slacks one summer when she dropped by for a surprise visit.

Admittedly he preferred the changes that came into his life after meeting Astoria. Once he married her and had children, he knew it was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. He found actual solid love, not based on anything of land value, just on trust and compassion. It was still in some ways, very new to Draco.

'Dad, you're deep in thought again. Mum's not going to be happy if we're late back home.'

That was also new too. Their house-elf Nimble, who they had to pay as part of the new Elf labour laws as the enslavement of any sentient being was made illegal the minute Hermione Granger got herself a position on the Wizengamot (the youngest in five centuries touted by every publication), which he realised had a hell of a lot to do with how she knew his family treated Dobby, had gotten a case a Dragon Pox which would see her out of work for a few months, and Astoria insisted on forcing her to bed rest while she prepared a big meal for her family who planned to visit that evening.

'Cassiopeia, why do you insist on calling me…Dad?'

Cassiopeia shrugged her shoulders before pulling him further along. She was thirteen and had been in the best educational institutions Muggle life and their money could provide and so he suspected her sense of propriety would remain intact, but she had introduced this specific moniker, not once uttered by him although to his wife's great delight as she wasn't quite stuffy growing up, and he was curious as to where it could have possibly come from.

'I've just noticed a trend among the muggles. The boarding girls who don't know or really love their parents call them mother and father and Miranda calls hers "Mum" and "Dad" because she actually likes her parents.'

'Oh,' Draco said in some genuine surprise. 'So what you're saying is –

'I don't want to give off the false impression that I hate you or Mum to anyone. You're good parents.'

Draco knew that she had adapted far more to his wife's personality quirks than she had his, as the level of maturity, and his wife's influence on her well-adjusted upbringing displayed how much more capable and intelligent she was at her young age than he ever could have been as a spoiled and pampered sixteen-year-old. He grasped her shoulder in some quiet appreciation and she smiled gently at him before pulling him along and expertly dragging her younger brother away from a colourful aisle full of sweets and confectionary, only half complaining as she did so.

He hadn't raised a witch, but he was certain for the first time in years that she was actually happy regardless.

Please do R&R

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