Summary: How something begins may influence but need not determine the end. Perhaps it had to happen exactly as it did, for now to be as it is.
Characters: Hermione, Lucius, Draco, Scorpius. Pairing: Hermione/Lucius. Tags: Family, Fluff, Love, A little angst. Rating: K+
Forever is Composed of Nows
Scorpius comes to spend the day with them.
Draco delivers him to Malfoy Manor (side-along apparating; Scorpius is beyond excited). Draco kisses Hermione on the cheek, then, "Father . . ." he greets Lucius stiffly.
Hermione sighs. Draco makes a face at her as if to say I'm trying, aren't I? She wants to say, Not hard enough! But she lets it go. She has learned, over years, that people's limitations are what they are; and only the person themselves can breach them.
Lucius actually lurks in the background, trying not to put a foot wrong. It doesn't suit him. Actually, he exasperates her as much as Draco does in these situations.
Exasperates her and, at the same time, tears at her heart.
They have spent years like this, since the war ended, in a stalemate of remorse and recrimination. The balance of the emotions different in each of them, but amounting to the same thing.
Now Scorpius is five years old. He looks like Draco; even more, in fact, like an old photograph of Lucius when he was the same age.
And he is starting to ask questions. Five-year-old innocence, completely without knowledge of what has come before, and with no intention to stir up the past. But everything resonates with her husband and her (it still sounds absurd to Hermione) stepson. You could say, Pass the sugar, please, the wrong way at the wrong time and one or both would retreat into a dark shell of regret.
She takes Scorpius into the garden and shows him the flowers, has him close his eyes and hear the hum of their magic as they bloom. She conjures butterflies with her wand, watches with delight that mirrors his at their multicoloured flight, and as one sits delicately on his hand. She wonders if, when the time comes, he will be sorted into Slytherin. She wonders who he will become. She wonders, and not remotely for the first time, who Lucius might have been if his beginning had been different; what that might have meant for Draco.
Still.
How something begins may influence but need not determine the end. Perhaps it had to happen exactly as it did, for nowto be as it is.
Now, as the newest Malfoy chases the departing butterflies, Lucius joins them in garden and wordlessly takes Hermione's hand. She presses herself against him to remind him he is loved.