Chapter 7
It was weird being a father, to say in the least. Draco supposed it wouldn't be so strange if he gradually had time to grow accustom to it, in the way a person typically became a parent. But having the sudden responsibility thrust onto him overnight had initially proved to be a challenge.
Scorpius was a wonderful child, who definitely had better manners than he ever had as a kid. He wasn't spoiled, nor did he demand that his needs always be met. He didn't constantly seek attention, and he was very thoughtful in his actions.
Draco supposed that it was Granger's genes in the child which had led to him being raised as such. He wondered how he had been in the future as a father, and shuddered at the thought that he was anything like his own. But if he had been, he supposed that he wouldn't have the apparent relationship with Scorpius that he never seemed to have with Lucius. And for that he was relieved; Merlin forbid he was anything like the man who raised him with the morals and values of a Death Eater prodigy.
Staying at the Potter home was also a strange experience. Sure, he got along great with his partner, and while they were decently acquaintances, bordering friends, it was different seeing him in a non-work related capacity, alongside Weasley and Granger. There were times he felt like he was intruding on the trio's friendship, and couldn't help but wonder if Ginny sometimes felt the same way as he did.
He sighed softly to himself as he thought about how his life seemingly had transformed into one of the most confusing affairs he had ever known. It was what he deserved for apparently getting involved with Granger; Merlin knows that she, Potter, and Weasley had a way of attracting trouble without even looking for it.
And while he taunted them in school for it, he was never jealous of it. Sure, he was jealous of the attention they received when they triumphed, and it hadn't helped that his own father would often use that as a reason to punish him for not being as successful.
"Daddy?" he heard a young child's voice call out. As he looked down, he saw Scorpius looking at him expectantly, as if waiting for a response to a question that he had failed to hear.
"Sorry, Scorpius, did you ask me something?" he asked, as the young boy scrambled up to sit beside him on the couch.
"I was asking where Mummy is," the boy said in a matter-of-factly tone. He nearly laughed at how much he sounded like a young, if not still current, Granger.
"She's at work," Draco informed the child, "She wanted to stay here with you, but she had no choice."
He nodded understandingly, "Mummy usually worked a lot, before…" he said, voice trailing off slightly, causing Draco to frown. He hated thinking about what his son went through, so he wrapped an arm around the child to comfort him. Scorpius leaned into and hugged Draco, causing him to feel a bit surprised at the action. But he used the action to rub Scorpius' arm gently, without pulling away from the contact.
"I'va another question for you, daddy," Scorpius stated, looking up at him with his wide eyes. "Why are you and Mummy being weird?"
Draco frowned, "What do you mean?"
"You and Mummy are always touching," Scorpius said, making a weird face, "It's icky. But you say it's because you love her sooooooo much. And you're always kissing, and doing other Mommy-Daddy stuff. But you and Mummy are being weird."
Draco coughed at that. He figured that he and Granger had obviously cared for each other in the future, but he had to say, hearing about it was on a whole other level of strange. It hadn't crossed either his or Granger's mind that it could possibly be a strange sight for their son not to see his parents on the intimate level they were during his timeline.
"I-uh-well, your mother and I aren't together in this time," he said, trying to come up with an explanation.
"Why not?" Scorpius frowned. "You love Mummy! And Mummy loves you!"
"You see, if your mother and I got together in the future, it was probably not for a while. And I'm not sure if your mother and I will get together in this timeline, but if it's supposed to happen it will," he added the last part as he saw Scorpius began to get distressed at the idea that he and Granger weren't together.
"So why can't you just be together now?" Scorpius asked, confusion flitting across his face. He had such an innocent look about him, as if what he was asking was the simplest thing on the planet.
"It doesn't always work like that, Scorpius," Draco tried to explain. "I don't feel that way for her."
He could see his son look even more upset at that. While his own parents were never all that emotional in their love for each other, Draco knew that they had grown to care for each other, arranged marriage or not. But if he had grown up with two parents, who apparently cared for each other a great deal, as Scorpius claimed, he could see why it could be slightly concerning for the young boy.
"But it doesn't mean that something might not happen in the future," Draco said hurriedly. "Who knows, maybe you being here will help bring us together," he said weakly. He knew that he probably shouldn't have said that, seeing that it would most likely be giving the young boy false hope for something that might not even happen. But he couldn't bring himself to cause the child any more grief; not after everything he had already gone through in his own time.
"You mean that I can help you and Mommy get together?" Scorpius asked, a wide smile appearing on his face. "Daddy, we have so much we have to do!"
Draco partially wanted to burst into laughter at the ecstatic look on Scorpius' face, but he also wanted to hex himself for giving the young boy so much hope into a situation that wasn't likely to come true.
"How about we start it a bit later, Scorpius?" he asked the boy, "That way you and I can spend some time together then we can worry about your mother and I."
Scorpius nodded solemnly, "So will you play with me Daddy?"
Draco laughed, "How about you go hide, and I find you?"
The young boy shrieked with joy as he stood up and ran out of the room, leaving Draco shaking his head in amusement at the child's antics.
When Hermione got home from her shift, she could all but stop herself from dropping on the couch and just resting her feet, so that was what she did.
She was exhausted. It had been one of her longer shifts, what with the number of patients and all. Thankfully for her, it seemed that the number of earthquake related accidents seemed to coming to a very slow halt.
While there were very few life threatening procedures she had to do today, there were still a good amount of difficult cases which definitely had a way of keeping her on her toes, trying out strange combinations of spells which she probably never thought she would need until all of five seconds ago.
"Long day?" she heard a voice ask from the doorway. She looked up to see Malfoy standing there, looking sympathetic toward her plight as he waved his wand to summon her a plate of food, and after using a quick re-heating spell, he handed it to her. As she looked at him questioningly, he shrugged and said, "Ginny made extra food for you, and I figured you were probably too tired to get it yourself, nor would you want to use a spell to grab it."
He was dressed far more casually than she probably had ever seen him, wearing a pair of muggle trousers and a knit jumper. She knew that he had changed since the war, but it was little things like this which really sold it to her that he had done so, regardless of the clothes probably belonging to Harry; seeing that Malfoy very easily could have transfigured them to robes.
She would also be lying if she said she didn't think that he looked attractive in the robes. But it wasn't as if she had ever denied his good-looks, just that in the past his personality often trumped over such details.
She smiled at that, "Thanks, I'm starving," she replied, "And yeah, it's been an extremely long day. Part of me just wants to stay on this couch for several long hours before getting back up and going to bed."
He sat beside her, waiting for her to fill in the gaps of what had happened, so she continued, "There were just so many people, you know? It was hard seeing how the earthquake caused so much damage and trauma to everyone, one way or another. And I don't blame the kids for coming back, because clearly whatever they endured was far worse than what we just went through. But I guess it just brought back all the horrors of the war, and the things I saw, which is strange, because that was what made me want to go into healing to begin with," she said with a sigh, as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, before starting to eat the food Malfoy had handed her.
He nodded, "I know what you mean. I was looking over damage reports earlier, and while most of it is easy to repair with magic, there's some major damage out there that won't be as easy to fix."
She looked down, before asking, "How was Scorpius today?" she asked, knowing the young boy was probably fast asleep in a guest room, and while she planned on checking in on him before going to bed herself, she was curious.
Malfoy smiled, "Fantastic. I think he's slowly coming to terms with what happened, you know? And he has moments where he's just so full of life and energy. It's just so strange, and amazing, to think that he's mine, you know?"
She nodded, "I do. I have a shorter day tomorrow, and I large part of me was relieved that I could spend the day with him."
He was quiet for a few moments, "He would like that; he missed you quite a bit today while you were gone. I don't think he completely understands that coming here means that the two of us aren't together, especially since Harry and Ginny are still married."
"He's young. He's at an age where he still is going to have trouble with relationships and making connections. It's something that comes with maturity," she explained softly, without meeting his eyes.
"I told him as gently as I could. I don't think he completely understood," he said, combing his fingers through his hair as he leaned back against the couch. "I think it's hard for him to comprehend it because apparently we care for each other quite a bit in the future."
Hermione looked down, refusing to meet his eyes as a tinge of pink gracing her face, and focused on eating to avoid having to say anything in response just quite yet. She hadn't been expecting him to be quite blunt about it, seeing how the pair of them had all but avoided the subject for the last few days. Despite Harry attempting to prompt her and Malfoy to talk about it properly, other both decide they were just going to pretend that it meant nothing.
Because it really didn't. A lot of things were going to change now that the children had come back. Her relationship with Malfoy was probably one of them.
"There was also something else I wanted to talk to you about," Malfoy said, shaking her out of her thoughts. "My mother is coming back to England. I sent her a general letter explaining the damage, in as little words as possible, to the Manor and she decided it would be best to come home and assess the situation."
Hermione looked up at him, "Oh? So what are you going to tell her about, well, everything?" She asked, curious how he could possibly explain what was happening to his mother without telling her the entire story. She didn't know much about his parents personally.
Lucius Malfoy had been sentenced to life in Azkaban after the end of the war, and due to fact that Narcissa wasn't a Death Eater, and Harry's testimony of her actions in aiding him by standing up against Voldemort, had given her a generous sentence of only a year in Azkaban, and ten years on parole.
She hadn't kept up on other details about Malfoy's mother other than that, and to be honest, she hadn't cared much to bother.
"I feel like I have to," Malfoy said carefully. "She's going to find out eventually, and if she finds out that I kept a grandchild from her, she's going to be furious."
"Will she care about Scorpius' heritage?" Hermione asked, attempting to be delicate with her wording of the sensitive topic. While Malfoy hadn't quite said anything to her recently about the matter, she had no idea what his stance on the issue was.
"I don't know," he replied honestly. "She was raised to believe in blood purity, but she was never as strict in instilling it in me as my father was. She's accepted that the world is a different place now, and those views are no longer acceptable, but I don't know if she'll be able to accept that Scorpius is a half-blood."
Hermione was about to retort angrily, when he sensed it and cut her off.
"It doesn't matter to me," he told her strongly. "Scorpius is my son, despite not being from our time, he's mine. I refuse to let the way I was raised affect the way I see him. If it comes to him staying with us permanently, then I will make him the heir to my estate and treat him as if he was here in a more conventional sense. I don't care what my mother thinks, Granger. If she doesn't want to accept him, then that's her problem."
Her eyes softened at the way he spoke with such reverence about Scorpius. She knew how he felt; she didn't think it was possible to care for someone she hadn't even known a week ago, yet she loved the child as he did.
"I hope you know that I don't believe in any of it anymore, Granger," he said, meeting her eyes. "I don't care about blood purity, or status and wealth. None of that make a person. They are determined by their values and merits, and not who their family was."
"It's nice to see that you've changed your perspective," she said honestly, smiling at him softly.
"It's quite difficult to believe what you've been taught when a muggleborn shows up, fully cultured and is the most intelligent witch in the entire school. It goes against everything you've learnt, and has a way of changing your views," Malfoy said, his eyes burning into hers intensely.
She felt her cheeks tinge again, and has to force herself to break eye contact with him. Malfoy has always had a way of affecting her, albeit negatively at first, but she can't help but feel a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"So are you going to tell your parents?" he asks, changing the conversation. And just like that, the spell is broken.
She was still a bit dazed when she answered, "What? Oh. I'm not quite sure, to be honest. My parents and I always had a slightly difficult relationship," she said, trailing off. She doesn't know if she should keep talking; the two of them aren't quite close. But he looks at her expectantly and she finds herself saying, "They were proud of me being a witch, but they never quite understood what it meant. I didn't tell them about the build up to the war, and when it hit, I obliviated them so they would leave the country. I tracked them down after and reversed the spell, and while they attempted to understand my reasons, it's never quite been the same."
He looks sympathetic at that and she is grateful that he hasn't said anything about it that might make her regret opening up to him.
"They'll come around eventually," he said softly. "Parents that care about their children anywhere near as much as yours do about you, can never permanently stay away from their children."
"How do you know they care about me?" she asked, slightly confused.
"When we were in second year, I saw them at Flourish and Blotts with you. I had never seen prouder parents who cared as much as they did for their own child as yours did. I think it was what set me off that day and sent me to go terrorize you," he admitted slightly.
She smiled at him, "I'm glad you grew up, Malfoy. You're actually a half decent person now," she teased at the end.
He looked affronted, "I'm not going to respond to that," he said, causing her to burst into laughter.
She patted his shoulder, "There, there," she said, finding her fingers lingering over his body ever so slightly.
Just then, the clock chimed twelve times, causing her eyes to widen at the time. "We should probably get to bed," she said, a bit regretfully.
He nodded as he helped her off the couch. She waved her wand and sent the dishes to the sink, as they climbed up the stairs to their rooms.
Once she had undergone her typical night routine, she laid down on the bed, and felt herself unable to sleep as the events of the day played over and over in her head like a broken record.