IV
The silence that fell in the dining room after the last words was deafening. Scorpius looked at his parents with the same mischievous smile on his face. Astoria was completely stunned, but from his father's face, he couldn't read anything in particular. A few hours earlier, he had promised himself he wouldn't destroy the holiday atmosphere, but it seemed he wasn't good with promises.
"I'm done," he said as he stood up from the table.
Without saying another word, Scorpius went to the living room, where he left his belongings. He thought about taking them and hopping on the next train back to Hogwarts. He couldn't stand his father for one hour - let alone one day! How was he going to manage the entire week? He didn't know.
"What are you plotting again?" Draco asked as he came to the room.
It would be better to say that he hissed these words because he barely opened his mouth. He looked as if he fought with an angry grimace that wanted to appear on his face.
Scorpius rolled his eyes.
"It was just an accident. Albus Potter came in my way and got hurt," he said. "If you are so worried, you'll be happy to know he returned home in one piece. So it's not a big deal; I only nudged him a little."
"It is a big deal."
Scorpius shrugged.
"Believe me, I have done worse things," he continued. With every word, he was more irritated and less amused with that situation. Even his father took the side of the Gryffindors, which was completely insane. "Worse things have happened to me," he added with a vicious voice.
For a moment, Scorpius thought he saw anxiety sweep across his father's face, but the expression disappeared as quickly as it came, and Draco composed himself.
"So it was revenge, right? Potter messed with you, and you wanted to give him a lesson."
Scorpius sighed heavily. He tried to stay calm.
"I'm saying to you, it was an accident! That moron stuck his nose where it didn't belong. I was trying to take down two Ravenclaws - so, yes! It was revenge."
Scorpius came closer and raised his head as much as he could, though his father was still higher than him.
For a moment, they watched each other in silence. Then Scorpius began with an angry voice.
"It's what you wanted to hear, right? So, allow me to proceed: yes, your son is vicious, ravenous, Slytherin scum. I'm the same as you were in the past."
Scorpius almost lost his balance when his father slapped him in the face. But he wasn't going to let the tears fall. Instead, he glared at Draco furiously.
"Enough!" his father barked. "We'll come back to this when you calm down."
Scorpius laughed hysterically at his father's response, but that laughter held no joy.
"Yeah, right," he began when he regained his breath. "Despite what you think, I'm perfectly calm. I'm only simply sick and tired of your hypocrisy. All my life, you fed me with your fairytales, and you are acting as if there's nothing wrong with this world. Don't you see it, father?"
He almost shouted the last sentence, but seeing that his father wasn't going to respond, he continued.
"Are you really that blind, father - or maybe you're so daft you can't see how much your life - your bloody mistakes cursed me? You never did anything right! You didn't have enough courage to kill Dumbledore and were too much of a coward to fight the Dark Lord. You always turn tail and run - even now! You can't face me when I'm upset! You'd rather withdraw and wait until I calm down. But you're wrong, Father! I've not calmed down for two years. That wrath made me tougher. I'm nothing like you! I don't run from my opponent - even when they are stronger than me. I face them with my head high, and sometimes I have to get my hands dirty."
Somewhere behind his father, Scorpius spotted Astoria, but her tears and scarred face couldn't cool his anger. It was as if all his frustration, which accumulated through the whole third year of school, found the exit and split out to his father.
But Draco still stood straight, still with hard clenched jaws. He said nothing for a while as if he analysed what he had heard, and then he shook his head a little.
"I was so stupid as a child; it's a shame that you gained it fully from me," he said coldly before turning around and leaving the room.
Hearing that, Scorpius was sure that he would explode from fury. Without a second thought, he took an empty cup from above the fireplace and threw it in his father's direction. The cup shattered on the doorframe, very near his mother's head.
The thought that he could hurt Astoria made him calm down a little. Before he could do anything more stupid, he grabbed his shoes and robe and left the manor.
Scorpius went through the garden that was all covered with snow. He didn't think where he was going, but at last, he came to the small, completely frozen pool. On the edge were many big stones, so he sat down on one of them. He didn't mind that it was frozen cold and covered in snow.
He didn't know if he should laugh or cry. He had so many different emotions running through his mind. He wiped his face by hand and combed his light blond hair with his fingers. Sometimes, he really regretted that he looked so much like his father.
He thought he had that phase behind him, that all these bad emotions lost their strength, but it seemed he was wrong. A few rash words, and he was completely out of control. Didn't his parents know what happened at Hogwarts? Didn't they understand that all his lessons, notes, and exams didn't matter at all? They still talked about it as if it was something important, something that made a difference. Maybe it worked that way when they were young, but then Voldemort came, and everything changed. His parents were the best examples. All their knowledge and attributes meant nothing to other wizards. For the rest of the Wizarding World, the Malfoys were only useless rubbish.
If they thought that passing the OWLs would make him a better person, they were completely foolish.
He grabbed his head and moaned with frustration. Why was that so hard? Other Slytherins could get used to it. In their small groups, they didn't provoke anyone; they pretended not to hear mean words and not to see the distaste in the eyes of other students. They seemed to be at peace with the situation.
Scorpius couldn't do that. His hearing was too good, his eyes too sharp, and definitely, he had too little patience. During his second year of school - when his childhood dreams had been crushed - he found himself getting into a lot of trouble. He always had a sharp tongue; he was never afraid of pain - always responding to every threat with an attack. He'd lost track of how many times he returned from a fight with a black eye or bloodied lips. It was during that time he had learned how biased teachers could be because the blame seemed to always fall on him.
Because of what he learned over that year, Scorpius stopped being so easily provoked; however, sometimes, he seriously wanted to take somebody down a peg. He couldn't deny how satisfied he was after witnessing the state of Backsing and Nash after his action, even though putting Potter in the Hospital Wing wasn't his intention. He knew he shouldn't be proud of it, but who cares? Backsing and Nash deserved what they got, and for sure, there were plenty of students who were happy to see them in that pitiful shape - even if they weren't sharing their joy out loud.
The memory of his revenge made his mood a little better - even though only for a moment. Quickly, the dark thoughts came back, and he sat on that frozen stone for a very long time. Nobody came for him. No one looked for him. His mother probably cried somewhere in the silence, and his father… who cared about him?
In the end, it was the cold wind that got Scorpius back to the manor. Frozen to the bones, he came inside and went to the living room, where he wanted to warm himself by the fire. He hoped his father was in his office - like usual when they fought - but unfortunately, Draco waited for him in the room.
He still had that unpleasant, hard grimace on his face, but in his eyes was a lack of previous anger. It seemed he also cooled down a little and was ready for a counterattack.
"Sit." He commanded and pointed to one of the chairs.
"I won't…"
"Silencio!"
Draco's wand cut the air, and suddenly, all Scorpius' words were turned into silence.
"You said enough today. Sit."
Draco didn't say it louder than before, but something in his voice made Scorpius obey. At that moment, he understood that what he had interpreted as the calm down was rather a higher form of fury.
Scorpius wasn't going to test his luck. He knew that his father could cast a much more unpleasant spell than that one.
Obediently, he came closer to the fireplace and sat in the chair. His eyes never left his father, who stood still near the window.
"The first thing you will do when you regain your voice will be an apology to your mother and clean the mess you have made here," Draco said with a voice as calm as terrifying.
Scorpius had never seen him like this before.
"But now, you will listen to me very carefully," he continued. "Tomorrow, your grandparents are coming here, and during their visit, you will behave properly. I don't want to hear one negative word about Hogwarts, teachers, and other students. They will also hear nothing of what happened today. You will be a good, exemplary grandson - even if you will have to lie straight to their faces. This shouldn't be a problem for you, I assume."
Scorpius hated the Silencio charm, but he would inform his father what he thought about all of it the moment he would regain the ability to speak. It seemed Draco wanted to do a hypocritical show for the sake of the family.
"And right after the New Year, you will return to school and fix your failures. I don't care how you do it, but I don't want to be ashamed of you any longer."
Hearing that, Scorpius jumped to his feet. He couldn't say anything, but he showed his disapproval through his posture.
Draco frowned, came closer, and looked at him with hard eyes.
"I want to make it clear: this isn't a request. It's an order. If you fail to right your wrongs, there will be no point in you returning home at all."
Scorpius stared at his father with wide eyes. At one moment, all anger disappeared. He never expected his father to say such things. The charm wasn't in use any longer because it left him speechless.
Draco watched him for a while, then he turned around and walked towards the door.
"Finite incantatem," he murmured, at last removing the spell.
For a long moment, Scorpius looked in his direction, even though he had disappeared in the corridor. The last of his father's words really shook him, and he needed more time to calm down a bit. Of course, there was a thought which nudged him to go after Draco and tell him what he was thinking about that, but Scorpius quickly abandoned it because his legs trembled too much.
So, after a while, he cleaned up fragments of the shattered cup and, with resignation, he walked away and began to search for his mother.
The next four days were like a play in the theatre. Scorpius greeted his grandparents with a bright smile spread across his face. His words were full of love - though he was sad, they met so rarely. He must've been quite convincing because his grandmother, Augusta Greengrass, hugged him with affection and promised him they would catch up on the vacation.
The Christmas dinner was full of various stories - from Hogwarts to Gringotts Bank and from south Wales, where Astoria's family home was. His grandpa amused them with his story about the lifelong conflict with his neighbour - an old wizard with dementia - who thought that Greengrass' horses had eaten his apples. Astoria talked about her job at Gringotts - something about goblins and slyboots who thought they were smarter than them. Scorpius shared stories from school - one more fantastic than the previous. He spoke about his colleagues, changing facts without hesitation or doubts. He didn't pay attention to the truth - the only thing that mattered was the good mood of his grandparents.
The only person who didn't interact much with the others was his father. Of course, everyone knew that Draco didn't willingly talk about his work between Muggles, and, moreover, he constantly watched each of his son's moves. Scorpius felt Draco's wary eyes on himself all the time, and he knew that one wrong word and he would bring the father's hellish anger on himself. And after their last quarrel, Scorpius was sure that he didn't want to meet it again.
Of course, Scorpius didn't want to admit it, but throughout his entire life, he had never been so scared of his father. Usually, it was easily missed, but that evening, he realised what a strong and terrifying wizard his father could be. The wizard who had not once had dirty hands and had lost the rest of his patience to his defiant son. And for sure, Scorpius didn't want to check what lay after that line he was so close to cross.
The last two days of the Greengrass visit were spent on the same farce as before and ended with a very tearful goodbye, especially from Scorpius' grandmother. At that moment, Scorpius was her only grandson since his aunt Daphne, Astoria's sister, ran to Eastern Europe and spent her time in the company of very rich men. It wasn't hard to guess what Augusta thought about that, and she didn't say even a word about her younger daughter throughout the visit. So, being the one and only proper grandson (although he might have had some cousins out of wedlock), Scorpius got all love, affection, and pride from his grandma - even though he hardly deserved it. But to fulfil his father's order, he played his role in that spectacle and didn't say anything suspicious to his grandparents.
If the three days with Scorpius' grandparents were fake and full of hypocrisy, the five next were at least depressing. Scorpius wandered through empty corridors and rooms in the manor and couldn't find anything to do. Everything that entertained him in the past seemed boring and pointless. He even didn't want to visit the kids from the village - even though they had grown up together.
His father didn't speak to him at all; besides, he went to work early in the morning and came back late in the night. Astoria also wasn't good company, and although she tried to behave normally, Scorpius saw that her eyes often shined dangerously. In the end, Scorpius spent most of the time in the library and did his homework, however, only for the sake of killing the boredom. For him, it was a meaningless task, but when he focused on something, time passed a little faster. He caught himself looking forward to coming back to Hogwarts; he didn't feel good at school, but the atmosphere in the home was hardly bearable.
He was in the middle of his visit to the library when, somewhere around noon, his mother joined him there. She brought a plate with sandwiches and sat at the table in front of him. He raised his eyes from the History of Magic book and saw that she smiled at him gently.
"Do you need some help?" she asked with her normal, pleasant to hear voice.
"I think I'll manage to write an essay about Middle Ages goblins' rebellions in Western Europe," he answered and also smiled.
He couldn't be angry at his mother for too long. Of course, he felt somewhere at the bottom of his heart that she had betrayed him and had lied to him about the same things as his father, but he also knew that she had been doing it to protect him, to make his childhood as happy as possible. Besides, it wasn't her who was responsible for his curse.
Sometimes, Scorpius wondered what pushed Astoria to bond herself with someone like Draco, with his past and all the consequences behind it. Did she love him so much? It was hard to tell because she hardly ever showed any sign of affection, just like Scorpius' father. But on the other hand, Scorpius never saw them argue, and the only tears that appeared in Astoria's eyes were because of him.
"You shouldn't part with your father in anger," she said, and he momentarily understood what her main purpose was.
He frowned and shrugged.
"It is a little bit hard to make it up with him when he doesn't want to speak with me. I'm not even going to try; he told me exactly what he was thinking about me."
"He is worried about you."
Scorpius snorted with false joy.
"Maybe he doesn't show that properly, but that is the truth," Astoria continued, still calmly and gently. "You must understand that Draco knows about his failures, and believe me, he paid a great price for them. That's why he is worried when he sees that you are doing the same."
"For Merlin's sake," Scorpius murmured and averted his eyes. "Maybe sometimes I fight with some morons, but it doesn't make me a Death Eater."
"He also didn't become one of them in a blink of an eye. I know what kind of a child he had been because I had known him in Hogwarts and, although you aren't the same, there are many things similar in you. Draco was arrogant and full of himself. He had despised everything and everyone. Don't you think that the last one perfectly describes you?"
Scorpius looked at his mother; the previous irritation was covered by surprise on his face.
"Rather, everybody despises me."
"Maybe, but didn't you push away everyone because you are afraid that they would hurt you? How many friends do you have?"
Scorpius shrugged reluctantly. There were a couple of people whose company didn't bother him, but they weren't his friends. A friend was someone that you could willingly tell your secrets to, but those Scorpius kept to himself.
Astoria interpreted his prolonged silence correctly.
"That also is similar for you and Draco." Astoria's eyes became unfocused as if she looked at something in the past. "I think it's something very common for Slytherin's students in general. We have a huge problem with trusting each other, and it is necessary to make a friendship. But it is a two-way transaction; you have to open yourself to a second person so they would trust you. It isn't something that fits Slytherin's nature. It exposes us to an attack, makes us vulnerable, and leaves us to someone's mercy."
Scorpius couldn't disagree with her. He knew from his own experience that he couldn't speak freely with other students. He always felt that one word too much, and he would put a knife into others' hands. He couldn't tell anyone how much it hurt him when someone compared him to Death Eaters or how much injustice he felt when he was punished without being guilty. He never said it to anyone, not once. It would show that he was weak and easy to harm, and that was something he avoided for any cost. He preferred to be alone than take that risk.
"It's much easier to hate," Astoria continued. "That feeling is much closer to us, and, unfortunately, it can very easily overwhelm anything else. That happened to your father. For many years, Draco truly hated Potter because he thought about him as a weak wizard who became a hero only thanks to luck. With each year, their conflict intensified to the point where they wanted to kill each other."
Suddenly, his mother stopped as if she hesitated about what to say. Scorpius understood that she wanted to tell him something he shouldn't know. The events from the war were always taboo in their family. Draco never spoke about that time and didn't explain what made him act that way or another. Scorpius only knew that his grandmother Narcissa and the previous Hogwarts headmaster - Severus Snape, were somewhat involved in it, but he never heard any details.
"Do you know why your father withdrew from the battle of Hogwarts? In a time when the Dark Lord almost won the war?" his mother asked after a long pause.
He wanted to say, like always, that his father was a coward, but he understood that it wasn't the correct answer, so he only shook his head.
"Because his greatest enemy, the one whom he hated for so many years, saved his life."
"Are you saying that…"
Astoria nodded slightly.
"Yes, that day, during the attack on Hogwarts, Harry Potter saved his life, even though he had any right and possibility to leave him to certain death. It shook your father, and he couldn't fight next to the Dark Lord anymore. But he couldn't also stay between defenders of school because his parents would pay for his treason. I know it is easy to say that it was cowardly, but Malfoys had left the battlefield because it had been the only right thing to do. In truth, at that moment, they didn't have a good solution. In the case of Voldemort's victory, they would be killed sooner or later, and when the defenders of Hogwarts won, only Potter's intercession saved your father from Azkaban."
Scorpius listened attentively to his mother. He didn't want to create any assumptions, but they showed in his mind anyway.
"So that is why he was so furious when he heard about my incident with Potter's son," he stated at last.
"Draco is in debt to Harry Potter, a debt that probably will never be repaid. Because of that, he doesn't want to be in a situation where he will have to apologise for your actions. I also prefer that you spare him another humiliation."
Scorpius sighed heavily. When he thought about it at the moment, he clearly noticed his own mistakes. Unfortunately, rage took control over him too easily, and then he didn't think rationally. He doubted that currently, he could speak with his father without bad emotions. They were too nervous and hot-headed.
"I won't promise anything, but I'll try to solve this situation," he murmured at last, however reluctantly. But later, he smiled a little mischievously. "And you can tell him that I will do this because you asked me for it - not because he threatened that he would throw me out of the home."
Astoria shook her head a little, but she also smiled at her son.
Three days later, Scorpius left the manor. His mother bid him goodbye with affection, but his father was cold and distant. They didn't speak with each other, but Scorpius was sure that his last statement came to Draco's ears.
When Scorpius had returned home for the holidays, he'd hoped he would be able to forget Hogwarts and all of his problems there. Instead, he was back to school with even more weight on his head. Scorpius didn't have any idea how he could solve his problems. One thing was certain... whatever he did, the effect would be the same - it could be only worse.