Chapter Text
Draco was restless, lying in bed. Thunder cracked across the shoreline, the small cottage by the sea stood firm against the storm outside, and tiny feet ran across the wooden floors. Draco got up just in time for a small, terrified body to launch itself onto his ribcage.
“DADDY!” A small knee dug into his side. Fingers grabbed at his sleep shirt.
“Daddy, wake up. The sky is shouting. I’m scared, Daddy.” Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy stared at him, his signature Malfoy blonde hair standing in wild directions, his stuffed dragon, which he named Dragon, the one he’s had since he was a baby, clutched under one arm, tears forming in his eyes.
Draco blinked once. The windows rattled in their frames as another peal of thunder rolled across the cliffs. Rain lashed against the glass, and the cottage shuddered in response.
“It is only a storm, Scorp,” Draco said softly, brushing his little boy’s locks.
“No, it is not”, Scorpius was clearly distressed; he always hated loud noises. When he was still a baby, his mother would sing him lullabies. Draco had never been able to replicate those.
Scorpius crawled higher until he was more or less sitting on Draco’s chest. “It’s mad at me, Daddy. It yelled right at me.”
“I am fairly certain it did not single you out, Scorp”.
Scorpius frowned. “I heard it. It shouted at me.” He was crying now, and he clutched Dragon even tighter. Draco’s heart broke for his little boy; he hated seeing him crying.
Draco exhaled slowly and shifted back against the headboard, creating a more stable surface for his son to cling to. “You can stay here until it calms down. Daddy will protect you.”
Scorpius didn’t move away. If anything, he curled closer, pressing his ear to Draco’s chest as if checking that his father’s heart was still working.
“Can I sleep here, Daddy? Just for tonight! Dragon is scared.”
Draco stared at the ceiling. “Sure, Scorp.” He let his arm wrap around the thin shoulders, hand spanning most of his son’s back. The cottage hummed around them with the familiar sounds of bad weather. The beams above creaked. The old wardrobe in the corner, the one that held memories of a love he lost, groaned quietly. Somewhere under the floor, the sea clawed at the base of the cliff, never satisfied, never still. Thunder boomed again. Scorpius flinched hard enough to jolt Draco’s teeth together.
“Daddy.”
“I have you,” Draco said, low and steady. He rubbed circles on Scorpius’s back.
Scorpius mumbled into his shirt, words half swallowed. “I don’t like it when the sky shouts at me.”
“I will have a very serious conversation with the weather later.” Draco held his little boy just a bit tighter. It's nights like these he missed her the most.
Scorpius’ fists bunched into the fabric of Draco’s shirt. For a while, the only sounds were rain, sea, and the ticking of the old clock in the hallway. Draco was almost lulled into something like calm when Scorpius’s small voice piped up again, quieter this time.
“Daddy. What was Mummy like?”
Draco did not answer at once. The question landed in his chest like a stone thrown into a lake, ripples spreading through places he carefully avoided. He saw flashes, not images. A silhouette at the cottage window. A hand in his. Laughter in this very room. The feeling of something fragile and fierce pressed against his ribs when she had placed a newborn into his arms and told him that they would manage, somehow, even with the world on fire around them.
He swallowed. “She was wonderful,” he said, but only because he couldn’t get the words out, the ones that truly described how she was. Everything. She was everything.
Scorpius shifted enough to see his face. “Was she funny? Or pretty? Or smart?”
“All three.”
Scorpius considered this very seriously, as if sorting it into categories in his mind. “Did she like dragons?”
“Yes.”
“Did she want me?”
Draco felt a lump form in his throat. “She wanted you more than anything,” he said at once. “From the moment she knew you existed, I think she loved you before she even knew about you, if that was possible”.
Scorpius relaxed a little. His arms looped around Draco’s torso in a shy hug. “Where is she now?”
Draco stared back at the ceiling. “She’s not here anymore,” he managed.
The smallest sound of disappointment, mixed with a hint of sadness, “Did she not want to stay?”
“She didn’t have a choice,” Draco replied.
Thunder rolled again, farther away this time. Scorpius pressed his face back into Draco’s chest and breathed out in a small shudder. “I think…I miss her.”
“I know.” Draco closed his eyes. “I know”.
He held his son until the storm softened to a gentle patter and Scorpius’s breathing evened out. Only then did he allow himself to look at the space on the other side of the bed and feel the sharp absence of who should have been there.
By midmorning, the storm had passed, leaving the cottage washed in pale grey light. The air smelled of wet stone, damp wood, and the faint smell of orange blossom, Narcissa’s signature scent, that enveloped the seaside home.
She sat at the small kitchen table now, posture straight, her pale hair pinned up perfectly despite the humidity. Scorpius occupied the chair opposite her, legs swinging, Dragon seated beside his plate with a slice of toast propped in front of him as if he might eat it. Draco stood at the stove watching bacon crisp in the pan.
“You look exhausted. I just don’t understand why you won’t let one of the Manor elves help out. We pay them well enough,” Narcissa observed, not looking away from her tea.
“Mother. Please. Not now,” Draco replied with a huff. “Let’s just have a nice breakfast together”. He cleared his throat. “It's been a rough night”.
She pursed her lips. “I am merely trying to help my Dragon.”Scorpius stabbed the eggs in his plate with unnecessary force. “Grandmother, the sky yelled at me last night,” he was pouting again.
“I heard it making a great deal of noise,” she agreed. “Very rude of it.”
“Very rude,” Scorpius echoed.
He stabbed again. The table rattled, and then the salt shaker burst apart in a glittering puff, grains spraying like snow over the tablecloth.
Scorpius froze. “Uh Oh.”
Narcissa calmly brushed salt from her sleeve with long fingers. “You’ve had quite a morning, little one.”
Draco turned off the flame under the pan. “This is new,” he muttered.
Scorpius’s eyes filled with tears so quickly that Draco barely had time to move before he started to sob. “I did not mean to. I did not mean to make snow.”
Draco crossed the room in quick strides and lifted him from the chair. Scorpius clung to him as tightly as his little body could.
“It is alright. You are not in trouble,” Draco said, placing a soft kiss on his forehead. “Accidental magic happens.”
“I want my mummy”. Draco looked at his mother over the boy’s head, startled. Scorpius has been asking for her more and more recently.
Narcissa set down her cup with poise. “You both need a change of scene,” she said. “Diagon, I think. New shoes for him. Maybe some books that are not about dragons setting fire to things.”
“Dragon does not set fire to things,” Scorpius mumbled, affronted, lifting his head. “He is a good dragon.”
“Of course he is,” Narcissa said smoothly. “All the same, an outing would be useful. Come on, Scorpius, go get ready.”
Draco gently placed him on the ground and watched him run off to his bedroom.
Now that he was left alone with his mother, she spoke softly, “You keep the walls of this place full of ghosts, Draco. It is no wonder the child feels it.”
His jaw tightened. “We are managing.”
“You are surviving, and that is not the same thing as managing.”
Draco turned back to the stove, mostly so she would not see the expression on his face. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “Invite strangers into his life and pretend that it's normal.”
“I would have you allow the possibility that you are not meant to mourn alone until the end of your days,” Narcissa answered. “There are women who would be kind to him. And to you. Daughters of decent families. Some are widowed, some never married. I know them. I could arrange introductions.”
“I am not interested,” Draco said at once.
“You have not heard any names.”
Draco cut her off with a shout, “The names do not matter, Mother!” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to gain composure.
Narcissa regarded him steadily. “She is gone,” she said. “Grief does not bring her back. Refusing to live does not honor her. It only teaches your son that love is painful and never heals.”
Draco flinched.
“You think I have not noticed the way his magic spikes when you are like this,” she went on. “The salt. The lights. The windows. He feels what you do and does not know what to do with it. If you cannot consider yourself, then consider him.”
Draco stared at the pan until his vision blurred.
“You know what it was like before. You saw together. How could you have seen everything and still suggest I move on?” He swallowed hard. “We were so young when we had Scorp, we loved each other so much.” He turned to his mother, “I love her, she is my soulmate, nothing and no one will change that. I will manage with Scorpius, so do not bring up finding me a wife again. Are we Clear?” The words were jagged on the way out.
“Please, mother,” he said. “I know she is gone, but she left me a house that is so full of everything that made her who she is, even in the quiet, I can feel her. She left me with so much love; she left me with Scorp. That is all I need”.
Narcissa was silent.
“I learned to hold him, to feed him,” Draco continued. “To change him. To walk the floors until my back ached because it was the only way to stop the crying. I learned which potions were safe for fever and how to charm nappies so they would not leak. I learned how to apparate with him without making him sick.” He took a deep breath. “I did not learn how to stop loving her. I did not learn how to let her go”.
Narcissa’s gaze softened but did not waver. “I was there,” she said. “You were not as alone as you like to imagine.”
He did not argue.
But the memory of those first months pressed in on him. Half-darkness, half the thin light of early mornings, always with a baby in his arms. The fear of dropping him. The fear of failing him. The fear, greatest of all, that he would grow and ask about his mother, and Draco would have nothing to offer but stories that hurt to say aloud.
Narcissa rose and crossed to him. She laid a hand on his arm, firm and cool.
“You do not have to marry again,” she said. “You are allowed to want more for yourself one day. You are allowed to want companionship. But if you refuse even the idea of it, you prove to yourself that your life ended with her”.
Draco wanted to argue that it did, but Scorpius’ face crossed his mind, and he did not say anything, fearing he would regret it.
Narcissa continued then. “It did not end with her. You are still here. He is still here.” She nodded toward Scorpius, who was now back in the room, quietly feeding crumbs of toast to Dragon.
“For his sake, if nothing else, do not let grief be the only thing that fills this house.”
Draco did not trust himself to speak on the subject anymore. “We will go to Diagon after breakfast,” he said.
Scorpius walked between Draco and Narcissa, holding his father’s hand and occasionally hopping to avoid cracks in the stones.
“Gods, is that Draco Malfoy?”
“He keeps to himself.”
“And the boy. Look at his hair.”
“Who do you think the mother is?”
“No one has ever seen her.”
“I heard she was a Muggle.”
“Someone said she was French.”
“They say he lived in France after the war, you know.”
“I heard it was Astoria Greengrass.”
“Didn’t she die? Blood curse, I heard.”
“Hush. Do not say that so loudly.”
Draco kept his gaze straight ahead. The comments slid off him. They always had. Curiosity was cheaper than cruelty, and he had endured far worse than gossip.
Scorpius tugged his hand. “Daddy. Why are people looking at us?”
“They are curious,” Draco said.
“About me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you are my son and you are perfect.”
Scorpius’s face lit up with pleased surprise. “I am perfect.”
“Obviously.”
He promptly tripped over a raised stone. Draco caught him before his knees met the ground.
“You always catch me, Daddy,” Scorpius said, grinning.
“Always,” Draco replied.
Narcissa watched them with an unreadable expression.
At the shoe shop, Scorpius tried on eight pairs, inspected each from every angle, and then chose the first pair he had liked. At the sweet shop, he pressed his face against the glass while Draco refused three different confections and finally allowed a single chocolate frog, which Scorpius shared solemnly with Dragon. By the time they reached the bookshop, the sky had cleared into a washed-out blue, and the worst of the storm’s weight had lifted from Draco’s shoulders.
The shop door chimed as they stepped inside. The air smelled of parchment, ink, and a faint trace of dust. Tall shelves rose on either side, crowded with spines in every color.
Scorpius inhaled as though he had entered a sacred temple. “Books,” he whispered. “Daddy, look. Books.” He shot forward toward the children’s section without waiting for permission. Draco followed at a slower pace, exchanging a brief nod with the elderly witch behind the counter. Scorpius disappeared behind a shelf. Draco could hear him humming something under his breath, the way he always did when he was content.
The children’s aisle was quiet, lined with stories about broomsticks and beasts and enchanted gardens. Scorpius stood near the end of it, stretching up as high as he could on his toes. On the top shelf, just out of his reach, a book with a silver dragon on the cover gleamed in the light from the high window.
Scorpius reached. His fingertips brushed the bottom edge of the spine. Not enough. He tried again, little shoes squeaking faintly on the floor. His tongue poked out at the corner of his mouth in concentration.
“Just a little more,” he told himself.
His balance wobbled.
A gentle voice spoke behind him.
“Here, sweetheart. Let me help you reach that.”
Scorpius went very still. He turned slowly.
A woman stood there, close enough that he could see the faint freckles on her nose and the way her eyes crinkled a little when she smiled. She had a book tucked under one arm and ink smudged on two fingers.
She reached up easily, took the dragon book from the shelf and brought it down to his level.
“There you are,” she said. “Careful. You might fall if you climb the shelves.”
Scorpius accepted the book with both hands. Something inside his chest gave a strange little flutter, like when his magic tried to surge and then settled instead.
Her voice was warm. It felt like the sound of the cottage fire on winter evenings. He did not know why that thought came to him. He had never seen her before. He was sure of it.
Yet for a heartbeat, he had the oddest sensation that he had been waiting to see her, without knowing he was waiting.
He hugged the book to his chest and smiled at her.
Behind him, footsteps approached. Familiar ones. He knew the pattern of his father’s stride the way he knew the sound of the sea.
Scorpius turned slightly, still clutching the book. Draco stepped to the end of the aisle and stopped.
The air seemed to thicken around him. The small hairs on his arms rose. The magic woven through the beams of the shop and the distant wards of the cottage far up on the cliff stirred as if taking notice. For a moment, nothing moved.
Scorpius blinked between his father and the woman. The book felt heavy in his hands.
“Granger”.
“Malfoy”.