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It is not until adulthood that Draco finds himself able to fall asleep with ease, or wake up refreshed.
Before Hogwarts, he’d always been required to wake up early for tutoring. And at school, he never slept well in the shared dormitory. On holidays and summers, he was shaken awake even earlier for more tutoring once the Muggleborn established her supremacy in marks.
And after the Dark Lord moved into the house, most nights he didn’t sleep at all.
Time is a healer. On the morning of his 30th birthday, a Saturday, he is fast asleep, dreaming about undressing the top marks receiver and deeply rested from the very naughty sex they had the night before. He feels a tug on his sleeve and opens his eyes to suggest more of the same. Then doesn’t.
“Good morning, baby,” he says tenderly, pulling his small, fully-dressed son into the bed and kissing his cheek as Hermione — also fully dressed, as they’ve learned their lesson about sleeping naked — peeps over his shoulder.
“Happy birthday,” says Scorpius brightly, climbing out of the bed. “But I’m not a baby today. I’m Daddy.”
Draco raises his eyebrows at his son, then at Hermione. She kicks him under the covers. Scorpius gives Hermione a meaningful look and she rolls out of bed, pulling on her robe.
“See you in the kitchen, Daddy,” she smirks, with her naughty last-night voice, and Draco turns pinker than the rose that always sits on his nightstand.
Draco comes into the kitchen and finds a bowl of sugary cereal and a glass of grapefruit juice poured for him. It’s one of Scorpius’s bowls, so it’s tiny, and the spoon and glass are also tiny. He sits and eats the cereal in three bites.
“Sweetheart,” says Hermione to their small server, “He’s going to be hungry. I think he needs a little bit more food. Can you give him some more?”
Scorpius hands him a green apple and a piece of toast dripping with jam. A dollop of jam plops onto the counter, another onto the floor, as he hands it to him.
“Is your breakfast good?” he says. Draco, solemnly licking the jam and apple juice from his fingers, remembering what used to happen when he spilled or dropped things at the table, says he’s never had better.
Draco then pours Crookshanks’ food and brushes his teeth under his son’s supervision — allowing him to give the brush a few swishes — and follows him to the closet in the bedroom.
“Time to pick out your outfit,” says Scorpius, pulling the closet door open with difficulty. Draco sees the normal array of Muggle clothes that have become his daily wear — T-shirts, jeans, jumpers, all comfortable and faded, and a small selection of dress shirts, trousers and jackets for the odd formal event.
Draco reaches for one of the first T-shirts Hermione gave him, a grey one with a screenprint of ancient runes. Then reaches instead for one with a purple niffler’s face on it that Scorpius gave him for Christmas. “Don’t forget your pants,” says Scorpius sagely, taking a comb out of his pocket.
Draco kneels and lets his son run the comb through his hair. Hermione, now showered and dressed, stands in the doorway with her hand over her mouth, eyes twinkling as Scorpius combs all of Draco’s fair platinum hair to one side, then to the other. Then all the way back, then over his eyes. Then messes it all up with his hands so it points everywhere.
“Thank you, ‘Daddy,’” says Draco, choking slightly on his mirth, as he stands and quickly finger-combs his hair back into a semblance of form. “Can I talk to Mummy for a minute?”
“Yes,” says Scorpius, “but be quick. We’re going to the park.”
Draco goes out, closes the door and collapses laughing in his wife’s arms as she buries her face in his shoulder. “What is going on,” he says, wheezing helplessly, “how much of this is your work, and is he really going to do this all day?”
“I’ve been asked to help with a few things,” she says, “but it’s all him. And yes, it will be all day long.”
Her eyes shine at him. Their beautiful, ridiculous life together never stops outdoing itself, and the engine of the ridiculous is the baby who surprised them early in their relationship. And then went on surprising them with his majestic dignity and calm. His serene ineptitude on the peewee Quidditch field. And his keen imitation of everything they do.
She gives him a long, lazy kiss that unravels his brain. His heart begins pounding as it always does, and he kisses her back fiercely, pushing her against the door so their weight holds it shut. Their breaths quicken as he kneads her breasts over her shirt and cardigan and her hand slides down to squeeze his rear. With an observant child always around, they take their pleasure when they can.
Their hips are rocking slowly together when they hear tiny hands banging on the other side of the door. “Time to go,” says a dismayed little voice. “Let me out.”
Draco opens the door for his small chaperone. “Mummy, can you drive?” says Scorpius, and Hermione swings the keys on her finger and says at your service, monsieur. In the car Scorpius sits in the front seat and Draco sits in the back, as children do.
***
Draco sits in the playground swing as his child pushes him with small pats to the back, barely moving him. Hermione watches with amusement from the bench nearby, reading her book.
“You’re so heavy,” says Scorpius plaintively, trying to push his slender father higher in the swing. Draco helps him by pushing off slightly from the ground.
Draco had never seen a playground or a swing until he was in his mid-twenties. There had not been one at the Manor or in any of the places his parents took him as a child. When Hermione had first taken him to one, early in their relationship, he’d stayed until sundown. He’d climbed all the rope ladders, swung on the bars even as his toes dragged the ground, and gone down the slide headfirst. Mostly, he made her push him in the swing. Parents stared, but the children shrieked with laughter at the grown man enjoying the playground just like them.
When just six months into their new relationship she'd shared that she was pregnant and keeping the baby — too much giddy, freshly-in-love sex, too much mutual forgetting to cast the Contraceptive Charm — he’d panicked. Not about the child, and not about being tied to her. Both felt unexpectedly right. What didn’t feel right was everything he brought to the table as a future parent. Over the next nine months, he bombarded Hermione with what ifs. Should we let someone else watch the baby? Should the baby go to Muggle school? He left the biggest what if unspoken, unable to speak certain things out loud.
He sees his mother, who now lives nearby, pull up and sit on the bench next to Hermione. He meets her eyes and sees that she's also suppressing a smile. Narcissa had had long conversations with him as the pregnancy drew on. They had even gone for some Mind Healing together, and with her at his side, he looked at some of his memories for the first time. All he knew was that what was done to and for him, he wanted different for his son.
As Scorpius’s small, warm hands push him in the swing, he thinks about how after he turned five, he was never touched. It was time for manners and Malfoy training. How to hold a knife or a letter opener. How to greet a lady or gentleman. Draco learned it all, because there was no option not to. Sometimes he met his mother’s eyes across the parlor or dining table and saw that it wasn’t what she wanted, either. That if she could, she would be doing this differently, too.
One day, for her birthday, he had picked all the roses in her garden and piled them in a basket for her. He had done it despite the house-elves pleading desperately with him not to do it, Dobby even getting on his knees to beg. His mother received the basket with grace and kind words, but he saw the fear in her eyes as she took it. He realized he’d done yet another thing wrong while thinking he'd done right — like the day a bumblebee flew inside and he'd followed it curiously all over the house, wandering thoughtlessly into Lucius’s study in a quest to set it free.
He'd swallowed the guilt as he went about his day. Worrying as his mother restored the garden and, later, Lucius summoned him into that same study to give his mother her “real” present: a bracelet from the Malfoy family vault that Draco had never seen before.
For his own birthday he received the same: Malfoy family treasures that he held briefly before they were locked back up in their cabinet or sent back to the vault. He didn’t understand; he was the only child, and everything the family owned would one day be his. Over the years, the presents from Lucius grew more abstract and more adult — the key to the family vault (immediately locked away, of course), or the deed to some vineyard in France.
As he swings back toward Scorpius, on an impulse he lets his foot drag the ground, then spins himself in the swing, the chains twirling around each other, tighter and tighter. Then he stops. Scorpius shrieks with laughter as they unravel, whirling Draco round and round until the chains are parallel again.
Then he sees Draco stand up in the swing as he himself is not allowed to do, stretch his legs in the air like a gymnast, and begin levering himself up the chains with his hands alone.
“Showoff,” calls Hermione.
“Stop,” says Scorpius, shaking the swing. “That’s dangerous. You’ll get hurt.”
Already halfway up the chains, Draco is about to protest when he remembers I’m the baby today and slides down obediently. His wife and mother are dying laughing on the bench and he makes a face at them. Then he settles back into the seat and once again submits to slow, soft, fruitless pushes from his child’s hands.
***
Lunch is at a bakery-café. Scorpius leads him by the hand, Hermione and Narcissa following, as they walk into a bright, buzzy, colorful, slightly eye-gouging epicenter of ice cream cakes for children. They all sit down in a red booth together, Scorpius carefully laying a napkin in Draco’s lap. Hermione meets the server’s eye and nods, then meets Scorpius’s and nods.
Draco watches, flabbergasted, as Scorpius then orders for everybody: tea, cocoa, and scones with jam. Hermione says they’ll need a little more food, and reminds him to order tea sandwiches and a quiche as well.
Draco mouths he thought of all this? and she mouths back Yes, he did. Draco excuses himself to go to the bathroom — Scorpius considerately asks “Do you need me to come with you?” — and sits in a stall and shakes soundlessly until the tremors pass and he looks respectable again.
The cake arrives and has 30 candles on it; Scorpius counts them carefully before letting the server leave. Its flavor is strawberry, and its shape is a rose. A cake with candles is another thing Draco never saw until later, when he saw other students receive cakes with magical self-lighting candles at Hogwarts. His mother sent plenty of cakes and sweets by owl — her way of reaching out and touching him after hugs and embraces were no longer allowed — but this particular kind of cake, he never had for himself until he was grown.
The first birthday cake Hermione ever procured for him, on a day they spent blissfully alone in bed, was in the shape of a broom that unfortunately ended up looking like an erect cock. They fellated their way down the cake, laughing hysterically, smearing buttercream on their fingers and on each other’s bodies, until they reached the broom bristles. Then they disappeared under the covers to be naked together, kissing and rolling over and under each other, the warmth and laughter and safety almost overwhelming. He was glad he had his wand back to clean up the buttery mess. On his next birthday he was a father, and they postponed a birthday celebration because Scorpius was ill. He stayed up all day and night with his infant son until his fever passed, and always wondered if the night of the cock cake had been the night Scorpius was created. His early March birthday was certainly a suspicious one.
“Come,” says Scorpius, pointing to the candles, and Draco obeys as they sing the birthday song, noticing that everyone including his son calls him Draco. Then Scorpius puts his small hand over Hermione’s as she cuts the cake and gives Draco the first piece.
“Thank you,” says Draco, offering a small forkful to his son.
“No, I told you,” says Scorpius kindly, taking the fork and offering it back.
Draco’s eyes meet Hermione’s and she nods: do what your father says. He swallows the small piece of pink cake from the fork and Scorpius’s look of pleasure is even sweeter than the cake itself. Then he lets his son feed him the whole piece, including the strawberries and fondant rose petals on top, and then a second. Scorpius lets Narcissa offer Draco exactly one bite, since she is after all the mother of his son.
***
Hermione leaves early and when Draco, Narcissa and Scorpius come home — Scorpius again sitting in the front with his grandmother while Draco sits in the back like a child — the dining table holds presents.
They’ve been out for about six hours and Scorpius gives a tiny yawn. Draco resists the desire to pick him up, while Narcissa makes tea and Hermione turns on Ella Fitzgerald on the Muggle record player. When tea is ready for everyone, they sit at the table and Draco opens his presents.
The first is from his mother — a warm topaz jumper in Aran wool with Quidditch brooms on the sleeves. Unspeakably soft. He buries his face in it to feel the softness and thanks his mother with his eyes — she was never allowed to give him presents like this when he was younger. His eyes then lock on Hermione’s, whose teacup is shaking and who he knows is thinking about the cock cake, and he smothers a smile.
The second is from Hermione. He suspects this is the family-friendly version and that an adults-only present is coming later, and her eyes confirm this too. He opens a gift certificate to a place in the city where adults can play like children: leaping off ledges onto trampolines, swinging on ropes into swimming pools. There’s even a flying trapeze lesson included. A dozen ways to fly without magic, an escape for the embattled youth Quidditch coach. Scorpius is under the age limit for it, so he reads it quickly, thanks her and puts it under his saucer.
The third is from Scorpius. “Take care,” he says, sipping his tea, as Draco accidentally tears a bit of wrapping paper while unfastening the tape.
It’s something he made at Muggle school, plaiting colorful floss together into a narrow band. The pattern is silver and green and red and yellow, for his parents' Hogwarts Houses. Scorpius explains that it’s a friendship bracelet. “You wear it until it comes off,” he says.
Draco touches it with his finger and feels the small dips and puckers where the floss was drawn too tight. The places where Scorpius forgot to change colors and plaited too many rows before changing over.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice trembling as Scorpius leans forward to tie it on his wrist. He’s about to say more when his son cries Oh no, oh no.
Their cups of tea lie on their sides. The liquid pulsing quickly down the table, puddling into the new jumper. Browning the edge of Draco’s voucher. Dripping into his own lap and Draco’s. And soaking the new bracelet, dulling its colors.
The tea’s not too hot — Narcissa made sure of it — but the mess is rather impressive. Draco tenses and grows cold as he watches the mess travel the length of the table, imagining what will come next. And what will hurt next.
Then, with painful effort, remembering where he is, when he is. And who he is.
Then Scorpius, always calm, always responding to chaos with a quiet Merwin! or Sawazar, begins crying silently, shaking and covering his face in despair, making no sounds except for an odd cough or hiccup. Horrified, Draco sweeps him into his lap and holds him against his chest as the tears squeeze out in shining drops and his mouth opens and shuts in wordless misery.
“Sweetheart, it’s all right,” says Draco soothingly, reaching for his wand as Hermione comes around the table to help. “It’s so easy to clean up. Just like that. Not even a drop left.”
He casts a quick drying charm and the spilled tea evaporates from the table, the gifts, and their own laps.
“But your birthday,” sobs Scorpius, curling into a small ball in his father’s lap, and Draco’s eyes meet Hermione’s in stricken wonder: He never gets this upset. Ever.
Draco stands up, holding his distraught bundle, and begins walking around the house, just like he did on his birthday five years before. Scorpius’s head rests on his shoulder, smelling like roses, and his small limbs wrap around his father like vines. Eventually he calms down, but he doesn’t ask to be put down.
So much responsibility, such a long day. “Will you let me be the daddy now?” says Draco quietly, carrying him to his room and laying the tired birthday planner in bed. Scorpius nods as Draco removes his shoes, smoothes his hair. Draws the cover over him. Palms his small cheek, enjoying the softness and downiness of his skin.
And then, like a candle suddenly at its end, Scorpius’s eyes close and he’s out cold.
Draco comes out and sits down again. He eases on his new sweater and Hermione ties Scorpius's gift on his wrist. He reaches for her and she sits in his lap, her arm looped around his shoulder, an unreadable smile on her face.
If his mother weren’t there his hand would be exploring under her shirt or down her skirt, but she is. And so he sips tea with an armful of wife and a mind full of questions instead.
“He never cries like that,” he says. “He’s the most unbotherable little fellow. What happened?”
“He wanted everything to be perfect,” says Hermione, leaning her head on his. Meeting Narcissa’s eyes, full of emotion as she sips her own tea. “For today, it all had to be just right.”
“But why?” says Draco, thinking of the jam spilled on the counter, the floor. Nobody had cried over spilled jam.
Hermione takes a deep breath. “Since he never met his grandfather,” she says, “he thinks you’ve never had a father of your own. Your mother and I both tried to explain it to him, but he doesn’t understand. So he made a plan.”
Draco closes his eyes and pulls her closer. She has no idea how much he plans to love her tonight. More than last night, or the night before, or any other night they’ve ever known.
“He wanted you to have a father today,” she says, running her finger along the small scrap on his wrist.