Chapter Text
“Don’t take anything my sixteen year old self says for legitimate advice, please,” Tom said exasperatingly, but Scorpius’s grip on the diary was unrelenting.
“He’s just telling me how you got together with Dad.”
“Jesus Christ-”
“Please don’t use muggle swears around our nine year old-” Draco changed his tune when he caught sight of it. “Oh, Scorpius, honey, you can’t have that one.” He plucked it off the kid’s grubby hands and replaced it with another one seamlessly, and gave Tom a peck on the nose as he went out the door to head to work. “Love you. Remember Delphini’s playdate with Rose and Lily in the afternoon.”
Tom smiled and said nothing. Scorpius threw a stuffed bear in his face, so Tom flipped the kid upside down and shook him until he collapsed into helpless giggles.
—
“That Tom,” Slughorn blew his nose; Dippet wiped a tear from his eye. “So much lost potential.” “It’s a shame.”
“Quite,” Dumbledore said, trying hard not to be too elated.
It was quite of poor taste to shag after a funeral, but Abraxas knew it wasn’t really one, and also he’d spent a year away from his fiance; he understood why Draco and Tom were the way they were, he hardly felt like he wished to be away from bed at all.
“I like Lucius for a boy’s name, what do you think?”
“What?” Emily raised her head off his chest, frowning at him. “Did you get a new pet?”
“No, I meant for a baby, when we have one,” Abraxas clarified.
“Ugh, well, I want a girl,” she grumbled.
“Hm,” Abraxas pondered it. “Lucia, maybe?”
“You know, I never did find out what that other Alphie did to get kicked off the tapestry,” Cygnus wondered aloud, little Sirius in one arm and Bellatrix in another, the both of them cooing at each other.
“Are you cursing me in front of my nephew and niece?” Alphard said, affronted, taking one kid from him to bounce in his arms.
“Only if you deserve it,” Cygnus said with serenity.
“Wally, your drivel grates my ears. Unless you wish to storm Hogwarts, I don’t see anything you could possibly do about it.”
“How dare you?!” Walburga had too much poise to lunge for her brother’s throat so she simply imagined it viciously. “None of your children are… are sorted Gryffindor!”
“Better a Gryffindor than dead, don’t you think, my dear?” Cygnus said.
“What the-” Walburga shook - it was fury. “What are you implying?!”
“That Narcissa girl, she seems to be quite charming, doesn’t she?” Abraxas said meaningfully as they looked over the Black tapestry. It was in the Malfoy Manor, for some reason - Abraxas had insisted and Emily had gone on quite the rant about it. Something about a seer boy they had known in school.
Lucius looked at Abraxas judgementally. “I thought your marriage with Mother was a happy one.”
“I meant for you, son.” Abraxas looked at him, disgusted. “That girl is young enough to be my daughter.”
“That’s because she’s my age,” Lucius said, and considered her a little bit more in her charmed portrait, flicking her hair and winking at him.
“I’m running away from home forever!” There was the slam of a door, and then a whispered apology to said door. Sirius slunk out of the guest bedroom, both contrite and defiant. “You can’t make me go home.”
“Neither can your parents, apparently,” Cygnus said, rolling his eyes. “I’m sending you to your uncle Alphard for the second half of summer.”
Sirius looked hurt. “You want to get rid of me, too?”
“I’m letting you stay for the first part of the month, aren’t I?” Cygnus said. “I’m going abroad, and you need to make connections with your extended family if you wish to stay a Black.”
“Fine,” Sirius said, folding his arms.
“You can’t marry a Malfoy, I forbid it,” Cygnus said immediately when his second girl told him about her suitor.
“That’s… okay?” Narcissa said, brows knitted together. “I turned him down last month. Rosier is courting me.”
“What?” Cygnus sat up. “What’s wrong with Lucius?”
“You just said you didn’t like him,” Narcissa said, annoyed. “Besides, he’s a bit of a prat, isn’t he?”
“All sixteen year old boys are prats. What did he do? I’ll yell at Abraxas for you.”
“I don’t want you to yell at his father, Merlin.”
“Break it off with Rosier,” Cygnus decided. “I’m betrothing you with Malfoy.”
“Ugh,” Narcissa said, and stormed out of the room.
“It’s not like that!” Yelled their youngest, and Druella raised her head lazily as her girls thundered up the stairs.
They were pulling at each other. Bellatrix yelled, “Andy kissed a mudblood!”
Her husband moaned into his hands. “I always dreaded this day.”
Andromeda looked aghast. “Y-you knew?”
“Your father claimed he heard it from a seer, before you were born,” Druella sighed. Cygnus was already scribbling furiously on a piece of parchment - no doubt to pen to his bosom schoolmate.
“That stupid seer again,” Narcissa lamented as she passed the room, pulling her hair into a bun. “It’s that damn seer’s fault I have to marry a Malfoy.”
“A grandson ought to be good, no?”
“My, what a brilliant idea.”
Abraxas and Cygnus shared a drink. Lucius whispered, “What in Godric’s hollow is wrong with the both of them, you think?”
“Positively barmy,” Narcissa agreed. “But I do want a boy. I’ve grown up with too many sisters.”
“I’ll try my best,” Lucius said earnestly, and Narcissa acquainted his gut with her elbow.
“I draw the line,” Cygnus said, holding a granddaughter, “at a werewolf in the family tree.”
Edward flinched and Andromeda hastily took the child away from her father. “Are you saying that she’ll become a w-werewolf?” She tried to keep her hands steady, pulling her baby’s fringe from her face.
“Goodness, no, but she better not marry one, either,” Cygnus said, shaking his head.
“Is this another one of those prophecies you were talking about?” Edward whispered to Andromeda, who shrugged helplessly.
“Draco? After that-” Lucius made a face. “That schoolmate you had, that died in a fire?”
“Why, yes,” Abraxas beamed at him. “It’s a good, upstanding name, isn’t it?”
“Well,” Lucius said. “It fits with the Black naming conventions, but he died in fiendfyre-”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, that was Cygnus and I’s doing,” Abraxas waved his hand.
Lucius looked at him, horrified. “You want me to name my son after the man you and Narcissa’s father killed in school?!”
“You’ll talk my mother into it, right, Uncle?” Sirius kept a hard grip onto his partner’s hand so the other man didn’t bolt. Werewolf Remus Lupin was avoiding Cygnus’s gaze. He had no other choice but to gape at them.
“A MUDBLOOD AND A CREATURE. NEVER IN MY LIFE OR DEATH, YOU STUPID BOY-”
Cygnus shut the door on his parents’ portraits in the Black Manor and wandered downstairs to see his favorite grandson. “Oh Draco,” he complained loudly, “Is any of this even worth it?”
“Father, we’re not naming him Draco,” Narcissa sighed, hand on her swollen stomach.
“Now is not the time for your rebellious phase, dear.”
“Sirius asked for my opinion on baby names the other day,” Cygnus said. “For the pup that he and the werewolf are picking up.”
It was a wonder how their relationship remained. Cygnus ended up striking Sirius off the Tree, anyway - as it turned out, a werewolf really was a step too far, and Walburga threatened for Cygnus himself to be burned off if he opposed her this time. He could keep Andromeda, but that was his kid for him to disgrace. “I told him, Nymphadora.”
Abraxas whipped around to gape to him. “Oh, you’re sick. You’re a sick, sick man.”
“Andy’s kid will go by Tonks, anyway,” Cygnus waved a hand in dismissal. “Nymphadora Lupin. Hah!”
“Your seer is so full of shit!” Lucius’s harried head yelled from the fireplace.
“Did my grandson pop yet?” Abraxas said lazily, waving a hand for his wine glass to fill itself.
Lucius said, “your granddaughter!”
“Oh fuck,” Abraxas said. Emily cackled.
“We’re naming her Aquila,” Lucius said, and hung up the floo.
“Uncle, please-”
“You’re trying to kill me. Me, and then your parents.”
Regulus stood across him, hands on his hip. “Sirius said you went to his wedding.”
“Yes, and I crossed his name off the family tree myself. What makes you think I can help you marry a mudblood?!”
Regulus took in a breath. “You let Andy do it.”
Cygnus rubbed his temples. “Can’t you just… marry the boy - at least he’s the pureblood - and consider the girl your kept-woman?”
Regulus shook his head. “Lily said-”
“She either takes the hit to her ego or you get disowned, and I get put in a grave by your mother.”
He sighed. “I’ll ask again. Also, I’m taking Aquila out to the muggle world today.”
“Don’t let Narcissa catch you.”
“I don’t want to be a girl! I want to be a dragon!”
“I can’t do it,” Lucius said, head in his hands. “I can’t let Father win.”
“You’re not letting Abraxas win, you’re letting your son express himself,” Narcissa said, although she was also dreading her own father’s reaction. That damn seer.
—
“What did Father say?” Delphini tried to grab the diary from him. Scorpius was quite afraid of it ripping, even though horcruxes didn’t do anything of the sort, but the diary was a tattered worn old thing that looked a day away from dust. He held it aloft her head and she kicked him in the shin. But then the diary glowed, so he pulled it back down for both of them to read.
Tom’s handwriting said: “He never told me how to fix it.” A frowning face. “Maybe, you can try to find him?” And then, a smiling face.
“Wow,” Delphini said, disgusted.
“Well, he’s sixteen forever in this thing,” Scorpius tried to reason, even though he felt equally as exasperated. Fifth year Tom Riddle circa the creation of the diary could be incredibly unhelpful when faced with the prospect of his childhood crush - which, in his timeline, had been his main fixation. Scorpius shut the book and tucked it in a robe pocket.
The wards of Malfoy Manor responded to Scorpius’s spray of blood on the ironwrought gates. They shook, and seemed to deliberate, before creaking open. Delphini skipped in with the audacity of a youngest sibling. Scorpius shook his head, healing his hand as he walked in after her.
“Why have my wards claimed you as family?” Said the man at the door, a stern expression on his face, long blonde hair slicked behind his ears.
Delphini beamed, “Grandfather Lucius! I’ve never seen you alive, before!”
Dad always said Delphini was the splitting image of a younger Narcissa, which may have been why Lucius accepted the hug without complaint.
Draco Malfoy was seventeen years old, the same age he had been when he’d originally repaired the vanishing cabinet in one timeline. He was also at school. It was Abraxas Malfoy who came through the floo instead, and ruffled the children’s hair very enthusiastically, rattling off about seers and dark lords and vanishing cabinets.
So, here they were.
“Tom Riddle?” Lucius said, making a face. “That other childhood friend of yours that died in fiendfyre?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Abraxas said. “Let me write Cygnus immediately-”
“You’re saying these are his children? So, he’s alive?” Lucius wandered after his father, deeply annoyed. “They called me grandfather. Tom Riddle must be your age, Draco is a child-”
“Fiendfyre is the excuse they went with?” Delphini said to Scorpius.
“I think it’s quite ingenious,” Scorpius said. “Father would have had the mens rea for it, after all, especially if Dad really broke up with him, at the time.”
Lucius only relaxed when he got the full story, and was assured that no elderly contemporary of Abraxas’s were to confess to knocking up his boy (although there was no telling how that would have worked; Scorpius was older than Draco was now.) Cygnus made the trip from Bulgaria and embraced the children, yelling something incoherent about regretting his last words delivered to the couple - and Great-Grandfathers sequestered away to yap like schoolboys in the library. Narcissa wrote for Draco to return from Hogwarts, signed off by a bemused Severus.
“I become an Unspeakable if I repair this thing?” Draco said, his eyes sparkling.
Delphini looked up from the book. “Do you have a boyfriend? My, er, diary wants to know.”
“Don’t enable it,” Scorpius said to her. To Draco, “you get a job offer.”
Draco gave them both hugs, as the last rune glowed in place. “Will I see you both again?”
“Probably not,” Scorpius admitted. “Our other parent doesn’t really, um, exist here.”
“Oh,” Draco said, disappointed. “I guess it’s for the best. Tom’s not going to be happy if I have to end things with him for some hypothetical children, no matter how much I like you both.”
Delphini wheezed, “Wait, wait-”
“Surname… Gaunt? Are you sure?”
“Yes, but the bloodline became untraceable decades ago.” Draco wrinkled his nose. “This connection likely arose from an old line of squibs… but at least they’re not muggleborn. Tom’s…” Draco chewed. “Kind of nice.”
“Nice,” Delphini cackled, not looking up from her furious scribbling.
“Okay, marry him or whatever, see you maybe,” Scorpius said, and gave Draco a peck on the cheek. “Come on, Delphi, it’s time to go home.”