Work Text:
Draco sits down gingerly at the provided seat and table. Across from him, his father was already settled before he’d come in, handcuffed to the table with a short chain to each wrist. Lucius looks even more washed out in prison attire than usual. Draco follows the deeper lines in his face, the way imprisonment has aged him considerably more than a few years. His hair hangs clean but lank across his shoulders. Shorter than when Draco visited a few weeks ago. He wonders if that were by choice.
“Draco,” Lucius greets. It’s cooler than last time, but then again, Draco hasn’t been making his weekly visits for a little while. Things have been busy. He tries not to take it personally.
“Father. You’re looking... Well, not great, to be honest.”
Lucius snorts and some of the ice in his eyes melts. He sits back, relaxing a little. “You seem a little rough around the edges as well.”
“Recent fatherhood has been more hectic than I’d been led to believe.”
His father laughs and then pauses and gives Draco a sharper look. “Is this one actually yours?”
“They’re all mine,” Draco says patiently through experience more than any real patience. “But if you’re wondering if this one is genetically mine, then yes. His name is Scorpius.”
“A good Malfoy name.” Lucius leans forwards and rests his folded arms on the table. It’s a gesture he’d have never made before being incarcerated. Draco finds it strange to see. “An heir. Have you made it official?”
“The paperwork is still being processed.” Draco folds his hands in his lap. He’s not sure if he does it because of habit or in the wake of his father’s lack of formality. “I’ll be leaving most of the estate to him. Mother has already relinquished her holdings to me.”
“You set up a stipend for her?”
“With a healthy beginning payment and agreement to purchase a property outright in her name once she selects one.”
Lucius smiles with fondness for his wife. “I’m surprised she didn’t have you buy her a beach house as well.”
“Vacation rights to the family one, six weeks a year at her determination,” Draco sighs but he’s smiling as well. He didn’t mind giving her all of that, but it had been interesting to watch her fall into her negotiation persona. People often thought Lucius was the shrewd one of the family, but where she had lacked interest in political ventures, Narcissa Malfoy had more than quadrupled the family fortune with her business sense. Draco learned as much from her as he did his father.
“She visits every week,” Lucius murmurs, his voice quieter. “She seems to be doing well.”
Draco feels a stab of guilt. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in a while. The birth was difficult and then after-”
“You need not make any excuses to me.” Lucius met his eyes and held them for several seconds until Draco relaxed a little. “I’m glad you came today.”
People think Lucius Malfoy is a liar. Draco knows that he often is. He also knows that sometimes, his father can be completely sincere. This is one of them and it makes Draco feel warm inside.
“I’ve made some progress in getting you released,” he offers. “It won’t be outright, but there’s hope for parole with some heavy magical restraints.”
Lucius nods solemnly. “I think I can possibly live with that, if only so I can have a decent spa visit.”
Draco cracks up. He holds back as much of it as he can but he’s grinning openly and across the table, Lucius’s lips quirk on one side. It doesn’t last long but it feels good to laugh even if it is here, surrounded by the truth of his father’s situation. At least the dementors had been banished from the prison. He hated to think of Lucius being tormented by them day in and day out.
“Enough about that,” Lucius says, waving a hand with familiar dismissiveness that makes him seem almost his usual self again. “Which one of those women you go around with bore my grandson? Tell me it was Potter. The sheer hilarity of that will comfort me to the end of my days.”
“Harry’s not a woman,” Draco reminds him and Lucius rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes, special snowflake Potter to the end. Was it him?”
“No.”
Lucius rests his elbows on the table and props his chin on his hands. “If you tell me it was the mudblood, I will disown you.”
“You can’t disown me. I’m head of Malfoy,” Draco reminds him patiently. “And don’t call her that.”
“I’ll call her what I like in the comfort of my own home,” Lucius mutters, rolling his eyes a little. It’s so strange to Draco how informal his father has become. Lucius had always been so very stuck on presenting himself with as much import as possible.
“It wasn’t,” he says instead of continuing on that vein. “It was Ginny Weasley.”
Lucius’s lip curls a bit at the mention, then he heaves a deep, dramatic sigh. “Well. At least she’s a pureblood.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her you approve.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Draco smiles. “I’ll have you know that foolhardy courage in the face of opposition is contagious.”
“Of all the things you could learn from them,” Lucius groans, looking skyward as if Merlin himself might appear to save him from the embarrassment. He shifts to rest back in his chair, a put upon expression on his face. “Tell me you aren’t signing her in to any power over the estate.”
“Of course not,” Draco scoffs. “She’s already the beneficiary to Harry’s estate. I’ll not levy that duty on her as well.”
“Finally a little good news.”
“The managing regent for Scorpius in the case of my absence will be Hermione Granger.”
Lucius looks like he swallowed a lemon. It takes everything in Draco not to laugh because it is honest horror that has crept into Lucius’ face.
“Are you insane?” he gasps out. “She’ll bankrupt the family within a month!”
“She’s done very well with the stipend I set up for the children’s expenses,” Draco says, a little more gently than he really needs to, but his father seems in delicate condition at the moment.
“All of them?”
“They are mine, after all. It would be remiss of me not to provide for them.”
Lucius covers his face with his hands. “You- you ridiculous boy. Don’t you understand that they’re using you?”
Draco thinks about that a moment. He doesn’t think he’d necessarily mind if they were. The benefits of their arrangement far outweighs the paltry monetary amount he returns. “Perhaps, but it is only fair as I’ve been using them.”
“For an heir? Draco, there were plenty of willing women to bed.” Lucius drops his hands into his lap, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to-”
“The heir was a bonus,” Draco admits. “If I hadn’t fathered one, I would have named one of the other children my heir.”
“No. Absolutely not. I will not sit here and be told that the fortune my family has amassed, the heritage we have behind us, would have been set into the hands of a halfbreed brat-”
“Father,” Draco growls with sudden steel. Lucius stops himself but there is a faint pink of anger rising on his cheeks. He glares back at Draco, refusing to back down.
“You had better be grateful you knocked that lowbred whore up,” he sneers, “and not the mudblood.”
Draco considers the option of punching him in the face. He’s spent too long around Ron. Instead, he simply stands up, politely pushes his chair back in, and starts for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He pauses, then looks back. “I don’t know what else you thought might happen when you started insulting my lovers.”
Lucius scowls at him darkly. “If I were still free-”
“If you hadn’t backed a madman and then gotten caught doing it,” Draco interrupts coolly, “then maybe you could have arranged a pretty little marriage deal and kept up sowing the seeds of corruption into a failing government ruled by idiots and fools. But you did back him and you were caught.”
“I did everything for you!”
“Is that so?” Draco isn’t even angry about that lie. He finds himself growing colder, more distant, and latches onto that. It’s an easier feeling than being angry with Lucius. “Everything for me? Are you sure about that? Because I seem to remember you have a liking for amassing power and throwing your weight around for the silliest things.”
Lucius’ face is red with rage, his eyes dark points glinting in the bad lighting. “How dare you doubt my intentions?”
“I don’t doubt them at all. I just know that none of it was about me.” Draco clasps his hands in front of him, regarding his sputtering father with the same absent consideration he would a rabid dog on a chain. “You’re free to make your justifications if you like, but don’t include me in them. We both know that I was only a tool against Dumbledore and an excuse to push the Ministry to your whims.”
Lucius says nothing. He’s too angry to speak. Nodding once, mostly to himself, Draco turns and opens the door.
“I didn’t neglect you,” Lucius spits out before the door closes.
“No. You didn’t.”
Draco lets the door fall shut and then leaves the prison with unhurried steps. The moment he’s outside the apparition ward, he goes home. It’s relatively quiet for once and that gets his hackles up. Draco finds his way to the nursery. It must be nap time because James is sprawled over his bed and the cribs hold Rose and Scorpius. He brushes his knuckles along James’ cheek and the three year old makes a little mumble before settling back into deeper sleep. Draco turns to the cribs and reaches in to curl his fingers gently around tiny little hands. They’re so small, so fragile. He knows he will do anything to protect and provide for them.
“You’re home early,” Ginny says softly from the doorway. He turns to her and regards her a moment. Ginny is tired and worn, but she still smiles at him with gentle fondness, like she knows exactly why he’s there. That’s the thing about Ginny. She knows him far better than she should.
Draco lets Ginny draw him out of the nursery and closes the door behind him. Ginny threads their fingers together as she leads him to the kitchen where she has two mugs of hot chocolate waiting. Giving her a grateful look, Draco settles at the table and sips from his.
“I visited my father today,” he says and Ginny nods, waiting for him to continue. “I told him about Scorpius.”
“That must have made him happy.”
“...In a way.” Draco curls his hands around the warm mug. “He approved of you being the mother, for the choices presented.”
Ginny snorts. “He did not. But if I ever see him, you know I’ll be rubbing his snooty little nose in it.”
“I’m sure.” Draco’s smiling and Ginny beams back at him. She reaches over and rests her fingers over his wrist, rubbing her thumb against his skin. It’s nice, the simple gesture. Draco isn’t always sure about his place with the group, but Ginny has made it clear from the beginning that she likes him being around.
“Since you’re here anyway,” she begins, mischief entering her gaze.
“Do you have a long honeydew list for me?”
“A short one.” She lets her fingers slide up over his sleeve. “Think of it as the beginning of repaying me for giving you an heir.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to be using that one for a while.”
“I knew you were smart.”
He ends up draped over the couch with her after they’ve finished their hot chocolate and only makes a few jokes at the ridiculous noises she makes when he rubs her feet.