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The Descent of Magic	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18803 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—Secrets Between the Lines

            “Scorpius, when you finish your breakfast—”

            “No.”

            Draco froze with his head bowed over the parchments in his grasp. He wanted to shake them. No, he wanted to fling them aside and strangle his only son and heir, if he was being honest with himself. But Malfoys didn’t do things like that.

            “You haven’t yet heard what I was going to ask you,” he said, as pleasantly as he could, raising his head and frowning at Scorpius.

            Scorpius had his chair tipped back from the dining table, his feet hooked under the rim of the table to keep him there. He had Vanished, or at least sent back to the kitchen, the porridge and dry toast that Draco considered a suitable breakfast. Instead, he was eating a huge bowl of custard, lemon or some other disgusting flavor from the yellow color of it, that was dripping all over his lap. As he looked up at his father, some of it fell on his robes.

            Draco shut his eyes and turned his head away.

            “The answer’s still no,” Scorpius said cheerfully. “It’s no categorically. It’s no phenomenonologically. It’s no epistemologically. It’s no to the ultimate powers of ten.” He swallowed the custard, from the sound, and added, “Al’s been teaching me all about Muggle maths. It’s fascinating. It’s like they’re learning how to trick the universe.”

            “You are not acting as befits a Malfoy,” Draco said. He found it hard to watch the spectacle of his son’s table manners, which meant he still couldn’t open his eyes and turn his head back, but at least he could speak his condemnation. He still hoped there was a buried part of his son that would take control someday, the part that had made him such a nice little boy and such a cheerful one when he went back and forth between his divorced parents’ homes. (Divorce wasn’t something Malfoys usually did, either, but it had been Astoria, not born into the family, who initiated the process, and Draco liked to think he had gone along with grace). “You could, if you would listen to my advice more often.”

            “Father, dear father,” Scorpius said, and such a disgusting sloppy noise came from his direction that Draco shuddered, not able to imagine what he was stirring into the custard, “you don’t understand. I have no interest in acting as befits a Malfoy. I was born that, yes, but it’s not who I am.”

            Draco sat up. This was it, then, he thought, his heart pounding and a tingling sensation racing through his arms down to his fingers. This was the moment when Scorpius would challenge him with something he couldn’t ignore, and their armed truce would fall apart. Draco had put up with many things, including his son’s Sorting and his Gryffindor friends and his Potter friend, but he would not put up with Scorpius’s rejection of his birthright. There might still be other ways for Draco to acquire an heir. Forty-four was not that old for a wizard.

            “Scorpius,” he said.

            “Oh, good,” Scorpius said, and looked up from where he was licking his fingers. The bowl sat on his head, which wobbled back and forth as he tried to keep it balanced. “I thought you were going to start out calling me ‘son.’ Nothing good ever happens when you let yourself be carried away like that.”

            Draco opened and closed his eyes, but more was at stake here than the visceral revulsion that made him want to shut them, so he looked. Scorpius sucked noisily at his fingers. Draco braced his hands on the table so he wouldn’t flee.

            “If you turn against your heritage,” he began, the same speech that his father had given him twenty-six years ago when they emerged from the war, “then I cannot help you. You take too many things for granted. The privileges that money gives you, your attendance at the best wizarding school in Britain—”

            “The only wizarding school in Britain,” Scorpius muttered, taking the custard bowl down from his head and sticking his tongue out to lap the sides, which muffled his words. Draco didn’t listen until he lifted his head again and added helpfully, “At least, the only one for wizards of our age.”

            “Your attendance,” Draco continued grimly, and then had to add something to the speech that Lucius had never had to. “Even if you did spend your youth in a House that is not the one I would have chosen for you.”

            Scorpius grinned at him, but it was his challenge-grin, on the edge, flashing out like a sharpened sword. (And Draco sometimes hated the ridiculous similes that his mind worked in). “Bloody good thing you weren’t in charge of the choice, then, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.

            “Language,” Draco said.

            “That’s something that matters in public, and in school.” Scorpius yawned, and stuck his fingers in his mouth again, swirling them around. Draco winced again simply because it wasn’t decent. “Not here, not in the embrace of my—” the fingers popped out again, and he shook them at Draco, sending a few drops of custard flying into the middle of the table, where a house-elf promptly appeared to clean them up “—loving family.”

            “That is what I am saying, Scorpius,” Draco said. Lucius had been able to act subtly with Draco, but interaction with Gryffindors had destroyed any natural gift for that that Scorpius had. “I intend to disown you if you continue your current disrespect.”

            Scorpius blinked, and finally put down the custard bowl. Draco felt a warm glow of relaxation in the center of his stomach. Not that he thought he had won, not yet, but getting his feckless son’s attention was a real achievement.

            “You’ve never said that before,” Scorpius said. “Not even when I acted a lot more obnoxious than I’m acting right now. What changed?”

            “Your continual disrespect for your name,” Draco said. “You’ve shown that you don’t think blood matters, that your heritage does not set you apart from other wizards.”

            Scorpius blinked extremely fast, several times. Draco thought he had never before heard his belief phrased in that way, and he would object that that wasn’t what he had meant. Draco almost held his breath. He was fond of Scorpius, in the reserved way that should be characteristic of relations between them, and he did not particularly want to produce another heir. He hoped Scorpius would choose the right thing, say the right thing.

            “That’s because,” Scorpius said slowly, “blood doesn’t matter a whit, and my heritage proves nothing. Except that we’re good at being poisonous wankers sometimes, and we object to the label of bastard just because we’re so careful of our marriages. I’ll give you that.”

            Draco rose to his feet. He was shaking. He pointed his finger at the far door of the dining room, but that shook, too. “Get out,” he said, lowering his arm and his voice at the same time, wishing that he had the vocal control Lucius had had. That would produce the best image of the patriarch in a rage, the only one likely to fetch Scorpius back now.

            But Scorpius rose to his feet with a slow, gentle, sad sort of look on his face, and Draco realized that he really must be too far gone. Nothing was going to rescue him now, and the Ministry had no more Time-Turners.

            “I was planning to leave today anyway,” Scorpius said gently, and turned and walked out of the room.

            Draco clenched his fists, breathing hard. He wanted to hit something, as he had many times since the war. But as always, his father’s advice came back to him.

            Now, more than ever, a Malfoy must do what befits a Malfoy. There is only one way for us to act if we would not be subject to the laughter of our enemies in the chambers of our minds, from which we cannot chase it out. Be dignified, be proper, and above all, never show improper emotions. Too much vehemence is deadly.

            So Draco did not hit something, or curse something, or chase after Scorpius and shout. He sat down, pulled his parchments towards him, and began to make legal notes for disinheriting Scorpius and practical ones for siring another child.

*

            “No.”

            Draco stared at Astoria through the fire, and then folded his legs more securely under him, shaking his head. Those were the only ways that he would express the intense emotions burning in him. She would get to see no more. Since she had forsaken his bed and his house, that was the way it had to be. “What?”

            “I said no.” Astoria ran a single strand of her bright hair around a finger and smiled at him. “I care about our son, Draco. I understand that you might have trouble with him. I always thought he was more Greengrass than Malfoy.”

            Draco opened his mouth to ask if Greengrass heirs regularly ate custard with their fingers at breakfast, but Astoria was talking on, looking into the distance in that gentle, unfocused way she had that Draco hated. She wasn’t focusing on what was in front of her, what had to be dealt with. She dealt very little with reality at all, Draco had found. “He tests your boundaries partially because he can, and partially because he knows that you’re still disappointed in him for not Sorting Slytherin.”

            “Of course I am,” Draco said, when he had spent a moment considering Astoria’s words and the angle that she seemed to think she had in them, something new and unexpected. “When one breaks a thousand-year tradition—”

            Astoria made a rude noise. “Draco, your family’s records don’t go back that far. The point is, no, I won’t help you conceive another child to be your heir, because I think the one you have is fine. It’s your standards and expectations that need to change.”

            Draco closed his eyes, opened them. “The marriage contract said that you would bear an acceptable child for me,” he said. “A pure-blood, a Malfoy, a son. If that middle condition hasn’t been fulfilled, then you still owe me a child.”

            Astoria looked at him and sighed longingly. Draco straightened. That was more like it.

            “How is it,” Astoria whispered, “that you’ve been gifted with the looks of a god and the mind of a pompous arse?”

            Draco stared at her, and said nothing. Astoria had sometimes said unexpected things to him, beginning with the words, “I want a divorce,” but she had never been openly rude to him before.

            “There’s nothing wrong with our son,” Astoria said, her eyes glinting with the hard sheen of jewels in the firelight. “And I happen to know that the greatest Malfoy tradition has always been their ability to adapt to what’s around them. Your grandfather Abraxas extended charity to Healers because that was in fashion at the time. Your father served the Dark Lord and then decided that he wouldn’t anymore for the thirteen years that the Dark Lord was apparently dead. Draco, you’re living a fossilized existence, a frozen one. There’s no reason for that. Accept that your son is riding the wave of the future, and follow him.”

            “Our son doesn’t respect his birth,” Draco said. “His blood. I thought you would care about that at least as much as I do.”

            Astoria gave him a thin smile. “Perhaps if I had borne a child who took my birth name, I would have,” she replied. “As it is, Draco, I was a second daughter. I saw from the outside all the time, and that included that the nonsense about an only son and heir was just that, nonsense. My parents never raised me to think that blood purity was as important for me as it would be for my sister. Scorpius is the best of both you and me, Greengrass and Malfoy. Accept that, and stop making silly statements.”

            “You won’t help me,” Draco said, to make sure.

            Astoria shook her head.

            “Then you leave me no choice,” Draco said, and stood up to walk away from the fireplace.

            “If you hurt Scorpius, then you will leave me none.”

            The words were spoken gently, but Draco remembered the conversation they’d had right after the divorce, when Astoria told him that she knew curses that would replace the blood in his veins with the blood of a Muggle. He would no longer be a Malfoy anymore if he hurt Scorpius, that much was certain.

            “I would rather lose my blood claim to be a Malfoy,” Draco said, turning around and looking down his nose at her, “than permit someone who was unworthy to rule after me.”

            “Disinheriting him does not involve hurting him,” Astoria said, and then paused and shook her head as if only now noting his choice of words. “Rule after you? What, Draco? An empty house, an empty suite of rooms where you have no wife, empty land that’s filled with peacocks you can’t tame and can’t get rid of? What heritage does Scorpius have there to be proud of?”

            Draco shut the Floo connection down. It was rude, but this was only Astoria, who would report no rudeness of his in case it reflected badly on her for marrying him in the first place. Draco knew that Daphne, in particular, hadn’t truly approved of the match and would still tease Astoria for it if she complained.

            This is my security that my divorce is not gossiped about. The pride of the woman who left me, not my own.

            Draco closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with one hand. He would not yield to the pettiness trying to crush him down, Scorpius’s bad manners and his choice to go into Gryffindor and lead an entirely unworthy life, but sometimes he wondered how it had come to this.

            It was so easy for Father…

            Well, the war hadn’t been easy, Draco had to admit. But he had handled even the aftermath of that with wit and courage. He had stood up to his enemies, the ones who had hurled accusations of crimes he hadn’t committed at him in the courtroom, and faced them down with silence that made Draco’s face burn to think about it. His enemies had been tiny, yapping dogs next to him. Lucius Malfoy knew how to live, how to lead, how to rule.

            He had died early, at least for a wizard, because the world had been too much for him. He could not live with a world where the best scions of pure-blood families abandoned their birthrights—Millicent had married a Muggle, for Merlin’s sake—and the Ministry became a safe road to politics instead of the dangerous one he had delighted in, among the best opponents. He had lived to see Scorpius born. Draco was glad that he had not lived long enough to see him grow up.

            Draco knew that he looked a lot like his father (and he would pay no attention to Astoria’s claim that his hairline was receding. He knew that for a trick of the light, and sometimes of enchanted mirrors). He didn’t know why he hadn’t also inherited Lucius’s air of easy command, and above all, his command of self. Draco had to hold himself back from hitting and shouting at people. Lucius Malfoy had never had the impulse.

            Draco took a deep, wavering breath, and then shook his head. No. He wouldn’t yield to the despair, wouldn’t succumb. He should have given up on organizing the family’s debts and vaults and legal standing long ago if he was going to do that, and forced his mother and Astoria to take it over. No. He had to make plans about acquiring another heir.

            A child-contract, a temporary but legal arrangement with a pure-blood woman who would grant him use of her womb in exchange for Galleons, seemed like the best solution. But Draco wanted to do some research first. All the pure-bloods of his generation had miscarried at least once, or, like Astoria, refused to have any but one child. He wanted a healthy second heir in addition to one of the right bloodline. It would do no good if the child never survived to come into his inheritance.

*

            No.

            Draco laid the newspapers down and looked out the window at the rain, which, as usual, was pattering down on the gardens as though it was choosing just the right spots to fall. The drops were huge, he noted dimly, so large he wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of them reflecting his sober face.

            So. Pure-blood families of his generation had experienced numerous miscarriages, stillbirths, or attempts at conception that were futile for years.

            Draco reached over and turned the nearest paper to face him. He would have thought that was an effect of bad luck, or perhaps the amount of Dark magic used during the war, and so confined to Britain. He would have looked to the Continent for a wife, perhaps even Ireland if the statistics weren’t the same there.

            But no. The newspapers that did articles on it took the trouble to research the conditions of the newest pure-blood generation in other countries as well, perhaps because they knew a thorough story would frighten their readers more. It wasn’t only English witches who had trouble carrying to term, or English wizards who had trouble fathering children. It happened in Australia, in China, in South Africa, in Egypt, in France. Everywhere that tradition-oriented pure-blood wizards volunteered the information, the same plague had spread.

            Draco curled his lip. Muggleborns didn’t seem to have trouble breeding, and as for Weasleys, they spawned like they breathed. But he was not so desperate for a child that he would turn to someone of inferior blood or a hereditary enemy.

            Yet.

            Draco sighed, and started to put the newspapers together in a neat pile. The Daily Prophet would sell older issues to those who specifically asked for them, but Draco saw no reason to keep them once he had convinced himself of the facts in the articles. He would return the papers to the publishers via double owl and request a refund.

            Because the shuffling of the papers made little noise and his son made much, he was aware of Scorpius and Potter before they were aware of him. They came bouncing and bounding down the corridor outside the library, laughing and tossing something back and forth between them that made a noise like several bowls of custard. Draco started to rise to his feet, mouth open, although he didn’t know whether he would begin his scolding with the way they had disrupted the peace of the Manor or the fact that they were here when they definitely should have been in school.

            “Your dad’s brilliant.”

            Draco felt a sneer twist his mouth. That was Scorpius, of course. Potter would never speak of Draco that way, either old Potter or younger Potter. And Scorpius was unlikely to tell either of them the truth about complicated Potions theory, Draco’s claim to brilliance, when they couldn’t begin to understand it.

            “I don’t know about that,” Potter said, and snorted. Draco imagined the mucus that would coat the walls of the Manor from that noise, and barely restrained a shudder. “He’s mostly interested in children, as far as I can tell, right now. He keeps muttering about how he thinks he’s solved the problem of why your lot can’t have them, but then he says that no one would believe him.”

            Barely breathing, Draco cast a Notice-Me-Not Charm on himself and then stepped towards the door of the library. He leaned soundlessly on the doorframe. Potter and Scorpius had come to a stop not far from him.

            Potter wore the dapper robes and Slytherin-green tie that should have been Scorpius’s lot in life. Draco felt a distant envy there, but he could not have said who he envied, his old school rival for having such a son or the imaginary version of himself who did. Scorpius, as usual, had tied his Gryffindor tie around his neck like a collar and had a series of ribbons in his hair, this time intertwined on the back of his head in the shape of a heart.

            “Your lot?” Scorpius repeated, scowling at Potter. “You’re practically a pure-blood yourself.”

            “Not according to people like your dad,” Potter retorted, slapping one hand against his knee. “He’ll always think I’m tainted because of Grandmother Lily.”

            “Fuck my dad,” Scorpius said. Draco closed his eyes, opened them. “Anyway. Come on. We still haven’t tested that potion that’s supposed to make Jamie fly.” He hoisted the dog under his arm that Draco had missed seeing because his eyes refused to look at the mongrel on principle, and then ran away. Potter trailed him, a quiet smile on his face.

            Draco thought about going after them, but that would mean admitting he had eavesdropped. A Malfoy would not do that.

            Besides, he had something to think about. That Potter the Elder was doing research on pure-blood fertility was ridiculous, of course; Draco remembered the quality of his “research” in Hogwarts, and knew he would find nothing unless Granger was helping him.

            But perhaps Draco could give his research a proper direction. He had heard that Potter had retired several years ago, and had divorced his wife also, and spent most of his time alone. Draco might show up, challenge him, and learn anything of value Potter had discovered. It would be proper for a Malfoy to challenge an old enemy.

            He cast a glance over his shoulder at the papers.

            It was, at least, better than sitting here and sorting over the fragments of his life.

*

            Nathoca Malfoy: You’ll need to wait a bit longer to find out, I’m afraid.

            dominique1: Thanks! I can promise that it’s not going to involve a big-scale slaughter of house-elves. Someone would have figured it out by now if it was the house-elves’ magic having a bad effect on the children they raised.

            ChaosLady: You’ll see, soon.

            moodysavage: Sorry, yes! But I do promise that it’s at least hinted at in Chapter 4 (I haven’t decided if I’m going to write it out in full yet or not).

            unneeded: Thank you! So far, the epilogue kids are much bigger characters in this than I originally planned when I was starting the story.

            SP777: Well, that theory would suggest that families became more fertile as they became poorer, and given the families Harry’s found where fertility still shows up, that doesn’t seem to be true. The Weasleys aren’t having fewer children as they grow more prosperous, after all; it was more likely that none of them wanted as many children as Molly herself did.

            Thanks for the praise on the description. As for knee pain, I know whereof I speak.
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The Descent of Magic