"Like Father, Like Son" - A Gift for sophia_weasley
Title: Like Father, Like Son
Author: ladyshina
Gift For: Sophia_weasley
Summary: Draco doesn't suspect an ulterior motive when Scorpius comes to him on a rainy summer afternoon and says, "Father, will you and Mother be free the first week of July?"
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2100 words
Author's Note: Many thanks to A., my beta-reader. Sophia, I hope you'll enjoy this! :)
Draco doesn't suspect an ulterior motive when Scorpius comes to him on a rainy summer afternoon and says, "Father, will you and Mother be free the first week of July?"
"Possibly," he answers, without glancing up from his potions notes. "Is there something you need?"
Scorpius hesitates. "Don't you think Mother would like to stay at our beach house that week?"
Scorpius is one who, as a kid, always heaved a resigned sigh when told to go on vacations with his parents, away from the house, and as an adult can only be persuaded to leave his flat under his girlfriend's badgering.
Draco pauses and glances up, raising an eyebrow. A blush spots Scorpius's cheeks, his left hand coming up to rub the back of his neck.
"I just thought that it would be... nice. Mother told Rose last week that we haven't gone on a family vacation together for three years now." Ever since Scorpius moved out, that is.
Draco knows his son, and he knows that isn't the real reason, but he trusts him. If there's something Scorpius does not want to reveal, he normally has reasons for it.
"Ask your mother," he tells him. "I will make time in my schedule for that week if she says yes." If Draco's right -- and he most decidedly is -- Astoria will agree before Scorpius even finish asking, and whatever Astoria wants, Draco knows he will eventually be roped into doing.
Scorpius breaths out a tiny sigh. Of relief, maybe, like a part of a long trial coming to a close. "Thank you, Father."
*
The cause for Scorpius's change in personality becomes apparent the first day at their beach house in Australia, and Draco wonders how he has failed to realise it before. There is ever only one cause for any changes in Scorpius: Rose Weasley -- who is currently blinking at them in surprise, her parents and brother a few steps behind.
It is a second before Rose's sense of politeness -- something she inherited from her mother, surely -- returns and she hastily offers belated greetings to Draco and Astoria. Astoria hugs her warmly and Draco nods his head, almost imperceptibly. Granger -- he refuses to think of her as another Weasley -- smiles brightly, while Weasley mutters a "How are you?", clearly discomforted. Draco smirks.
"I didn't know you'll also be here this week," Rose tells Scorpius, who shrugs, a tiny lift of shoulders, and smiles, half guilty.
"Mother wants us to take a vacation."
"What a coincidence," says Granger, beaming at Scorpius and Astoria. "We're visiting my parents and have decided to take the opportunity and stay at the beach for a week."
"Have you found a place to stay yet?" asks Astoria. "If not, you are all welcome to stay with us." Sometimes, Draco wishes his wife were less friendly. Judging from the look on Weasley's face, he must be thinking the same thing.
"We really shouldn't intrude upon your vacation."
Astoria waves away Granger's protests. "We have a lot more rooms at our place than we can possibly use. And besides, it'll make the trip much more fun with more people, don't you think?"
Draco really would beg to differ, but his opinion never counts for much when it comes to Astoria's idea of hospitality, so he wisely remains quiet and dreads a week spent with not one, but four Weasleys.
*
Scorpius comes to him again that night as he sips on a glass of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey in the living room. The house resonates with silence, most of its occupants already retired for the night. Scorpius's footsteps are soft and hesitant. When they stop, it is a second before Scorpius sits down on the sofa opposite of his father. Draco pours another glass of Firewhiskey and hands it to his son; normally, Astoria would chew him out for "corrupting her son with alcohol," but Scorpius looks like he needs it.
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes before Scorpius speaks up. "Father, how did you propose to Mother?"
That isn't the question Draco would expect from his son, well, ever, partly because Astoria is likely to have told him already without him ever asking. It seems she hasn't.
Draco has to think before he can formulate an answer. "Your mother and I were betrothed," he says, slowly. "Arranged marriage. We did meet and date before the wedding, of course, and I fell in love with her then. But there were no actual proposals."
He had planned one, of course, so that she could reject him if she really wanted, even though he think that would've broken him, a little, if she did. In the end, Astoria had merely barged in and told him in no uncertain terms that betrothal or no betrothal, they would be married within a year. Draco could do little but nod.
He isn't about to tell his son that, however.
"I see." Scorpius cups his glass, tense.
"Do you have something in mind?"
Scorpius shakes his head. "No. Thank you, Father."
*
It is easy to see that Scorpius and Rose have been together for a long time, a few years as lovers and an entire childhood as friends. Draco almost thinks it's pathetic how his son gravitates toward Rose whenever the two of them are in a room together, how his eyes always seek hers when they are out. Except he has been there before -- still is, as he glances over at his wife, who is currently engaged in a no doubt scintillating conversation with Granger.
He wonders how much longer it will be before he has to worry about being in-laws with Weasley and, by the wizarding world's idea of association, Potter. No doubt it will be much faster than Draco would like for it to be.
He is sitting, or laying rather, on the beach, getting burnt to crisp because his wife insists that he is "too pale to look attractive" (he didn't see her minding before), when a shadow drapes across him, blocking out the sun. Draco lowers his newest potions text (an absolute drivel that he cannot seem to be able to put down in hope of finding at least a morsel of decent knowledge buried deep in there somewhere), and glares up at the intruder. The glare melts away as he recognise Rose, hair dripping with a towel slung over her shoulders and a nervous smile twitching at her lips.
She gestures to the blanket on his left. "Do you mind if I sit here?"
"Go ahead," Draco says, inching over to his right.
Rose lowers herself down and brushes the sand off her legs. She is wearing a conservative black one-piece bathing suit, a complete contrast to Astoria's set of red bikini. Her bushy red hair is tied up in messy bun, whereas Astoria's blond hair is shoulder-length and always straight. The one thing they have in common, however, is the ability to engage in conversations on any and all possible topics.
It makes Rose's continuing silence rather uncharacteristic, and so is the twiddling of thumbs that Draco had taught Scorpius to abandon since he was five years old.
Draco thinks about returning to his book, but he has lost any interest he ever managed to gather for it, so he settles for following Rose's gaze out to the sea, where he can spot Scorpius and Hugo engaging Weasley in a Muggle beach volleyball match.
After a long while, Rose starts, "Mr. Malfoy --"
"Call me Draco, please," he interrupts, more out of habit than anything else.
" -- I really do love Scorpius."
It takes a second for Rose's words to sink in, and when they do, Draco tilts his head to look at her, raising an eyebrow. Rose looks as though she wants the earth to swallow her whole.
"I do not think I am quite the Malfoy you need to convince," Draco says dryly. That they love each other, he never doubted, not even when he had put up a token protest when Scorpius first asked Rose out, because even then he probably knew that he is doomed to be related to the Weasleys.
Rose shakes her head and raises her eyes to meet his, even when her face is still beet red. "I -- I know you and Dad don't always get along." That's an understatement, Draco thinks. "And I know that -- that I'm not the perfect pure-blood daughter you are hoping for your daughter-in-law, but I really do love Scorpius."
Draco doesn't care for a pure-blood daughter, never has, and he wonders how long the poor girl has been carrying such thoughts in her head and if she ever shared them with Scorpius. Probably not.
"And," she plunges on, "I promise I will do my best to make him happy."
She pauses. Draco waits. When she doesn't seem to want to continue -- probably used all the energy just to utter those sentences -- Draco says, "I know."
It seems Rose wasn't expecting a reply. "I'm sorry?"
"I know you'll make him happy," he says, then looks at her, seriously. "And I never did hope for a pure-blood daughter-in-law. After all, a niece of Harry Potter is surely more of a bag."
Rose chuckles and smiles at him. Draco can see why his son is in love. "Thank you, Mr. Malfoy."
Somehow, Draco feels as though he has just been asked for his son's hand in marriage -- and he's just given it.
*
"Father," Scorpius says without preamble, as thought he has been steeling himself up for it, "I am going to propose to Rose tonight."
If Scorpius had expected him to be surprised, Scorpius is in for a surprise himself. "I have gathered that when you asked me how I proposed to your mother the other day."
"Oh."
"Have you asked Weasley -- Ron Weasley, your soon to be... father-in-law --" that leaves a strange taste on Draco's tongue, not a pleasant one, but he continues on "-- that, though?"
"I --" He pauses, looking nervous. "No, I haven't. I want to ask Rose first before meeting her father." A wise move, that. If Scorpius asks Weasley before Rose, he might be lucky to survive the ordeal whole. Draco doubts Weasley can ever deny his daughter anything.
"I see. When will you be proposing to her, then?" Draco asks, affecting nonchalance -- because, really, he isn't interested in his son's love life.
"Er, tonight. Hopefully."
"Good. Your mother has been wanting to have a grandchild to spoil ever since you outgrew coddling."
"Father." Scorpius blushes, but does not deny. "And, you are all right with this?" He sounds hesitant.
"If I say I am not, what will you do?"
"I will marry her anyway." There is no hesitation this time.
Draco smiles at his son, something Astoria tells him he doesn't do enough. "Then Rose Weasley is a lucky woman."
*
A lucky woman who is wearing a new ring on her left ring finger and a bright smile on her lips the very next morning. Scorpius looks equally proud, although he pales a little whenever Weasley sends a dark look his way. Draco thinks perhaps proposing to a woman when you are living in the same house as her father is probably not the smartest thing to do.
After dinner that night, Draco draws his son out and asks, "I take it you have asked her?"
Scorpius looks sheepish, and his hand automatically goes for the back of his head. "I... have," he says. "In a manner of speaking."
Draco raises an eyebrow. "In a manner of speaking?"
"You see," Scorpius says, without looking at him in the eyes, "I -- sort of... didn't have the chance to ask her."
"What do you mean, you didn't have the chance to ask her? She's wearing the ring, is she not?"
"I -- well, she is, but I didn't ask."
"How did you manage that: proposing without asking? Surely you did not tell her to marry you?"
"No. No, of course not." Then he mumbles something along the line of, "But Rose kind of asked me before I did. Told me, rather. In a no-nonsense voice, too."
Draco blinks at him. Then blinks some more. Well. "That's certainly something."
Scorpius laughs self-depreciatingly, but when he speaks his voice is fond and proud, "She really is something, isn't she?"
That wasn't what he meant, but Draco chuckles. Maybe it is the Malfoy's curse to be proposed to by their wives.
When Scorpius had gone back to his new fiancée, Draco nurses a glass of firewhiskey and thinks, Well, at least Weasley will have a heart attack over his daughter fallen into the hands of a Malfoy.
Author: ladyshina
Gift For: Sophia_weasley
Summary: Draco doesn't suspect an ulterior motive when Scorpius comes to him on a rainy summer afternoon and says, "Father, will you and Mother be free the first week of July?"
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2100 words
Author's Note: Many thanks to A., my beta-reader. Sophia, I hope you'll enjoy this! :)
Draco doesn't suspect an ulterior motive when Scorpius comes to him on a rainy summer afternoon and says, "Father, will you and Mother be free the first week of July?"
"Possibly," he answers, without glancing up from his potions notes. "Is there something you need?"
Scorpius hesitates. "Don't you think Mother would like to stay at our beach house that week?"
Scorpius is one who, as a kid, always heaved a resigned sigh when told to go on vacations with his parents, away from the house, and as an adult can only be persuaded to leave his flat under his girlfriend's badgering.
Draco pauses and glances up, raising an eyebrow. A blush spots Scorpius's cheeks, his left hand coming up to rub the back of his neck.
"I just thought that it would be... nice. Mother told Rose last week that we haven't gone on a family vacation together for three years now." Ever since Scorpius moved out, that is.
Draco knows his son, and he knows that isn't the real reason, but he trusts him. If there's something Scorpius does not want to reveal, he normally has reasons for it.
"Ask your mother," he tells him. "I will make time in my schedule for that week if she says yes." If Draco's right -- and he most decidedly is -- Astoria will agree before Scorpius even finish asking, and whatever Astoria wants, Draco knows he will eventually be roped into doing.
Scorpius breaths out a tiny sigh. Of relief, maybe, like a part of a long trial coming to a close. "Thank you, Father."
*
The cause for Scorpius's change in personality becomes apparent the first day at their beach house in Australia, and Draco wonders how he has failed to realise it before. There is ever only one cause for any changes in Scorpius: Rose Weasley -- who is currently blinking at them in surprise, her parents and brother a few steps behind.
It is a second before Rose's sense of politeness -- something she inherited from her mother, surely -- returns and she hastily offers belated greetings to Draco and Astoria. Astoria hugs her warmly and Draco nods his head, almost imperceptibly. Granger -- he refuses to think of her as another Weasley -- smiles brightly, while Weasley mutters a "How are you?", clearly discomforted. Draco smirks.
"I didn't know you'll also be here this week," Rose tells Scorpius, who shrugs, a tiny lift of shoulders, and smiles, half guilty.
"Mother wants us to take a vacation."
"What a coincidence," says Granger, beaming at Scorpius and Astoria. "We're visiting my parents and have decided to take the opportunity and stay at the beach for a week."
"Have you found a place to stay yet?" asks Astoria. "If not, you are all welcome to stay with us." Sometimes, Draco wishes his wife were less friendly. Judging from the look on Weasley's face, he must be thinking the same thing.
"We really shouldn't intrude upon your vacation."
Astoria waves away Granger's protests. "We have a lot more rooms at our place than we can possibly use. And besides, it'll make the trip much more fun with more people, don't you think?"
Draco really would beg to differ, but his opinion never counts for much when it comes to Astoria's idea of hospitality, so he wisely remains quiet and dreads a week spent with not one, but four Weasleys.
*
Scorpius comes to him again that night as he sips on a glass of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey in the living room. The house resonates with silence, most of its occupants already retired for the night. Scorpius's footsteps are soft and hesitant. When they stop, it is a second before Scorpius sits down on the sofa opposite of his father. Draco pours another glass of Firewhiskey and hands it to his son; normally, Astoria would chew him out for "corrupting her son with alcohol," but Scorpius looks like he needs it.
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes before Scorpius speaks up. "Father, how did you propose to Mother?"
That isn't the question Draco would expect from his son, well, ever, partly because Astoria is likely to have told him already without him ever asking. It seems she hasn't.
Draco has to think before he can formulate an answer. "Your mother and I were betrothed," he says, slowly. "Arranged marriage. We did meet and date before the wedding, of course, and I fell in love with her then. But there were no actual proposals."
He had planned one, of course, so that she could reject him if she really wanted, even though he think that would've broken him, a little, if she did. In the end, Astoria had merely barged in and told him in no uncertain terms that betrothal or no betrothal, they would be married within a year. Draco could do little but nod.
He isn't about to tell his son that, however.
"I see." Scorpius cups his glass, tense.
"Do you have something in mind?"
Scorpius shakes his head. "No. Thank you, Father."
*
It is easy to see that Scorpius and Rose have been together for a long time, a few years as lovers and an entire childhood as friends. Draco almost thinks it's pathetic how his son gravitates toward Rose whenever the two of them are in a room together, how his eyes always seek hers when they are out. Except he has been there before -- still is, as he glances over at his wife, who is currently engaged in a no doubt scintillating conversation with Granger.
He wonders how much longer it will be before he has to worry about being in-laws with Weasley and, by the wizarding world's idea of association, Potter. No doubt it will be much faster than Draco would like for it to be.
He is sitting, or laying rather, on the beach, getting burnt to crisp because his wife insists that he is "too pale to look attractive" (he didn't see her minding before), when a shadow drapes across him, blocking out the sun. Draco lowers his newest potions text (an absolute drivel that he cannot seem to be able to put down in hope of finding at least a morsel of decent knowledge buried deep in there somewhere), and glares up at the intruder. The glare melts away as he recognise Rose, hair dripping with a towel slung over her shoulders and a nervous smile twitching at her lips.
She gestures to the blanket on his left. "Do you mind if I sit here?"
"Go ahead," Draco says, inching over to his right.
Rose lowers herself down and brushes the sand off her legs. She is wearing a conservative black one-piece bathing suit, a complete contrast to Astoria's set of red bikini. Her bushy red hair is tied up in messy bun, whereas Astoria's blond hair is shoulder-length and always straight. The one thing they have in common, however, is the ability to engage in conversations on any and all possible topics.
It makes Rose's continuing silence rather uncharacteristic, and so is the twiddling of thumbs that Draco had taught Scorpius to abandon since he was five years old.
Draco thinks about returning to his book, but he has lost any interest he ever managed to gather for it, so he settles for following Rose's gaze out to the sea, where he can spot Scorpius and Hugo engaging Weasley in a Muggle beach volleyball match.
After a long while, Rose starts, "Mr. Malfoy --"
"Call me Draco, please," he interrupts, more out of habit than anything else.
" -- I really do love Scorpius."
It takes a second for Rose's words to sink in, and when they do, Draco tilts his head to look at her, raising an eyebrow. Rose looks as though she wants the earth to swallow her whole.
"I do not think I am quite the Malfoy you need to convince," Draco says dryly. That they love each other, he never doubted, not even when he had put up a token protest when Scorpius first asked Rose out, because even then he probably knew that he is doomed to be related to the Weasleys.
Rose shakes her head and raises her eyes to meet his, even when her face is still beet red. "I -- I know you and Dad don't always get along." That's an understatement, Draco thinks. "And I know that -- that I'm not the perfect pure-blood daughter you are hoping for your daughter-in-law, but I really do love Scorpius."
Draco doesn't care for a pure-blood daughter, never has, and he wonders how long the poor girl has been carrying such thoughts in her head and if she ever shared them with Scorpius. Probably not.
"And," she plunges on, "I promise I will do my best to make him happy."
She pauses. Draco waits. When she doesn't seem to want to continue -- probably used all the energy just to utter those sentences -- Draco says, "I know."
It seems Rose wasn't expecting a reply. "I'm sorry?"
"I know you'll make him happy," he says, then looks at her, seriously. "And I never did hope for a pure-blood daughter-in-law. After all, a niece of Harry Potter is surely more of a bag."
Rose chuckles and smiles at him. Draco can see why his son is in love. "Thank you, Mr. Malfoy."
Somehow, Draco feels as though he has just been asked for his son's hand in marriage -- and he's just given it.
*
"Father," Scorpius says without preamble, as thought he has been steeling himself up for it, "I am going to propose to Rose tonight."
If Scorpius had expected him to be surprised, Scorpius is in for a surprise himself. "I have gathered that when you asked me how I proposed to your mother the other day."
"Oh."
"Have you asked Weasley -- Ron Weasley, your soon to be... father-in-law --" that leaves a strange taste on Draco's tongue, not a pleasant one, but he continues on "-- that, though?"
"I --" He pauses, looking nervous. "No, I haven't. I want to ask Rose first before meeting her father." A wise move, that. If Scorpius asks Weasley before Rose, he might be lucky to survive the ordeal whole. Draco doubts Weasley can ever deny his daughter anything.
"I see. When will you be proposing to her, then?" Draco asks, affecting nonchalance -- because, really, he isn't interested in his son's love life.
"Er, tonight. Hopefully."
"Good. Your mother has been wanting to have a grandchild to spoil ever since you outgrew coddling."
"Father." Scorpius blushes, but does not deny. "And, you are all right with this?" He sounds hesitant.
"If I say I am not, what will you do?"
"I will marry her anyway." There is no hesitation this time.
Draco smiles at his son, something Astoria tells him he doesn't do enough. "Then Rose Weasley is a lucky woman."
*
A lucky woman who is wearing a new ring on her left ring finger and a bright smile on her lips the very next morning. Scorpius looks equally proud, although he pales a little whenever Weasley sends a dark look his way. Draco thinks perhaps proposing to a woman when you are living in the same house as her father is probably not the smartest thing to do.
After dinner that night, Draco draws his son out and asks, "I take it you have asked her?"
Scorpius looks sheepish, and his hand automatically goes for the back of his head. "I... have," he says. "In a manner of speaking."
Draco raises an eyebrow. "In a manner of speaking?"
"You see," Scorpius says, without looking at him in the eyes, "I -- sort of... didn't have the chance to ask her."
"What do you mean, you didn't have the chance to ask her? She's wearing the ring, is she not?"
"I -- well, she is, but I didn't ask."
"How did you manage that: proposing without asking? Surely you did not tell her to marry you?"
"No. No, of course not." Then he mumbles something along the line of, "But Rose kind of asked me before I did. Told me, rather. In a no-nonsense voice, too."
Draco blinks at him. Then blinks some more. Well. "That's certainly something."
Scorpius laughs self-depreciatingly, but when he speaks his voice is fond and proud, "She really is something, isn't she?"
That wasn't what he meant, but Draco chuckles. Maybe it is the Malfoy's curse to be proposed to by their wives.
When Scorpius had gone back to his new fiancée, Draco nurses a glass of firewhiskey and thinks, Well, at least Weasley will have a heart attack over his daughter fallen into the hands of a Malfoy.