The Mystery Wife

Scorpius Draconis Albus Richard Malfoy was nervous.

No one not directly related to him by blood would have known it, to look at him. He looked stiff and composed, with all the white-gold, unearthly Veela beauty of all the Malfoys, as he stood with his parents on Platform 9 3/4 and waited for the Hogwarts Express to take him away to school.

Away from home for the first time ever.

He swallowed, and jerked his pointed chin a little higher, refusing to cry in front of all these strangers.

At least they couldn't see him. The steam from the enormous red train was billowing across the platform, obscuring everything and everyone. Bits of various conversations drifted to them on the warm air along with the steam; one man was going on about broomstick regulations, a pair of his soon-to-be-schoolmates were squabbling, a little girl was crying and telling her parents she would miss them.

Scorpius thought really seriously about doing the same, for a few dizzying seconds.

"Kindly do not forget to breathe, Scorp," his mother teased him, resting a steadying hand on his small shoulder.

There might have been little of Sevanna Prince-Malfoy in her son's pale, pointed features, but his pensively knitted brow was entirely hers. "What if I end up in Gryffindor?" he murmured, finally voicing the worst of all his fears. "What if I'm not in Slytherin?"

Draco firmly suppressed his knee-jerk, only half-joking reaction of horror.

"You'll just have to show the lot of them what it is to be a real gentleman, then," he drawled affectionately. "It'd be a kindness, frankly, if you saved them from themselves. And some Gryffindors make fairly bearable friends, once you get their heads screwed on right."

Draco and Sevanna glanced down the platform, at Harry and Ginny Potter and Ron and Hermione Weasley, and the rather substantial, noisy Gryffindor brood they were all managing to raise between them.

Ginny Weasley was, predictably enough, thickening around the middle, her three children having taken the customary toll on her body. She was built to take after her mother in that as in so much else. Ron Weasley, on the other hand, was taking after their father, tall, thin up top, a bit paunchy around the midsection, with thinning hair.

Granger and Potter had fared rather better in the mid-life lottery. A bit heavier than they'd been in school, but that was natural enough, Draco supposed. Still. He couldn't quite prevent just a glimmer of pure Slytherin schadenfreude from teasing his lips into an upward quirk. He'd aged better, an ever-so-slightly thinning hairline his only concession to the nearly two decades since they'd all seen each other. And Sevanna was simply ageless, as beautiful today as she had been when they'd been rather unexpectedly married.

One of the many fringe benefits of being a family of Potions Masters.

"Are those..." Scorpius frowned in the direction of the Gryffindor contingent.

"Harry and Ginny Potter and their three children, James, Albus and Lily," Sevanna said neutrally, pointing them out in turn, "and Ron and Hermione Weasley and their children, Rose and Hugo."

Draco had kept in touch with Harry through the very occasional letter, enough that they all knew the names of each other's children, at any rate.

"Hugo?" Scorp asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Yes, Hugo," Draco sighed. "The Weasleys will keep on naming their children as if they expect them to become bartenders and busdrivers, I'm afraid... It's not his fault."

He gave the Gryffindors a polite but noncommittal nod, because all of them were staring at him.

"All aboard!" the conductor called, and Scorp looked up at his parents, his silver eyes momentarily wide.

"Everything will be just fine," Sevanna soothed him, straightening his school robes and planting a kiss on top of his white-blond head. "We'll write each other all the time, and your father and I will send you loads of sweets and presents, and before you know it you'll be coming home for Christmas."

"Christmas is ages away," he said wistfully, a little frown line between his brows.

Draco had to suppress a smile. Scorpius looked so like his mother when he did that, in spite of the Malfoy colouring...

"It seems like a long time now," he replied. "But it'll go by quicker than you think. Hogwarts is brilliant. You'll see." He nudged their son gently towards the train. "You'll be fine, Scorp. Remember that you're a Malfoy." He gave Sevanna a quick, wry glance. "Only... not too hard."

She actually laughed at that, and kissed him lightly, and then kissed Scorp again, freer with all such expressions after a few years of actual happiness. "Go on, love. You'll be brilliant. Just be yourself, and have fun. Hogwarts can be wonderful."

She very kindly and sensibly did not mention that while Hogwarts could be wonderful, adolescence frequently wasn't.

"Go make friends with Albus Potter," she said on a sudden, shrewd thought. "If he's anything like his father and his grandmother, he'll be a good friend. In fact..."

She steered them all over in the direction of Harry and Albus Potter, the steam momentarily concealing them. They arrived just in time to overhear, "Albus Severus... you were named for two Headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin, and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."

Sevanna froze, her hand tightening fractionally and unconsciously on her son's shoulder. She looked rather poleaxed.

"But just say --" the boy began to argue, and his father cut him off.

"Then Slytherin House will have gained an excellent student, won't it? It doesn't matter to us, Al. But if it matters to you, you'll be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin. The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account."

"Really?"

"It did for me," said Harry.

"Why would anyone deliberately choose Gryffindor over Slytherin?" Scorp whispered to his parents.

"An appalling lack of taste," his mother whispered back teasingly, glancing after Potter a bit pensively. "But come on, the doors are closing, we have to get you onto the train..."

One last hug from each of his parents, and Scorpius was bundled onto the carriage.

"We'll write!" Sevanna promised. "So often you'll get sick of us! We love you!"

"I love you, too," he said in an uneven voice, lifting his chin bravely, visibly and grimly determined not to cry. He swallowed, and his eyes flicked to Albus Potter, mostly to give himself something else to think about.

Draco closed his eyes briefly. "Please, do not start a fight," he whispered, audible only to Sevanna. "Please, do not start a bloody fight. Let's not do this again... Weasleys, stay out of it..."

Sevanna threaded an arm around his waist, swallowing against the tightness in her throat. They saw Scorp introducing himself to the Potter boy, and shaking his hand, bold and demon-charming, another distinctly Malfoy trait Scorpius had inherited in spades. Albus Potter smiled back a little shyly, started to introduce Rose Weasley, and then the train whistle sounded one last time. All three children bolted to the nearest window, their eyes a little wide and scared, their thin arms waving wildly as the train started to pull out of the station.

Draco and Sevanna waved back, smiling, ignoring the mutual tug at the heart that was their only son, gliding away, faster and faster until the train became a toy, and then a red dot on the autumn gold horizon, and then nothing at all.

Draco wrapped his arms around Sevanna's waist, and she let her head loll back against his shoulder for just a moment.

"I hate this part," Harry Potter said conversationally, still staring into the distance in the direction of the departed train. His youngest, Lily, was crying inconsolably into her mother's hip, while Ginny smoothed the girl's hair with a gentle hand.

"Which?" Draco asked, a little absently, still staring into the distance.

"The whole 'watching our kids go off to school' part, and knowing we won't see them until Christmas," Potter sighed. "Want to go for a drink? I'm finding I could use one. I promise not to get us attacked by any more Death Eaters," he added wryly.

"And no Truth or Dare games?" Draco drawled.

"Ever again," Potter agreed with a grimace. His eyes lit on Sevanna. "I never got to thank you properly for that night."

"Was she at the Truth or Dare game?" Ron Weasley blinked at her, turning as red as his hair.

"No," Potter and Sevanna chorused. Potter stuck out his hand at her, earnest and a little gauche, as ever.

"Harry Potter. Nice to meet you, finally."

Not entirely a first meeting; Potter and Granger had long since been entrusted with the truth about Severus Snape's supposed demise. But Potter had clearly learned a thing or two about subterfuge, as an Auror.

"Sevanna Malfoy. A pleasure," she said smoothly, even managing a smile without teeth, shaking hands with him. "The Leaky Cauldron, perhaps?" she suggested. "Lunch, and we can all catch up on old times and bore each other to death with stories of our children?"

"Sounds brilliant," Hermione Weasley smiled, tucking a stray lock of curly brown hair back into her otherwise tight chignon. Her husband didn't particularly look as if he agreed, but he didn't look as if he crossed the stated wishes of his wife much, either.

"It does," Potter agreed, looking as if he actually thought so. "Draco?"

"What, I don't get a rose and a declaration of love, this time?" Draco smirked, unable to help himself. Yanking Potter's chain was as natural as breathing for him, even if it no longer had the edge of real dislike it once had.

Potter blushed rather satisfactorily at that reminder of their Truth or Dare game. Lily and Hugo looked on curiously, as did Ginny.

"Shall we?" Sevanna offered with polished smoothness, ignoring the byplay. Her eyes sought out La Granger's, as her natural ally in all this.

"We shall," Hermione nodded. The two of them took off in a determined and cheerful stride, all high heels and long, gorgeous legs in fashionable slim skirts, leaving the others no choice but to follow in their wake.

They could all manage one bloody catch-up lunch without killing each other, surely. Draco looked at Potter. Potter looked at Draco. Weasley implored Potter with his eyes to say no, and was roundly ignored.

Ginny herded the children determinedly in the direction of Sevanna and Hermione, and with one last glance at each other, the men followed.

Draco couldn't help it.

He really couldn't.

Unable to resist, because he'd never been able to resist his personal imp of the perverse and never would, Draco sent a little shower of white rosepetals fluttering down over Potter's head as they went.

"A wizard's staff has a knob on the end," he sang softly and beatifically, not quite audible by the children. Potter barked a surprised laugh.

"Through thick and thin, it's his firmest friend," Potter sang back, grinning.

"He polishes it tenderly, and imagines it a mighty tree," they chorused, sounding, Draco thought, rather good. Weasley looked at Draco like a suspicious canine.

It was rather less noisy and boisterous than their original rendition of the Wizard's Staff Song, and it got them marginally fewer stares, but it was no less fun for that. Weasley's suspicious look at Draco shifted to Potter, and by the third verse, he was looking resigned to the notion that Draco was apparently marginally acceptable company, and not to be hexed on sight or anything.

By the fourth verse, he'd even joined in. Ginny and Hermione rolled their eyes at each other in pure exasperation, glancing down at the children to see how much of this they were picking up.

Lily was blinking in innocent confusion, but Hugo was snickering, having apparently gotten at least some of it.

"Men," Hermione growled softly at the world. Sevanna let out a distinctly unladylike snort, which wrested a smile from Hermione.

Sevanna glanced back at Draco, her dark eyes infinitely knowing, and hot enough to make Draco's toes curl in his fashionable Milanese boots. One of her brows lifted, along with one corner of her mouth.

Draco smiled at her as they launched into another rousing chorus and caught up with her to lace his fingers through hers, angel innocent.

No one was fooled.

THE END