Dad to Rights

"You can't be here!" Draco shouted at his father.

Lucius didn't even look up from his dragon steak. "Oh, Draco, do shut up, won't you? Daddy has business to attend to, and anyway, he needs a place to sleep it off and hide from His Dark Lordliness."

"You're going to get me sent to bloody Azkaban," Draco continued, because it really seemed best, at this point, to pretend his father hadn't spoken. "Or murdered by your Dark Lord, and I only just avoided it, too." That footage of him crying was still in Weasley Seven's locker at St Mungo's. She liked to show it to the crying children who were brought in by way of cheering them up. He'd given up stealing it after the fifth try, when he'd realized he probably ought to just accept that she had an unlimited supply of them, and if she didn't, she'd probably be able to find someone willing to provide a copy.

"Not if I make you my Secret-Keeper," his father pointed out. Draco didn't have a chance to speak before Lucius had waved a hand and muttered a few things about loyalty and oaths and, presumably, a lot of similar rubbish. There was a bit of green light, and an odd squelchy feeling, and that was that. "Now," he said -- it didn't need saying, but Father did love to feel important -- "the only way they're going to find out where I am is if you tell them."

Well, that was just wonderful, wasn't it?

"You haven't got enough of wine around," his father complained, having swept across the room to look through the cabinets while Draco was busy glowering at him.

"You ate my fucking steak!" Draco answered.

"Yes, and there was no wine to go with it. I don't know how you live like this, Draco. It's appalling. You're a Malfoy."

"How much do you think this suite costs, Father?" Draco asked. He wasn't sure why he was letting himself get pulled into this, but there it was. "Really, have you any idea what a view of that park is worth? Anyway, it's only until I can find myself a flat. So don't get too comfortable, all right? In fact, why don't you run out and get me another steak while you're at it?"

"Don't be stupid, Draco," Lucius answered, having apparently decided that the gin would do well enough and mixing it with a bit of screeching-apple tear-juice. "The only places that sell dragon steak will know who I am in an instant, and you can't seriously expect me to go to one of those Muggle shops. I thought I'd raised you better."

"Oh, you were doing quite well," Draco said, sitting down to finish the steak, "until you were sent to Azkaban. I hope you realize I'm not going to be sitting around all day to entertain you, anyway, or run errands for you, or anything like that; I've got a job now."

He didn't.

"Pays well -- "

It didn't pay at all.

"Very rewarding -- "

He hated it. Showing up his father, however, seemed more important at the moment.

Lucius paused in his drink-mixing to stare at him. "Draco, what has happened to you? And living in a suite in a Muggle hotel, too -- my God, you're not a stockbroker, are you?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Father, if I were a stockbroker, I'd be living nearer the City."

His father didn't look reassured; he did, however, look slightly confused in addition to horrified.

"That way," Draco said, pointing in a random direction. He thought the City was that way, anyway; he always Apparated, or, when he was particularly drunk, took the Tube (which wasn't so horrific if you didn't mind being treated like a pig, but his father had always made it out to be populated by dragons or something equally horrific) so it could've been on Mars for all he knew. Outside of one's own block or so, London as a city was really more of an abstract idea than a physical presence. "Anyway, I'm not working at a Muggle business. Couldn't do, could I, what with being woefully unprepared for Muggle life, as having a Death Eater for a father tends to leave one."

"It's your own fault you have to deal with it anyway," Lucius said, now judging glass after glass and finding each somehow unsuitable. Much as he'd done to Draco all the latter's life.

"Oh, just pick a glass, father, they're all the same!" Draco shouted, then continued, "I'm working at St Mungo's. Mother thought -- "

"Oh, of course, Narcissa," Lucius said, smiling fondly at the mention of Draco's mother. "Anyway, I should've known you'd be doing whatever she told you to."

"Mother thought -- " continuing as though Father hadn't spoken seemed the best approach -- "that it would help improve the family image. After the patriarch escaped from Azkaban, where he'd been sent because he worked for You-Know-Who." Everything he had just said was true. It was a new record.

In fact, when his mother had first made the suggestion, Draco had thought she was concerned after their financial situation. He had proposed putting a few things of Lucius's up for auction on WitchBay, a magical appropriation of some Muggle business. Seamus Finnegan had made a fortune off of it. Draco was currently wishing he had sold Lucius's things anyway, not because they needed the money, but simply because he would've liked to spite his father.

Previously

"Oh, you wouldn't be paid, darling," Narcissa said, when she'd explained the job to Draco.

"Sorry?"

"So am I," she said, "and that's exactly the message we want to send."

"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Draco, not this You-Know-Who nonsense," Lucius corrected. "Your mother's a brilliant woman."

"She does all right, after you abandoned us."

"You're a Healer, then?" Lucius asked. "I suppose that's respectable enough, if you're going to work."

Draco wasn't a Healer. However, he also wasn't going to give his father the satisfaction of finding out what that he was only a volunteer Welcome Wizard. He tried to find another avenue of complaint. "What am I supposed to do if I want to bring a girl here, anyway?"

Lucius burst out laughing then, harder than Draco had ever seen him do, save perhaps for that one time at the beginning of second year, when they'd gone to Diagon Alley for books and something at the shop seemed to have amused him. "A girl? Oh, Draco, you still think you can convince me with that one, do you? Goodness, there are times when I'm glad your mother decided not to use the Desisto potion."

"What?" Desisto being a well-known potion designed for the purposes of terminating unwanted pregnancies, Draco was understandably distressed by this.

Taking advantage of Draco's confusion to accio the steak to himself -- it was a nice piece of spellwork; he managed the plate and all, not so much as stabbing himself, as Draco wished that he would do -- "As I hope your taste would be better than to bring Muggles back here, you're just going to have to make some sacrifices for the time being. I can't very well call on the rest of the fellows to get rid of any whores, as they're as much after me as the Ministry."

"You murdered whores?" Draco asked. "That's what the Death Eaters get up to? Murdering prostitutes?"

"Well, I didn't," Lucius said primly. "I'd never betray your mother that way." He took another sip of his drink, and finished off the steak.

The next morning, Draco was edgy. On the bright side, he suspected that looking nervous and muttering to himself might keep him from being bothered by the usual idiots who couldn't read a bloody sign, and wondered why he'd never thought of this strategy before.

"Oi, Malfoy!" someone shouted as he crossed through the 'glass'. "Think fast!"

Despite this warning, Draco was nonetheless bowled over by something or other.

"Great reflexes there, mate," Weasley Number Seven said, as he pulled himself to his feet. There was a Bludger currently speeding around the waiting room, which would certainly explain it. "Really," she went on. "Every time."

"Those aren't permitted," Draco said, and aimed a jinx at the Bludger. It sank slowly into Weasley's arms as it deflated.

She threw it at him again, muttering something under her breath. This time, it exploded, and he was left coated with some kind of pink powder.

"You owe me a new Bludger," she said, smirking and pulling her Healer's robes out from her bag.

He followed her to the locker rooms, and threw his shirt after her, pulling a spare Healer's shirt off of one of the shelves.

"Well," he said, "you owe me a new shirt!"

"I say," said someone behind him. Draco spun around to find himself facing Finch-Fletchley. Justin Finch-Fletchley was newly the youngest Department Chief Healer in the hospital's history. He also still had a grudge against Draco, because some people just couldn't let the little things like what happened at school go. He was currently frowning at Draco. "Malfoy, do you two really think that's appropriate? No offense, old chap --"

He didn't mean that.

" -- but I hardly see why Miss Weasley would make it her business to take up with you anyway. That aside, though -- "

That was, in fact, the main thrust of the argument. Justin, like many of the men in the hospital, particularly those who'd gone to Hogwarts with them, carried a torch for Ginny Weasley. Her matches were generally packed with men, and she'd been forced to put several security measures on her team robes after they'd gone missing from her locker for the third time.

" -- this is the hospital's time, not yours."

"You're absolutely right, sir," Weasley said, with a look of innocence to rival Draco's own -- not that anyone believed his innocent looks anymore, which was one more thing to thank his father for -- and before Draco could possibly protest. "I'm so sorry, Mr Finch-Fletchley."

Justin hemmed and hawed a bit, and then said "Now, Miss Weasley, I've told you, to you, it's Justin, none of this Mr Finch-Fletchley, or Chief Finch-Fletchley, or Sir, or Department Chief Finch-Fletchley, or Healer Finch-Fletchley. Just -- do try to keep it outside the hospital from now on, won't you?"

It wasn't, of course, just 'Justin' for Draco. He believed that Dumbledore would've been ashamed. If, that is, Dumbledore weren't dead. Which he was.

So either way, Finch-Fletchley lost. It was a thought Draco found comforting.

"What happened to your shirt, Draco?" his father asked that evening.

"Oh," Draco said. "A girl I work with. Every day, she's after me."

"Well," Lucius said, and studied him. "Perhaps there's hope for you after all."

Draco realized that his father thought there was a girl who was pursuing him romantically. He also realized that perhaps this was a chance to earn some his father's respect.

"Make sure she's on Inexpugnabilis, though," Lucius said. "She'll be after the fortune soon enough, and you'll only make it easier for her if you've got her pregnant. Also, you've something pink in your hair."

Well, maybe there was still --

"And you're out of gin."

Right, then.