Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction and am not making any profit through the writing of this.

A/N: Written for day 9 prompt for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry: (genre) family

This is AU.

"Family?" Draco whispers, not quite believing his soon to be mother-in-law.

The word sounds foreign coming from his lips, and he nearly chokes on it. His heart is pounding so loud that he feels like it's going to explode in his chest.

"Yes, family," Molly Weasley says, pulling him into a hug that is somehow smothering, protective and tender all at once.

Coming from her lips, the word sounds warm, comforting, like being bundled up on a rainy day in one of her infamous sweaters. She's knit him two, both lovely shades of gray to match his eyes, the past two Christmases. Ron had rolled his eyes and muttered something about how unfair it was that his friends, and lovers, always got decent sweaters from his mum, while he always got ones that clashed with his hair. Draco wonders how many sweaters Molly knit for Hermione before Ron broke it off with her, if Harry still gets a sweater every Christmas, if Viktor Krum ever got any sweaters before he ended things with Ron (in a rather public fashion that still makes Draco's blood boil whenever he thinks about it, no matter that Ron seems to just brush it off as though he wasn't raked over the coals).

"See, there," Molly says, turning Draco around so that he's facing the peculiar family clock. She points at the clock, chin on his shoulder. "Your name's already found its way onto the family clock. If that's not enough proof for you that you're a Weasley, then I don't know what is."

Draco blushes at the kiss she plants on his cheek, and struggles to understand how effortlessly family seems to come to the Weasleys. How easily they've come to accept him - a former Death Eater - as one of their own, though he and Ron's wedding isn't until the following day.

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Mrs. Weasley," Draco says. "Why did you add my name to the clock? Isn't it a little premature?" Ron could still send him packing.

Over the past two years of dating Ron, Draco's come to understand that voicing his insecurities will not result in punitive lectures or looks of disappointment from this family. He won't be Crucio'd by any of the Weasleys for showing weakness. It's okay to ask questions.

Molly purses her lips and shakes her head. "What did I ask you to call me, young man?" There's steel in her voice, but no rancor.

"Mum." Draco can't look her in the eye.

She cups his chin, raising his eyes to hers, and gives him a look that's a cross between exasperation and fondness. Smiling at him (her smiles are a lot like Ron's, and far more motherly than his own mother's are) she nods.

"Thank you, dear," she says before releasing his chin and drawing him into another fierce hug that both squeezes the breath from his lungs and makes him feel like he's one of her sons. He's learned not to tense up, but to relax and enjoy the hug. There have been many such hugs from the Weasley matron, and Molly's assured him that there will be many more, that he looks like he needs them, like he's been starved of hugs - he has, though he doesn't admit to it.

"As for the family clock, that wasn't my doing, it was the clock's," she says. "Noticed it when I came down to put breakfast on the table."

"The clock?" Draco's not sure how to feel about it, or about the way the clock has chosen to represent him - Draco Lucius Malfoy-Weasley. He's not entirely certain that he wants to keep his father's name. It's as he's thinking this that the lettering on the clock shimmers, the letters twisting until they reconfigure themselves into a name that makes him smile, Draco Lucius Weasley.

"I'm honored," Molly says, voice thick with emotion.

This time Draco beats Molly to the hug. Wrapping his arms around her, he squeezes her as hard as he can, ignoring the tears of happiness that roll down her cheeks, and the ones that roll down his own. He'd thought that the Dark Lord's downfall and Ron's awkward proposal to him (he'd fallen flat on his face in the mud), had been the happiest moments of his life, but this one - being held in the arms of a loving mother who love and accepts him, in spite of his faults and his past sins - tops them all.