Cuckoo Boy

In a beige room accented with emerald greens and the occasional touch of baby blue, Draco Malfoy sat in the rocking chair that once belonged to his wife's mother. In the soft light filtering through the room's picture window Draco stared at his infant son's face. He was handsome, the Malfoy scion decided. His cheeks were a perfect newborn ruddy pink; his chin a lovely point at the bottom of a round face and his head was topped with a thatch of feather-white blond. All in all, he was a fine Malfoy specimen.

At two weeks old, he rarely cried. When hungry, he mewled, when tired, he whined, when wet, he squirmed. His mother had told him all babies were different, but Draco didn't like it. Something about Scorpius just felt… wrong. His friend's babies had fussed at the holds of strangers even in their earliest days. They were always seeking out the comfort and safety of those who made them, but his son just lay in strangers' arms with the same tense body he kept in his arms and Astoria's.

Petting the little cheek, he murmured to the infant, "Get better Scorpius."

"Get better?" his wife called from the doorway. Looking up, he saw her smiling at him with her hair flowing around her shoulders. "Is he gassy from his bottle? My mother mentioned that Daphne sometimes got that way."

Handing his son off to the eager hands of his sleepy-eyed wife, Draco didn't have the heart or bravery to admit his true fears. "Yes," he agreed instead, watching all the while, as Scorpius lay straight in his mother's arms. Not once did he shift as she bounced him and sang a child's nursery tune.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells,

And pretty maids all in a row…

At six months old, Scorpius was almost ordinary. He sat up, rolled over and occasionally slithered around while on his tummy; he babbled some too. Astoria wanted his first word to be "Mama" and Draco kind of hoped it would be "Dada" or a variant like "Da". What wasn't normal, however, was how Scorpius worked himself into fits of frustration.

They took him to a healer for it once. The healer waved their concerns away though with the simple line of, "He's only six months old, babies are prone to dramatic behavior. " Followed by asking, "Do you react when he does? Little ones sometimes do things to get a certain reaction."

After that, Draco hadn't really asked anyone else on what his or her thoughts were about his son's odd behavior. One day, home from work for the afternoon, Draco was saddled with watching Scorpius. Taking his son to the drawing room, he put the infant on the floor with a stack of cups and tuned out to read a book instead of playing with Scorpius. A few minutes later, the infant screeched.

Looking up, he saw his son throw one of the cups halfway across the room and with a sudden spurt of magic, one that Scorpius was still shaking around began to melt.

Jumping up from the couch, Draco ripped the toy from his son's grip and gasped at how hot it was. The whole situation seemed inconceivable to Draco. He could hardly believe a baby - not even a year old - preformed such an act.

He and Astoria had shared stories they knew about their early accidental magic during her pregnancy. They only had a story each between them where they had preformed a magical feat at such a young age. Draco's was the story of how he made his blankey float all the way to him from the opposite end of the manor when he was just a bit older than Scorpius was now and Astoria had a funny little tale about how she made her sister's share of cake disappear from her plate and appear on hers at about a year and a half old.

This, though, felt oddly violent and as Draco swung his still bawling son up in his arms, he had a look at Scorpius's little hands and let out a scared squeak at the blisters he saw.

Just how frustrated had a couple of colorful stacking cups made his son?

"It's alright my little scorpion," he tried to sooth as he bound off for the bathroom where they kept a small tin of burn salve. "We'll get you all fixed up before you know it."

None of this mattered to the infant, of course. Instead he simply threw himself in a painful looking arch as he let loose a particularly heart-stirring scream.

It was as they visited Daphne one late autumn day that Scorpius stirred another reason to fear in Draco. His son was almost two, he ran with the agility of a clomping rhino and talked at a volume Draco was going to have to correct soon if he didn't want everyone to think the Malfoy heir was raising his son to be some sort of commoner. Playing in his aunt's garden, as the adults talk comfortably off to the side, no one was really minding too much what Scorpius tore from bushes or what he uprooted from the soil.

As long as he was occupied and relatively happy, it was nothing that couldn't be fixed later. As his son took a turn behind a particularly tall bush, he gave his signature hyena cackle (which sometimes brought back echoes of a woman's breathless, frightening laughter) and no one really expected much. He'd come back around in a moment - just as he had twenty times before. Suddenly, this belief was shaken when his son gave a sudden, rage-filled yowl and the bush lost all its leaves.

Standing up immediately, the trio of adults went around the plant to find Scorpius on the ground convulsing with anger and a bloody little hand rose up for all to see.

Lunging for him, Astoria screamed, "Oh Merlin!" And then she tried to pick him up.

The toddler kicked out with a bit too much power and Draco's wife stumbled back, a hand on the tender spot just beneath her breasts. Leaning down, Draco kept his arms up and his body tense as Daphne took care of her sister. Gritting his teeth, the Malfoy heir demanded, "Tell me what happened!"

Somewhere in his pure fury, Draco's son managed to choke, "B-B-Bad, baaaad buuuuussh! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt!"

Vanishing the bush with a flick of his wand, he screamed over Scorpius, "It's gone now! See? Daddy vanished it!"

His son stopped his tantrum. He was absolutely still then, his slate-eyes inspecting the spot where the bush had once been. With a sudden grin, Scorpius sat up and laughed joyfully. "Bush gone! Bad bush gone!"

"That it is," Draco murmured after a disbelieving blink. Had a bush really worked his son into such frenzy? Why didn't he come running to he or his mother as a normal toddler would to cry about his boo-boo? What was so different about his son that he simply threw himself down and let his magic take out the threat he perceived?

The Malfoy heir just didn't know and it scared him. Picking his son up, he asked Scorpius, "Do you want Mummy to fix your boo-boo?"

Scorpius frowned. Draco pointed at his still bleeding hand. As if suddenly reminded why he'd thrown the tantrum to begin with, he bobbed his head up and down. "Fix! Fix! Fix!" He chanted as he thrust the injury out at a teary-eyed Astoria.

Taking out her wand, she cast a silent healing charm and their toddler's hand was as good as new. Smiling, Scorpius proclaimed, "Good now! Bye-bye!" And then he squirmed away from Draco to explore the garden once again.

Daphne, still holding her sister asked, "Is he...always so intense?"

"Yes," Astoria sniffled. "It's sort of frightening sometimes. But, other times, it can be so sweet. He'll see you're hurting or upset and do everything in his little boy power to make you all better."

And Draco, the ever-darker half to his wife grumbled, "And when he get's angry, he get's angry. You just never know what will set him off or how badly. Getting a bump from tumbling off the ottoman? No more legs for that dastardly villain. I think the blood is what caused him to completely kill it..." Then, with a sympathetic look to his sister-in-law, he offered, "We can buy you a new bush."

She waved it off. "I needed to take a few out, anyway."

He had a feeling Daphne just didn't want them to feel any more guilt.

His mother and Draco sat at a small, round table in his kitchen as the two chat over tea. They didn't talk about anything of true importance, a funny article in the Daily Prophet, about how the Apothecary was, how Father was, Astoria, Scorpius.

"–He's alright," Draco told his mother and just as he said it, his little son came waltzing into the room with his feet muddy and a toad in hand.

Stiffening, the Malfoy heir asked his son, "What have your mother and I told you about bringing those into the house?"

Smiling, slate-eyes were far away as he hugged the ugly creature to his chest. "But, Daddy what if it's a prince?"

"We've told you, Scorpius," Draco grumbled. "Those are just stories."

His son narrowed his eyes at him and then, with a serious little frown, took the toad away from his chest and raised it into his line of sight. "Scorpius will decide if it's a prince or not!" he declared and before the man could stop him, Scorpius laid a sloppy smooch on the slimy creature.

"Scorpius!" he cried in exasperation.

The little child grinned and with his familiar, hyena-cackle ran away from them; the toad tucked away in his pocket. Draco's mother stirred a bit of honey in her tea and remarked, "Bellatrix did similar things."

"What?"

She shifted her gaze away. "She'd do things to get a rise from our parents, she believed in, and would tell us silly little stories. When she wasn't furiously mad at Andromeda and I for touching her things or doing something annoying, that is."

"Mum," the Malfoy heir warbled, "Do I - should I worry?"

Familiar wrinkles coming around her eyes, his mother brought her tea close and shook her head. "I can't say, Draco, I just can't say."

"His laugh scares me most," he admitted.

Draco's mother took his hand and ran her thumb soothingly over his knuckles. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Maybe the next one-"

"Who says there will be another?" the Malfoy heir hissed, pulling away and crossing his arms. "I don't want another if it will be like-like-him." And Draco hated himself. How could he speak so horribly of the son he made and loved? How could he hate Scorpius and say he loved him in the same breath?

Listless, his mother turned back to her tea. "I'm sorry Toujours pur has brought you trouble it never brought me. If I had known it skipped as it did..."

"What, Mum? What could you have said? Done? We wanted a baby and Scorpius is as much a light to us as he is a stain."

Meeting her son's gray eyes, Narcissa Malfoy once Black declared, "You may love him, but never ever trust him."

"I won't."

Draco felt unnatural, a father was supposed to trust his son.

"Daddy?" Scorpius whispered as he pressed frigid little fingers to his forehead.

Blinking through the haze, he saw his son's slate-eyes were wide and watching. "Yes, my scorpion?"

"Are you dying?" he asked in that curious, detached way of his.

Draco felt a chuckle catch in his chest. "No, Daddy just ate a bit of bad food."

Fingers falling away, Scorpius smiled and kissed his cheek. "Scorpius will take care of you, okay?"

"Okay," the man agreed. He was sure Astoria wasn't far; she'd make sure to keep an eye on Scorpius.

Almost lovingly, the little child ran his fingers through his father's hair. "Scorpius loves you, Daddy."

"I love you too."

If only Draco's son could always be such a sweet child.

When Scorpius was eight and all skinny limbs and flyaway blond hair, Draco and Astoria told him he was going to be a big brother. He'd gone from being primly poised on the parlor couch to up on his feet ripping and tearing apart things in ten seconds flat.

"Scorpius!" Draco had yelled at his son, wrenching him away from the bookcase as he tore through the pages of a particularly thick volume. "Scorpius what do you think you're doing?" he screamed, giving the boy a good shake.

Face red and eyes teary, his son shouted, "Making you hurt like Scorpius is!" Throwing himself away from his father's much too hard grip, the child howled, "You don't like Scorpius and you want to replace him, because he's-he's wrong. Scorpius isn't stupid, you know! Scorpius sees how you look at him when he gets mad!"

And Draco suddenly realized just how much his terribly broken, gifted child understood. Scorpius knew there was something loose in him, he knew it from the way he and his wife shared complicated looks after his fits and eyed Scorpius critically when he was quiet and asked him questions.

His son knew.

Leaning forward, he took Scorpius in his arms and hugged him tightly. "I'm so sorry," he whispered into his sobbing son's hair. "We love you and that's not going to change with the baby."

Astoria having come forward to hug her son as well, kissed his forehead. "Just because you're getting a little brother or sister doesn't mean we're replacing you either, you know. Mummy is the little sister in her family. My parents loved my sister and I equally."

"You don't think the next baby will be better than Scorpius?" their son inquired with wet, slate-eyes.

Draco shook his head. "No," he answered. "You two will be different. Neither better or worse."

"Okay, if Mummy and Daddy are sure they won't love the baby more..." Scorpius sniffled as he pulled away.

Relieved that his son appeared to be reassured, Draco smiled at him. "Your mother and I are certain we won't love the baby anymore than we love you."

And that seemed to be that. Scorpius didn't hate them, or the coming baby...or, at least it seemed that way for a short while.

-v-v-v-

Stirring in the middle of the night for a reason Draco can't quite decipher, the man reached out, taking his wife under his arm. The nights were getting quite cold and the closer Astoria was, the better. While shift to bring his wife close, the Malfoy heir spied something in the shadows. Sitting up completely with his wand in his grip, Draco saw that it was his son. Scorpius was just a foot from the bed with Astoria's wand in his small hand.

It was pointed at-

Draco, without thinking, cast a jelly-leg jinx on his son, causing him to tumble to the ground. Jumping over his wife then, he wrestled the wand from Scorpius and pinned him down to the carpet as his wife put on the lights. Staring into narrowed, slate-eyes, Draco for the first time in his life wanted to truly, absolutely murder someone.

His own son no less.

"What the bloody Hell were you going to do!" he demanded.

Scorpius thinned his lips.

The meeting of flesh filled the otherwise quiet room.

Turning his cheek, Draco's son muttered, "Scorpius was going to kill the baby."

"Why?" the Malfoy heir whispered, releasing his son and slumping back on his bottom.

Sitting up and touching his red face, the child hissed, "Scorpius doesn't want a sibling!"

"You-" Astoria warbled from the bed. Looking to her son and then to her belly, she whimpered, "You said you were okay with it..."

Scowling and totally unrepentant, Scorpius snarled, "Scorpius lied!"

Draco's wife began to cry and he knew he couldn't turn to comfort her with his son still in the room. Jerking his head toward the door, he commanded, "Get out of here."

The child scrambled up and out of the room. Draco cast every locking charm on the door that he knew.

Shortly after Scorpius tried to kill his new sibling, Astoria went to stay with her sister until the baby was born. It was a boy and she named him Harlan, for her father. When she brought him home to Draco and Scorpius, he'd feared his son's reaction, but instead of getting angry or trying to hurt his new brother, his son took to avoiding him at all costs.

It temporarily relieved Astoria and Draco of worry, but they still refused to ever leave their youngest son alone in any room with Scorpius.

By the time Harlan, or Harly as they affectionately called the baby, was a year old Scorpius had stopped avoiding his brother and instead had moved on to glaring at him and calling him a "dumb baby".

Draco didn't care at this point what Scorpius called his brother, as long as he kept his hands off Harly.

-v-v-v-

It was quite late in the evening and Daphne had gone to visit her sister for the weekend, leaving Draco alone with the boys. Scorpius, in the middle of a bout of calm, was quietly reading a book about house elves on one side of his armchair and on the other, Harlan was chewing away on a teething ring whilst playing with a jack-in-the-box.

Sitting there, the pressure on his bladder grew and grew. Knowing he couldn't ignore it much longer, Draco debated interrupting Harly so he could use the loo. Eventually, he decided it would just be quicker to dash off to the toilet and leave the boys here. Alone. It didn't quite sit right with the Malfoy heir, but with a clearing of his throat he announced his plan.

"I'm going to use the loo," and then, with a stern look at Scorpius, he warned, "I'll be just a minute."

Rolling his eyes, Scorpius remarked, "Like I needed to know that, Dad."

A noticeable benefit to having Harly come into their lives was that his oldest son no longer referred to himself in third-person. Maybe he had realized now that the world was not centered on Scorpius, after all, it was quite hard to believe such with another little life demanding attention just as he did in the house.

With one last look at his two sons, Draco reminded them both, "I'll be just down the hall."

Barely a minute into pissing, he heard a scream. Cursing God and everything else, Draco did up his pants and ran to the parlor. There, he found Harlan bawling with a little hand on his cheek and Scorpius looking teary-eyed beside him.

"He was - I just - I didn't-" his older son babbled as the Malfoy heir pushed him aside to pick up his baby.

Checking him over, all Draco found was a mark on his son's cheek that would soon be a nasty bruise. Anger flaring to life in his chest, Draco turned on his son. "Who the bloody Hell do you think your are? I leave you alone for a minute and you do this! Merlin, Scorpius! How can you hate your own brother so much?"

Outright sobbing, Scorpius shook his head and leaned forward as if he wanted a hug. He refused his son and growled, "Tell me. Now."

"He was b-being loud and I just wanted him to quiet! I didn't think I-I hit him that haaard!"

Grabbing his son's chin, Draco made slate-eyes meet his. "If you ever try and touch your brother again, you'll be sent away, do you understand me?"

"Don't!" Scorpius screamed, grabbing onto his father's wrist. "Don't send me away..."

At a loss, the Malfoy heir could only shake his head. "Harlan is your brother, you have to care for him. He needs you to love him, just like you both need us to love you."

Sniffling and trying his hardest to get closer, Scorpius whimpered. "Daddy, I'll take good care of him. Just don't send me away."

"I won't, if you don't make me," he promised as he hugged both his sons close and kissed their heads.

After that, Scorpius was an exemplary brother. Smiling and encouraging Harly at every turn - Draco and Astoria still never trusted him to be alone with his younger brother.

It was a gloomy day. All rain and cold weather and somewhere upstairs, Harly is clomping around with his mother. Draco was downstairs working on a letter to his mother and father in the study and it was then that an awful smell found him. Getting up, he followed it all the way to the kitchen.

There, he saw Scorpius standing beside the oven. His face was slack and Scorpius's lean fingers were twitching at his side. Inspecting closer, he saw there was a bit of a puddle by the boy's feet and that his son has a few scratches on his face.

"What's that smell, Scorpius?" Draco demanded as he came into the room.

The boy's slate eyes calm, he said, "The cat, I figure."

Draco felt himself sputter as he tried to find the right words to properly ask his next question. "The cat? Where's Marm, Scorpius!"

"In the oven," his son answered.

The Malfoy heir ran to the oven and threw it open, only to see the frightful sight of the family's dead cat. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no." Backing away, he didn't even have the sense to vanish it.

Peeking in, Scorpius became visibly upset. "What's wrong with Marmalade? Dad he's not moving!"

"He's dead!" Draco wheezed from where he'd curled himself into a loose ball in a kitchen chair. "You killed our cat, Scorpius!"

His son began to weep. "He was wet! I just wanted to dry him off quick!" he cried. He stared at the boy. He couldn't be telling the truth, could he? Surely he was too old… but he seemed so sincere. "Daddy, Daddy," Scorpius chanted. "I didn't mean to!" he wailed as Draco came close.

It took all of the Draco's will power not to recoil from his own son. Instead, he opened his arms and took the boy in to harbor him. "It's okay," he soothed. "It's okay…"

And he really tried to believe it; Scorpius couldn't possibly have meant to kill their cat. Even so, Draco couldn't stop the doubt blooming in his chest, as his cat's remains stayed in his field of sight.

(If he could have seen his son's face, he would have shoved Scorpius away in a second).

Fighting their way through the Hogsmeade back-to-Hogwarts crowds, Draco kept a firm hand on Harly as Scorpius darted back and forth between them and things that caught his eye. At one point, his son, a blinding grin on his face returned to their side yelling, "Dad! Mum! Can we get my wand now? I see the shop right there!"

This should be a happy event, Draco knew, but all he felt was dread. The day he had to send his son into the world was coming ever closer and he was no nearer to knowing what was wrong with his son – let alone to fixing it. Astoria, from beside Draco, smiled and took his hand.

"I guess we can, don't you agree, my dragon?" she asked.

Draco nodded. "We might as well, if it's so close." Putting a hand to the side of his mouth, he shouted, "Okay! We'll go there now!"

His son gave a delighted whoop and rushed to the store. Hurrying after, he looked to little Harly next to him. "Are you paying attention, lad? In a couple of years you'll get to do all the same things as your brother is now."

Harly, who took after Astoria more in feature, declared with appropriate child-seriousness, "I hate shopping."

"Then you can have your brother's old books and robes. If he doesn't ruin them, that is," Draco's wife said.

Clearing his throat, he started, "Malfoy's don't–"

"Oh, can it, Draco," Astoria clucked. "He's part Greengrass too and we aren't nearly as showy."

Draco chuckled and said, "We should probably hurry. Scorpius is glaring at us."

"Probably," she agreed with a smile.

And the mother, father and younger son went to join their Hogwarts bound child.

-v-v-v-

Scorpius went through a sizable amount of wands at first, each failure making him more frustrated and leading to even worse reactions from the wands he tried. It almost looked like his son would destroy the shop before he would even get a wand, but then Ollivander handed him one more.

"Try this young man, it's a twelve and three fourth inch walnut wand with a dragon heartstring for a core."

Appraising the bent thing with a dubious eye, his son took it and waved it in a snappish motion. Immediately, a row of wands he'd knocked down previously corrected themselves.

Draco, Astoria, and Harly clapped. "Wonderful!" Draco's wife grinned. "You have a wand, my scorpion!"

His son smiled back at them. "I like it," he told them.

"You should," Draco declared. "It's yours."

Ollivander took back the wand then and put it in its' case. He then looked to Draco and Astoria with a wary sort of expression before putting on a thin smile as he told their son, "You know, I sold a wand just like that to your Great Aunt Bellatrix."

The name made Draco's heart stop. Bellatrix. A wand just like the one in his son's hand had rested in his aunt's. Feeling a cold sweat start up, he wondered if Scorpius was just as broken as she. Was there no hope for his firstborn? Was he already too far gone for saving? They should have drowned him like a cat years–

No, despite his son's faults, Draco loved him. To think of killing him now was blasphemy.

"Oh?" Scorpius hummed as he accepted the wand. "That's nice, thank you, sir!" And with it now in his grasp, he hugged his wand's case close to his cheek. After a moment, Scorpius turned to his parents and asked, "May we get my books next?"

Astoria was the one to answer, as Draco's tongue still felt too thick to talk. "Of course, my love," she whispered and quickly paying the wand-maker, they rush out of the shop.

Walking the streets, Scorpius's curious slate-eyes looked to them. "Who's Bellatrix? I don't think I've heard of her," he said.

"She was a Death Eater, one of the most loyal, actually," Draco told his son.

Perking up, Scorpius seemed to consider what he said. "Loyal, huh? That sounds like a good thing to be. People like a person who's going to stand by them, don't they?"

"They do," Astoria replied. "But your aunt did a lot of bad things too."

Scorpius bobbed his head agreeably to what his mother had said. "Oh, I know she must have," he said. "But if I'm going to have her wand, I should try and redeem it, don't you think? What better way than using her best quality to do it?"

The Malfoy heir didn't like his son's logic, but at least he was not plotting for world domination. So, leaning over, he ruffled his son's hair and whispered, "Do your best, lad."

His son grinned like he'd given him the world.

(Draco's frightened for their and everyone else's future).

After hugging, and waving his sons goodbye, Harry Potter left his wife, daughter, and godson to approach Draco and his wife.

Wearing the smile of an accomplished father, he asked, "How do you feel? Are you proud?"

"I've never felt more so," Draco lied.

Whew! This took me quite a long while to write! You'll have to let me know what you think. This a two part fic and the next is about Scorpius's time in Hogwarts and maybe a little bit after. I'm hoping to have the next part up sometime by October? Who knows, we'll have to see how College goes.

Next I want to give a big thank you to The Dark One Rising, KodeV and That One Eccedentesiast who helped me in deciding what direction I wanted to take with this fic!

Thank you for reading and pretty please review!

EDITED: 6/9/15