A/N: Hi there. This story is currently undergoing an editing re-haul. This mostly includes me hating everything about it and sprucing up the grammar. I'm too lazy to actually rewrite it, so whatever. Anyway, thanks for stopping in. Read the Mischief Managed series instead.
Prologue Part I: Wake Up
"It took so long to say, you walked away from me when I need you. Wake up, I'm pounding on the door; I'm not the man I was before. Where the hell are you, when I need you? Wake up, I'm pounding on the door; I won't hurt you anymore. Where the hell are you, when I need you?" (Wake Up, Three Days Grace)
August 22, 2005
"I've always like the name 'Hyperion'," Astoria said, running her hand over her bulging stomach.
"Okay... So that's mythology, not a constellation," Draco said, adding his hand to his wife's.
"So what's your suggestion, oh great astronomer?" she asked sarcastically.
"Scorpius," Draco replied instantly.
"Scorpion, son of the Dragon!" Astoria proclaimed dramatically.
"You're lucky we moved out of the manor. Father hates loud noise in his 'old age'," Draco said.
"You would have stepped in if he'd tried to hurt me, right?" she asked, turning to face her husband of fourteen months.
"It's a good thing we moved out," Draco repeated.
"You are circumventing the issue!" Astoria shouted, standing up. Draco swore he could hear the paintings rattle in the next room. "If you are anything, ANYTHING, like your father for this baby..." her voice broke as she glare Draco down.
"I am not my father!" he shouted back, and before he could stop himself, he'd pulled out his wand and cast the first spell he could think of. She was blasted back off her feet.
"GET OUT!" she shouted, but he was already gone.
He landed in the leaky cauldron. He hadn't realized he was both shaking and crying until that moment. He flung himself onto a bar stool and shouted, "Barkeep! Fire whiskey, please."
"Draco Malfoy," said a voice he vaguely recognized. He looked up.
"Hannah Abbott?" he asked, surprised. The last he'd heard, she was a kept woman, her husband working for Kingsley himself.
"Longbottom, actually," she said. "Nev got himself a job that he loves more but paid less, so when I found out old Tom was retiring, I applied."
"Wow," Draco muttered. "What else have I missed the last three years…" It was a rhetorical statement, as many with Draco are, but Hannah Longbottom answered none the less.
"Harry and Ginny got married and had a son in March. Ron and Hermione got married too, but no kids to speak of. I'm due tomorrow," she said, stepping back. She was only slightly bigger than Astoria, who was due around the first week of September. If all went as planned, their son would apparently be in the year behind Hannah and Neville's kid.
"What are you doing here, Draco?" she asked patiently. He was shocked to find out easily animosity disappeared after eight years.
He wheezed out a drunken laugh and swallowed his fifth shot, placing the tumbler against his suddenly warm face.
"I hit my pregnant wife," he said in the same drunken tone. Then he started crying. Hannah, not one to see anyone cry patted his shoulder.
"Come on," she said softly, walking around the bar and taking his arm. He hadn't noticed the fact the pub was empty.
"Neville!" Hannah called. He walked out from behind the stairs.
"What's he doing here?" Neville asked waspishly when he realised who his wife was supporting towards the door.
"Crying," Hannah said, gesturing for Neville to take his other arm. Neville looked repulsed by the idea.
"It's Draco Malfoy!" he exclaimed in a hushed whisper to his wife. She rolled her eyes at him.
"This is why I'm the Hufflepuff, kind and hardworking and you're the pigheaded but brave Gryffindor. I could apparate him back home," she said.
Neville flinched. The two things Dr. Chang had said to never do under any circumstances when pregnant were drink and apparate.
"Fine," he snapped. "Where do you live?" he asked Draco. Draco hiccoughed his address and Neville apparated him to the front door of his apartment. Before Draco could say anything, Neville was gone. He knocked loudly on the door.
"Astoria," he whispered. "Astoria! Wake up…" no one else was on their floor, luckily. "Wake up! I'm sorry! I'll never do anything to hurt you again! We can call him Hyperion!" He paused. He had heard her walk to the door. "I love you," he said quietly. He heard the bolt draw back and the door clicked open. All he saw was her eyes since she kept the chain across the door.
"Do you mean it?" she whispered.
"I won't hurt you anymore," he whispered. "I'm not the man I was. Ever. I love you," he said. "Please let me in?" She closed the door and he heard the chain unlock. He opened the door and kissed her.
"I have conditions for letting you back in," she said. He nodded.
"Anything." She smirked evilly, her Slytherin side coming out.
"Alright. We will be muggles until he gets his letter. We will tell him everything your family did. Explain why we raised him as a Muggle. When he's five, we put him in a muggle kindergarten," she said. Draco nodded. "We lock our wands up and we move to a muggle neighborhood. I've already though of what we'll do for work," she said, grinning slightly. "But if you ever hurt me again, you're gone."
"Okay," he said. "What are we going to do for work?" Draco asked, not letting her out of his arms.
"We can run an occult bookstore," she laughed.
"What's a cult bookstore?" he asked his half-blood wife.
"It's occult not 'a cult'. They're books about magic for muggles. The types that believe in zombies, and ghosts and magic," she explained, laughing. "There's a type of religion called Wicca that tends to have people who shop at such places." She was still laughing. The irony was not lost on Draco, although he was slightly confused.
"What's a zombie?" he asked. She laughed more.
"An animated dead body being used by a voodoo practitioner to do their bidding," she explained.
"So, an inferius?" he asked. "And what's voodoo?" The evening went on in this fashion until they were falling asleep.
"We'll call him Scorpius," Astoria said sleepily. "Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy."