A/N: This will be a two-parter. It's a follow-up to my earlier fic The Perfume of the Roses, but can also be read on its own. For those who haven't read the first, Draco is married to Astoria and lives with his wife and son in muggle suburbia.

The Roses Grow

Suddenly Scorpius was 5½ years old. How it happened, his father never knew. One minute he was a gurgling, helpless infant and the very next a walking, talking, running, playing, mischevious little wizard. Of course, even with witches and wizards, nobody ages over five years in the space of one minute and so time must have passed without telling him anything about it. As Astoria pointed out, when he mulled over the mystery, there had been other changes over the years – for instance, Draco's hair was thinning. Although Draco refused to believe it was due to age. It was, he maintained, due to the fact Scorpius when a baby loved to pull on his hair to draw his face closer whenever he put his head in his cot. So strong was his grip that he pulled strands of his hair out by the roots, he claimed, impervious to Astoria's laughter, and sticking to his tall story. And he sighed at the pictures of his late father, who had a wonderful thick head of hair right until his dying day.

As did Mother. At least, this was the memory Draco liked to keep in his mind though it wasn't quite true. A week before Narcissa Malfoy died of Hurbyscurby, her beautiful long, gleaming locks, the last indication that the skeletal, sunken-eyed witch was the same pretty young English rose laughing and dancing in the silver-framed photographs, turned snow-white and brittle and fell out altogether. It was heartbreaking to see it gone. Heartbreaking that she was unaware of her beauty being eroded by illness, no longer aware of anything at all, even of who he was, lost forever in her world of dreams.

Fittingly enough, a single red rose was the last thing he ever gave her. Which led to the tradition.

At 10.30 in the morning of the day Narcissa Malfoy passed, an enormous bouquet of mixed flowers awaited delivery to her. At 10.33 on the very same morning, a certain Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy was practising riding a small broomstick indoors and in his efforts to avoid crashing into the ceiling instead crashed and landed in an ungainly pile on his grandmother's bouquet.

The little wizard was extremely upset, not only because he had been told several times not to ride broomsticks indoors and was now probably going to be literally grounded for a week, but because he knew the flowers' intended recipient. He picked up the rose, the solitary flower that had been fortunate enough to escape his mass destruction, with tears sparkling in his eyes.

"This one is best, Daddy," he said in a low, guilty voice, looking round in dismay at the trampled bouquet and choosing not to mention it was also the solitary survivor. "And Grandmama can have my magic hat to make her better."

His voice croaked even as he made the suggestion. Scorpius's magic hat was his most treasured toy. It was a gaudy, peculiar-looking contraption that once placed on the head could tune into the wearer's wishes and create a limited and somewhat useless magic, such as moving a quill from one end of a table to the other, but many a witch and wizard too young yet to use controlled magic yearned to own one.

Sometimes his father was breathless with awe at his son's generosity and at how easily he laughed and cried. At around the same age Draco had been taught selfishness and to hide his emotions. On his fifth birthday, his own father took him aside and gave him a stern lecture on how displeased, dismayed and disgusted he was that a pureblood child and heir to the Malfoy fortune had wept hot tears of disappointment, reluctant to hurt his parents' feelings by telling them one of his birthday gifts had not been to his satisfaction. It was, Lucius Malfoy explained, not replacing the gift that was the problem. Money was not an issue in the Malfoy household. No, the problem was Draco's reaction. He should simply have stated the present was not acceptable and demanded something bigger and better. But never, ever burst into tears and shame himself and his family.

Keen to earn his father's approval, Draco quickly learnt to mask his emotions until it became almost second nature and as the emotions were swallowed so, too, was his empathy for others. So where the tears came from that day in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom he never knew. Nor why he confided in her so much. He suspected Myrtle was muggleborn but he gave himself a thousand excuses. He didn't know for certain. She was dead so it didn't count. It was easier to let her waffle to get rid of her. There was nowhere else to go to cry in peace. Someone might suspect what he was up to if she had a hissy-fit and stormed off.

Truth was, muggleborn or not, he needed Myrtle. He needed to break down. To feel the overwhelming relief that tears brought. To know that if only for a few minutes someone was there to listen. And afterwards the guilt that he'd cried would overwhelm him, but he knew he would still cry again tomorrow. Until Saint Potter. He froze when he glimpsed the Gryffindor's reflection in the cracked, dirt-streaked mirror. Small wonder his father said never let your enemies see you weak. Because worse than being caught sobbing had been the pity in his eyes. Bloody Potter, of all people, pitying him! Bloody Potter, of all people, knowing one shove and he'd crumble. He'd whipped round fast as lightning, drawn his wand, the cruciatus curse on his lips, but Potter was faster because the tears, the terrible tears, had weakened him. Or so he thought at the time.

Years later he realised.

One night five years ago as he sat by Scorpius's cot soothing him to sleep the truth dawned. They had earlier been discussing the shocking events of the astronomy tower – or, rather, Draco had been sharing his whispered secrets with the gurgling infant and confessed how Potter beat him to the draw because crying made him slow. But suddenly he knew. He hadn't been able to curse Potter because his heart wasn't in it. He couldn't hate enough to kill Dumbledore or curse Saint Potter! Tears had been his strength not his weakness!

In that wild moment of realisation, he itched to shout Eureka at the top of his voice - except Scorpius was giving such wonderful tiny snores of contented slumbers and Astoria wouldn't be very pleased if he made both herself and their child jump out of their skin. Anyway, Eureka was a bit muggleish. Just because they were raising their son to be much more tolerant of muggles than they themselves had been in their youth didn't mean they had to let standards slip. Though he couldn't help chortling as he crept downstairs, the late evening silent save for Scorpius's snores and the occasional chirp and rustle of wings as the family of birds that lived under the eaves of the roof settled down for the night. It might have been lonely except nights were never lonely any more.

In summer Astoria liked to read by the open window to catch the last balmy rays of evening light and he found her there, book face down in her lap, chin resting on fists, concentrating on breathing deeply in and out to better inhale the fragrance of the roses that had begun to scent the air. He recollected how the hidden chortle had turned into an outright laugh and how, as she turned, smiling sheepishly at being caught so, tears dimmed his vision. Odd, odd, odd. Here he was, about to tell his wife of his discovery and now tears came when there was no reason for tears! After all, he wasn't sad or tasked with killing Dumbledore or about to take a Dark Mark, was he? No, he was perfectly happy and yet the tears simply arrived as if they had every business to be there and strangely felt as good as Astoria's smile and kiss when he told her about the Eureka moment. He was still healing, Astoria said, when he tagged the tale of the second remarkable discovery on to the first, but he still couldn't quite fathom it. It was something he might have pondered upon with Scorpius when Scorpius was a baby, listening to his father's soliloquies, pulling his face closer tugging at his hair, and chuckling in delight. But now Scorpius was 5½ he often asked his advice instead. Oh, not directly. What sort of topsy-turvy wizarding world would it be, Draco asked himself, if a father needed to constantly consult his small son instead of the small son seeking guidance from his father? He was very discreet about it. You see, Scorpius was very wise and so Draco watched and he learnt.

When his son was happy, naturally he laughed, but when he was very, very happy, he might also dance around with excitement or shout for joy or even jump several times. When Draco and Astoria took him to see the hugely popular travelling show, The Amazing Acrobatic Abdabbies (abdabbies are a small community of free elves very distantly related to the house-elf) Scorpius, like some of the other young witches and wizards in the audience, leapt out of his seat, screaming, laughing and waving his arms with excitement. Of course Draco could never imagine himself behaving in such wild fashion, but as so many emotions seemed related to happiness it seemed perfectly feasible that perhaps tears were too. Another puzzle answered.

But other mysteries remained. Such as the fact Scorpius – not always, but sometimes - cried not only when he himself was hurt or angry or being reprimanded over some misdemeanour or other but when others were hurt!

It was how the tradition of the roses came to be:-

(To Be Continued)