"I want ice cream, Draco."
The said blond expelled a monumental sigh and glared at the determined redhead. "You really shouldn't barge into my study any time you like," he scolded, but Mini Granger merely lifted her chin in childish defiance.
"I want ice cream," she repeated, this time crossing her arms against her chest.
Draco rolled his eyes then looked at the report sent to him by Healer Matthews. Although stable, his mother still had not made a good progress since last month; he really should visit his mother soon. "I'm sure I can get Tippy to make you one."
"No, no Florean's!" she exclaimed. "Florean's, Draco."
He frowned and looked at Rose once more. "But that's in Diagon Alley," he pointed out. When Rose vigorously nodded her head, Draco incessantly shook his. "I have too many things to do than frolic outside, Rose."
Her bottom lip protruded out. "Mama always brings me to the Alley on Saturdays," she said.
Draco's eyes widened, his gaze falling onto the calendar on his table. 'Saturday,' he thought. It was a stormy Sunday when Hermione Granger suddenly appeared in his flat and dropped off her child for him to babysit. It was almost a week, and he still had not heard from his former bushy-haired schoolmate. With dread in his heart, Draco had a feeling Hermione would not appear by the end of the week.
"Draco," Rose said, tugging on his robes. "Ice cream!"
He sighed, suddenly feeling tired and lent back on his chair. "I'll tell Tippy to get some ice cream from Florean's and - " He trailed off, with Rose this time vigorously shaking her head.
"No, no, we go to the Alley," she said with an indignant stomp. "Mama always brings me to the Alley."
"Well your Mama is not here so piss off and leave me alone," he exclaimed in exasperation. Almost a week had passed but the menace continued to bother him. Draco was slowly going insane.
Rose glared. "No, we will go to Diagon Alley for ice cream!" she shouted. His nearby inkwell suddenly shattered into pieces. The ink splattered all over his mahogany table, prompting him to groan.
"You're as stubborn as your mother," he snarled at her, absentmindedly magic-ing the mess her accidental magic made. "Fine!" he then said, throwing his arms in the air. "But we're only going to Florean's then head straight home, understand?"
The change in her demeanour was instantaneous. Rose squealed in delight and dashed out of his study to get ready.
Draco released another sigh and slumped back onto his chair.
"Hurry up, Granger," he snarled to no one. Draco wondered when he would get his peace and quiet once again.
__________
Suffice it to say, Draco was really not out much. He would usually visit either the Malfoy Manor or St. Mungo's to check on his ailing mother. The Malfoy business also required him to get out of the country multiple times; although famous, he was received neutrally. Into Wizarding London, however, he never really ventured out ever since, well, the Dark Lord's demise.
The stares and whispers he received were all too much, reminding him of his horrible misdeeds and the small, insignificant fact that he was the Death Eater that brought his comrades into Hogwarts to reign terror. He was forever labelled Dumbledore's almost murderer, the true murderer part being crowned to his late godfather. But Severus Snape proved that he was Dumbledore's man through and through. Draco only became an Order member when he failed to kill Dumbledore and Voldemort killed Lucius in an act of rage.
He especially hated crowded places like Diagon Alley. Knockturn Alley was tolerable, but then again, the usual wanderers of this dark alley were either locked up in Azkaban or dead. Diagon Alley, on the other hand... well, Draco had his worst memories here during and after the Second Wizarding War, and he'd rather steer clear from it.
"Hurry up, Draco!" Rose happily babbled, her little legs speeding out. Draco had no choice but to grab onto her and carry her, so as not to lose her. Although admittedly frustrated and a little bit angered that Hermione left her daughter to him, Draco knew he should never cross Granger by losing her daughter in the busy alley.
As predicted, every step he made garnered him suspicious, hostile glares. Others even scuttled away in fright. Draco tugged onto his sleeve in discomfort until they reached his wrist, in fear that his faded mark would show. He had poured himself in thick tomes both in Hogwarts and the Malfoy library, but he never found the right spell or potion to remove the blasted Dark Mark. It was a pale grey nowadays, as opposed to its dark, glinting color during Voldemort's resurrection. He'd be damned if it started to darken once more.
His thoughts were disrupted when he bumped quite hardly against a burly man.
"Watch it, Death Eater," he hissed with a dark glare.
Draco scowled in reply. 'Why is this place bloody crowded?' he thought in exasperation, deciding to take a detour from the main road and into one of the small alleyways. 'The faster we get her damn ice cream, the better.'
"They all look at you funny, Draco."
Surprised, Draco looked at the small child in his arms. "What do you mean?" he asked, curious.
"People look at Mama and Uncle Harry funny too when we go to Diagon Alley," Rose explained. She then craned her neck to look up at Draco. "But they look mad at you, Draco. Did you do something wrong?"
He snorted and was about to answer her, but then two men blocked their way. Draco coolly looked at their direction. Deep inside, however, his heart thudded loudly. The looks on their faces were far less friendly and he had this sinking feeling this altercation would not end pretty.
"What are you doing here, Death Eater?" one snarled, with crooked teeth and pointy nose. Draco thought he looked like Rookwood and wrinkled his nose. He remembered he was a bastard and it was good he was already dead.
"Interesting insult," he snarled with sarcasm. "I'm sure you've done a job well done for hurting my feelings."
The man's eyes dangerously flashed and even bared his teeth. The state of his teeth was more ghastly than what he had originally thought.
"Let us pass through and we will all go our merry ways, yes?" Draco coldly replied his mercurial eyes locked intently at Crooked Teeth. One thing he would be forever thankful for his Death Eater trainings (or being generally a Malfoy, really) was the fact that he was quite good in masking his emotions. It had driven some people insane, especially Hermione, since they could not decipher what he was thinking and feeling. It was one trait that made him a perfect Slytherin, honestly.
"They should have sent you to Azkaban, bastard!" the shorter, stouter man with goatee shrilly exclaimed. He shook with anger and pulled out his wand. Draco took a few careful steps back. "You killed my wife."
All the color drained from Draco's face. He could not remember this man, so he had no recollection whatsoever of his accusations. But he had... hurt a lot of nameless people before and he would not be surprised that Goatee's wife was really one of his victims.
"You're not nice, Mister!" Rose suddenly exclaimed, glaring at the two men.
Draco's eyes widened, remembering he was not alone. He absentmindedly tightened his hold on Rose and scanned their general vicinity. There were lesser people here and most of them were either pointedly ignoring the sudden commotion or did not care one whit. 'They really thought this through, those bastards,' he thought, brief fear slipping through his mask. It would have been better if he was alone; he could handle them and probably exercise his duelling skills today. But he was with a child, and that did not bode too well.
Crooked Teeth narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"I'm Rose," the redhead snottily said, lifting her chin in perfect confidence.
"Is he hurting you?" Goatee demanded, shakily pointing his wand at Draco. The blond merely rolled his eyes, riling up the man more. He suddenly took quick steps forward, his wand end growing closer to Draco's face. "What are you going to do with her?!"
Rose flinched at the wand and the man's tone and instantly buried her face against Draco's neck.
"Answer me, Malfoy!" he demanded, prompting the child to release a frightened squeal and tightened her hold around Draco.
"Hey, hey you're frightening her!" Draco growled, shifting Rose in his arms so that she would be farthest from the wand. "And it's not any of your damn business, Goatee."
Crooked Teeth mouthed the nickname with a frown while the other man growled and tried to lunge at him. Rose shrieked and Draco took a step back, releasing a string of curse words. With his arms wrapped around Rose, he could not reach for his wand on time. He then internally cursed his running, stupid mouth. If he had kept his mouth shut and received the insults passively, then they would have left this alley unscathed.
"Mate, he has a child," Crooked Teeth hissed and restrained his friend.
His companion struggled against his tight grip, thrashing wildly with a crazed look in his eyes. Draco thickly swallowed, not really blaming Goatee for his bloodlust. Then, he slumped against the other tall man in misery and released an anguished sob. "She didn't deserve that," he spat with raw emotions and Draco was driven to look away. "It is filth like you who do not deserve to live."
His words stabbed Draco straight into his heart. Jaw tightening, he watched wordlessly as Crooked Teeth pulled his grieving friend away and left Draco and Rose alone.
He was silent for ages, the man's words repeating in his mind again and again.
It was the truth. Damn it all he was right. He was fucked up and evil and he did not deserve to be freely roaming around this busy street while families mourned for all the people he had killed. Granger should not have testified in his hearing. He spent his first year of adulthood finally fighting for what he truly thought was right, defecting from Voldemort and aiding the Light Side with information and assistance. In the eyes of the some of the members, he finally did something right.
But it was not enough.
The echoes of the screams of people he had killed still haunted him at night. Tormented begging had plagued his darkest days. Theo had been seeing a Mind Healer for his battle wounds and had been doing well for the past year. He had urged Draco to go to one, to finally give himself peace for all the horrors he had seen, but Draco knew he did not deserve to forget. He believed he should forever punish himself by remembering every torture, every injury, and every death he had inflicted as his lifelong penance.
"Draco?"
Her tiny voice snapped him off his inner turmoil. Jaw still tight, he emotionlessly looked down at the child in his arms. Rose's blue eyes are wide and dewy, but he could see a new emotion there.
Concern.
Granger had looked at him like that, especially on his bad days, and a lump formed in his throat.
"The bad men are away, Draco," she softly said.
Chuckling darkly, Draco thought it was him that was the bad man after all.
"You all right, Draco?" Rose asked with worry, placing her right hand on his forehead to smooth out his worry lines. Draco thickly swallowed the lump, remembering the same thing Rose did to Hermione when he had upset her, and found himself slightly comforted.
"Draco?"
The blond sighed. "Let's just get your ice cream and fucking get away from here."
Noting Draco's distress, the little girl did not comment on his language.
__________
The ice cream shop was almost empty, to his utmost relief. When he entered, with Rose in his arms, Florean merely looked at him suspiciously, or more fittingly his blond hair, then smiled warmly at Rose. Draco figured the owner recognized Rose, seeing she often visited here with Granger and Potter.
Draco brought her to a secluded booth, away from prying eyes. There was a couple to their far right, but they were too busy making googly eyes at each other to notice the former Death Eater. A mother and child was also somewhere near the door, but the boy was throwing a tantrum, enough to distract his mother.
"What flavor do you want?" he coldly asked, still miffed with their encounter a while ago.
Rose was deep in thought, taking her sweet time to decide. When Draco's patience had ran thin, he was about to demand for a bloody flavour when suddenly, a wide, mischievous grin grew on her mouth. "Peanut butter with chocolate chip cookie bits, please."
Draco narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and then slowly nodded his head. "All right, but you will eat it quickly so that we can go back immediately, yes?"
"Yes, Draco," she echoed with a resolute nod.
He looked at her for a few more seconds before ordering their ice creams. Draco merely got a vanilla flavored one, not really a huge fan of sweets.
When he placed the huge scoop of ice cream in front of her, Rose's eyes almost bulged out of their sockets.
"You never had this flavor?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow in mild amusement.
Rose shook her head, her curls wildly swinging around. "Mama never got me this flavor," she confessed.
Draco frowned, wondering why Granger, who undoubtedly doted on her daughter, never bought her this flavor she clearly liked.
He then shrugged, brushed the thought away, and picked up his spoon to start eating. As he dug his spoon deeply into the ice cream, he frowned and looked at Rose, who was staring unabashedly at him. "What?" he grumbled with a glare. "Eat."
As the redhead slowly took her spoon, her eyes still questioningly looked at him.
"What?" he repeated.
Rose blinked her owlish eyes thrice, before primly placing the spoon back on the table. She had a determined look on her face and he did not like it one bit. "What is a... Death Eater?" she slowly asked, her eyes never leaving his form.
Draco choked on his ice cream, eyes widening in astonishment. Her question had caught him off guard and he darkly scowled. How was he supposed to explain to a five-year-old child that a Death Eater was some fucked up job of killing people and spreading terror for the good-for-nothing Dark Lord? And oh, how he used to be one and he should really be in Azkaban for being a failure in life.
"Mama and Uncle Harry kept on saying that," Rose explained, seemingly oblivious with Draco's panic and distress. "I asked them once but Mama only tells me they are bad people."
A wry smile appeared on his face. "That sums up everything you need to know on Death Eaters," he replied.
Rose still looked at him curiously. "The man with the funny beard called you one, Draco," she innocently said. "Are you a bad person?"
For such a small child, she was awfully perceptive. It was rare for him not to have a witty comeback; surprisingly, today was one of those days. He stared at her, unsure of what to answer.
"Yeah," he finally said, feeling strangely empty. "I am."
Rose gazed at him with her impossible blue eyes, slowly frowning. "I thought so, too," she piped in with her childish glares. "You say bad words and get angry a lot. Mama said you should be nice to people to be a good person."
He gaped at her naive statement for minutes, before bursting into boisterous laughter.
The redhead coloured in confused embarrassment, crossing her arms against her chest. "It's not funny," she said.
He was laughing too hard that tears welled up in the corner of his eyes. "Just bloody eat your ice cream so that we can get the hell away from here," he said with a wide grin that hurt his cheeks.
Rose glared at him, but did not need to be told twice. Eagerly, she dug into her ice cream and Draco did the same, hurrying to finish it.
Suddenly, gasping and choking noises directed his eyes on Rose once more. The child was horrifyingly grasping her neck, her face swelling up and turning purple, and Draco loudly swore.
"What is going on?! What have you done?!" Florean demanded, pointing his wand at Draco. The couple and the mother were curiously looking at their booth.
"Oh shite, oh shite," Draco said, panicked, and pushed Florean out of the way. He then picked up the choking child and side-along Apparated into St. Mungo's despite the ice cream parlour owner's protest.
He arrived in a messy heap, sprawled onto the sterilized floor. "Help!" he croaked, fearfully looking at the eerily limp Rose in his arms. "I need help!"
A flurry of lime robes pried Rose away from him and Draco helplessly looked on, praying to whatever beings in the universe that she was all right.
__________
"You are fucking stupid, Malfoy, you hear me?" Theo exclaimed with a half-hearted glare. The bastard was trying to stifle a smile and annoyed, Draco kicked his shin. He watched with a satisfied smirk as Theo scowled and massaged his smarting leg.
They were in a waiting room, thankfully alone save from a snoozing, balding man and a wrinkly old lady who looked like she was lost in her own world.
"How could you miss this, Draco?" Theo demanded. "Oh, Granger will kill you if she gets wind of this."
"Which is why she should never get wind of this," he replied, glaring when a wicked, conniving smirk grew on Theo's face. "You will be the first person I'll kill if she discovered this."
"Not if she kills you first, Malfoy," he said, the smirk still in place.
His cheeks tinged with pink and he darkly glared at Theo. "Shut up, Nott," he murmured under his breath. He glared darkly at the crumpled sheet in his hands, Granger's list of instructions, and scowled at number 5, which stated that Rose was allergic to peanuts and she had nasty, deadly reactions to it. Now, it made sense why Granger never allowed her daughter to have that ice cream flavor she clearly loved in the first place.
"You never read her instructions, did you?" Theo accused.
He darkly scowled, but guiltily looked away.
"Oh, give me that," Theo said with a sigh, snatching the parchment from Draco's hands. "For all of our sake's, I will memorize all of this in case you fucked up once more and this time landed in Azkaban for killing an innocent child."
Draco snatched the list back. "Fuck you, Nott," he said, and proceeded to thoroughly read Granger's twenty-one list of instructions on how to take care of her daughter.
He snarled at the first one, reminding him to never let Rose wander alone and without company. He knew that one, of course, even if he did not read Granger's list. He glared at number 5 once more, and determinedly memorized all of the do's and don'ts's of taking care Rose Weasley.
"I should have read this list when she told me to," Draco said with a sigh as he folded the parchment and placed it inside his pocket.
"Yeah, you really should have," Theo completely concurred, ignoring his best friend's glare. "I mean this is Granger we're talking about, mate. The woman's a bossy know-it-all to boot but we can't deny that she's a perfectionist and a bleeding Gryffindor at heart. She wouldn't have left you her daughter without properly thinking and planning about everything. You are an idiot for refusing such a generous act of kindness from her."
"Shut it now, Nott," Draco growled in warning. He also, however, could not stifle the roaring guilt at the pit of his stomach. It made him sick, remembering Rose's choking and swollen face, prompting him to involuntarily shiver in horror.
Before Theo could retort in reply, the door to the waiting room opened. A young Healer, about in her early twenties, strode inside with eyes on her parchment.
"Guardian for Rose Weasley?" she asked.
"That would be me," Draco said, immediately standing up from his seat. Theo followed suit.
The Mediwitch frowned at him, or more particularly at his hair, then gazed back at her list. "Umm, Draco... Malfoy?" She breathed his last name in surprise, even taking a step back a little in unconcealed fright.
Draco scowled at her reaction, and cursed himself for not thinking of bringing Rose to the nonjudgmental eyes of Healer Matthews instead. He had known his mother's healer for ages and he was a competent healer. He would have taken care of Rose without making a fuss. He mentally noted this in case there would be future unfortunate accidents of the said child.
"Is there a problem?" Theo smoothly asked, placing a comforting hand on Draco's shoulder as he took a step forward.
The Healer nervously cleared her throat. "Your... charge is ready to go," she said, then quickly swiveled around and walked away.
Theo rolled his eyes at his mute best friend and pulled him out of the room.
She led them in a ward that was obviously for paediatric cases. The room was brightly lit, painted with playful colors. At one corner was solely for playthings, with toys strewn around and even a mini slide. Draco immediately spotted the redhead happily playing with one of the stuffed toys in the room. He released a shaky sigh, relieved that the swelling was gone and she was normally breathing once more.
"The papers had been processed and you just have to pay for her fees at the Discharge Area, Mister Mal... err." The Healer blushed and hurriedly excused herself.
Draco briefly glared at her retreating back. Then, with three big strides he reached the redhead.
"Rose," he called, slightly flinching at how relieved he sounded. He determinedly ignored Theo's amused stare.
"Draco!" she happily exclaimed and pattered closer to the blond. She then lifted her tiny arms in the air. "Up, up!"
He lifted her up without any second thoughts at all, also secretly relieved that she did not blame him for her near death experience. But then again, Rose was merely five and he wondered if she completely understood what happened to her.
"I was looking everywhere for you," she told him with wild gestures. "I'm hungry."
Beside him, Theo snorted. "So she did inherit the Weasel's infamous appetite," he pointed out.
"You okay?" Draco asked, ignoring Theo's comment.
"Yes," she chirpily replied. "But I'm hungry, Draco. Let's go home."
'Home,' he echoed in his mind. He wondered when Rose started thinking of his simple flat as somewhere akin to 'home'.
"Let's go home," he repeated awkwardly, feeling strangely happy.