Keeping Secrets

A/N: Hey everyone, thank you all for reviewing they were very nice. Well I hope you all like the new chapter have a good day.

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Hermione was correct; Lucius Malfoy was NOT a happy bunny, no sir-ee. The owl that had shown up in his study a mere half hour ago contained the most disturbing news concealed behind spells that had taken him seconds to recognise and reveal, he had shown his son how to guard letters to other wizards after all. The news was disturbing on so many levels, his son, that irritating mudblood who should be dead at his own hand and a pair of unborn babies.

He had only just refrained from hexing the Headmaster when he called a HUFFLEPUFF in to the office to fetch Draco from the Tower. A Hufflepuff! He would be kept waiting for ages, the little twit would probably get lost or forget why it was going to the Tower in the first place!

Luckily for everyone, Lucius was not kept waiting too long, just long enough that his initial anger had been sufficiently squashed to allow him to think clearly. “Draco,” he greeted his son in a tone that informed the younger of the Malfoys that Lucius was definitely not pleased with his decision.

“Dad,” Draco said with a small smile and nod in return.

Lucius motioned for Draco to sit in one of the chairs in the office Dumbledore had so kindly agreed to vacate seconds before Draco walked through the door. Draco sat appearing every inch the calm dignified young man his father should have been proud of. “Draco, I hope you do not think that your letter was funny, I can assure you it most certainly is not,” Lucius drawled, his eyes fixing Draco with a glare that would have made even the most foolhardy Gryffindor quail.

“It was meant as no joke Dad, I’ve asked Hermione to marry me and she has already accepted,” Draco responded.

“You were also serious about that mudblood carrying your children then?” he sneered.

Draco managed to control every part of him that wanted to deny the awful admission, call it the lie that it was, but he couldn’t, he had promised them all safety and that is what he would secure for them. “Yes, she is and they are.”

“You thought it wise to bed that irritating mudblood? I thought that I had brought you up to be better than that Draco, I am disappointed in you. You have polluted the bloodline, our bloodline with muggle filth!” Lucius growled outwardly but inwardly felt a tiny bit relieved at the fact the bastards were not his. He knew that Draco had always craved his approval and actually telling him he was a disappointment was the biggest blow he could give seeing as he was not just inside Hogwarts, but in the middle of that irritating old coots office.

Hypocrite! Draco felt like shouting but kept that impulse down. “What can I say, she is worth it? She’s a good lay? She’s clever and a powerful witch? She’s a mudblood?”

“Precisely Draco, you have no idea how much trouble you are causing with such action!”

“Dad, I think it is you who does not see what a benefit this can be, for you and those you are concerned about,” Draco said.

“That mudblood and half-blood brats? What good can possibly come of them?” Lucius said fighting the urge to shake some sense into his son literally.

Draco shook his head, “You are viewing them all as problems, as things to be killed off; am I correct? Well, try seeing it this way, I marry Hermione and you don’t do anything but play nice, think of all the suspicion that has never quite gone away since your last stint in Azkaban and how it will disappear faster than a puddle on a summers day.”

“You’re telling me, I should ‘play nice’ to improve my image and throw off suspicion? You want me to accept a mudblood into my family? Draco, I cannot see that this will be acceptable,” he said his mind trying to work out how much truth was behind Draco’s idea. “What in Merlin’s name were you doing with that bitch anyway?”

“I would think you would know father, after all you and Mum managed to have me,” Draco drawled easily.

“Don’t pretend to have the intelligence level of an amoeba Draco, it doesn’t suit you,” Lucius chided, “So when is the bitch due?”

“If you are asking to work out if you can ‘persuade’ her to abort them, she won’t,” Draco said in a warning tone he never thought he would end up using on his father.

“I surmised as much, after all if she had been persuadable it would have already happened and I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“September.”

Lucius’ jaw clenched as he mentally reviewed the implications that Hermione’s due date could have attached to it. So he might not have been so fortunate after all, so why on earth would Draco claim them as his own? Well, better his son get the blame than it lie directly upon his shoulders before Voldemort, Draco was not yet sworn to loyalty and could more easily get away with this indiscretion. “You mustn’t marry her Draco, claiming the children as yours is one thing, but to marry the mudblood isn’t so easily forgivable.”

“Not even when it would leave you freer to work without all those watchful eyes, after things settle down anyway? You were complaining when we last spoke that Fudge was beginning to slip from under your thumb and this could help convince him you are really on the Ministry’s side in all this, don’t you think?”

Lucius sat back and considered everything his son was telling him. There was a possibility that the mudbloods babes were his grandchildren, and another that they were directly his. The mudblood could come in useful, as Draco said, to dissuade the Ministry from looking to hard into his activities. But why was the mudblood going anywhere near his son? Unless she didn’t know that he, Lucius had raped her, been their first if he remembered correctly, which he was sure he did. In all the tangled web of possibilities one thing weighed the most heavily; Voldemort. His Master had not been happy to find out they had allowed Potters mudblood friend to live after chancing upon here and capturing her, to now approach him and tell him that Draco was planning on marrying the bitch and they were expecting... it could be suicidal but it was definitely better than approaching Lord Voldemort and telling him that he suspected it was entirely possible that he was to blame for this mess.

“Very well Draco, but on your head be it. I will inform certain parties and do my best to make him see your argument, though he is not a patient man and a much less patient Master,” Lucius said, “You would be best to get in close with Dumbledore and Potter, it will be extra leverage for your lives.”

“I know, Hermione has already made me promise to play nicely with her friends,” Draco gave his father another small smile, he was both relieved and concerned and that combination wasn’t exactly sitting well with him.

Lucius returned the smile in spite of himself, “It could be worse I suppose, you could have owled me to warn me that you had brought the Parkinson brat into the family already in the family way and I would have had a very angry Gregory Parkinson after us both.”

“Eurgh, no thank you, I’ll take my mudblood over Parkinson any day,” Draco said.

“You still stick to your beliefs then?” Lucius was genuinely curious at that small remark.

Draco looked to the floor briefly then met his fathers eyes so similar to his own, “I cannot just abandon them can I? I still think that purebloods are superior and that mudbloods are just that, muddy blooded beings, I just so happen to have found a decent one. Besides, the blood of our line can always get repurified over the next several generations can’t it?”

“I suppose that what you are saying has some merit, and I am pleased to see that you have not totally lost your mind to the mudblood but as a final warning Draco, your mother and I may be forced to sever all ties to you if I cannot persuade Him that it is ultimately in his best interest to have Fudge working for me and me working free of suspicion,” Lucius said. “Oh and we’ll work out some punishment for knocking up the mudblood when you return home for the Easter Holiday,” he added before inclining his head in a short nod and then sweeping out of the office leaving Draco to wonder just how awful that would be.

Hermione had regained control of her stomach and was sat chatting to Ginny while Harry and Ron played with the Wizards Chess set that was built into the coffee table in the Tower when Draco returned from meeting his father.

“How’d it go?” Hermione asked as soon as he walked through the portrait hole.

“Well I’m not dead yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” Draco quipped, “Seriously though, he seemed to take it as I thought he would, and I’m very glad we were in Hogwarts or there’s no telling how he would have expressed his anger...” Draco trailed off and gave a soft sigh then realised that there were still three extra people in the Tower. “What are you three still here for? Shouldn’t you be off preventing that super-klutz Longbottom from killing someone because of his stupidity?”

“Funnily enough we thought we’d wait with our friend for her fiancé to come back,” Ginny said with her eyes narrowed at Draco.

“Ginny, drop it, and Draco, you agreed to be nice to them!” Hermione said feeling worried that their pretence would be seen through before it had even really been started.

“I know I did and I would say I was sorry but I haven’t done anything like what I usually do so be fair,” Draco said while wishing he could hex Potter and the Weasels and get them the hell out of his home and away from his little ones before the idiots did something stupid, as they usually did and end up hurting innocents, like they usually did.

“It’s to be expected,” Hermione said looking between Harry and Ron who were looking at Draco very suspiciously and Draco who had decided to ignore them now it seemed. “We need to get to classes,” She said after a moment or two.

The five students gathered themselves then exited the Tower four heading for Potions with Snape and the fifth to Transfiguration with McGonagall.

Hours later and it was dinner, if either or the Weasleys or Harry had expected a change in Malfoy’s behaviour towards them they were sorely disappointed, he managed to loose Gryffindor 20 points in potions when he sabotaged Harry’s cauldron, though as Hermione pointed out to Harry, Malfoy had only sealed the already dismal concoctions fate, not ruined a perfect potion.