Father of the Witch

Chapter 5: BFFLUITDOMS Part I

A/N: This would have never happened without you, Lena. Thank you for being the lightning strike that restored the fire for my story. This is all for you.

With endless adoration and gratefulness,
XOXO Helix

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Father of the Bride, or Party City.

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BFFLUITDOMS: Part I
(Bryan, Franck, and Father Lucius: BFFLs
United In The Deterioration Of My Sanity)

"Let me do the talking, girls, okay?" I checked.

Annie and Hermione walked ahead of me on a busy sidewalk in Chelsea, on our way to the first wedding planning appointment with whichever high-dollar coordinator Hermione had selected. It was sunny and breezy out—a beautiful day for endorsing a large cheque, Scorpius had cheerfully reminded me as he flooed away to Goyle's this morning, the smug little bastard.

"We already promised, Daddy," Annie rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

"Now, what was his name, again?"

"Franck."

"Frank," I tested scathingly.

"Franck," Annie corrected me with a flip of her golden hair, emphasizing the 'onk.'

"Fronk..."

"Oh, look—we're here!"

We stepped up into a boutiquey kind of shoppe on the street corner. I closed the door behind myself and stilled—there was magic in this place.

By the end of the Second War, I'd become sort of sensitive to magical presences. Potter speculated that it might have something to do with my stint as the briefest master of the Elder Wand in history. It normally wouldn't even register since I lived in a magical household. But because of Bryan, we had decided on a Muggle wedding planning agency. We were firmly in the middle of Muggle London's fashion district, and there shouldn't have been any magic except coming from the three of us.

Call it post-war paranoia, but magic in places where it wasn't supposed to be made me uneasy. While our reputations as Malfoys was restored now, there were still a few of the old families that disagreed our acceptance of change and wouldn't mourn the end of our line, or have a problem financing it personally. On top of that and our wealth, we were tantalizing targets no matter what world we were in, especially now that Annie's impending wedding to a Muggle was so publicized.

I rolled my wrist to double-check for the weight of my wand against my arm.

Hermione noticed and stepped subtly closer to me, rubbing a thumb on the inside of my other wrist. "Is something the matter, Draco?"

"There's magic here," I said shortly. "Not us."

We watched Annie together as she moved further into the boutique, trailing her fingers along a crystal chandelier display, lowered to eye-level for potential customers to appreciate. She was swept up by the 'magic' of the actual store itself; distracted by the glitter and porcelain place settings and models of frosted floral cakes. A puzzled little frown crossed Hermione's face.

"Perhaps there was another wizarding family planning a wedding right before we got here?" she suggested.

I shook my head. "That's impossible. We're the only wizarding family currently planning a wedding right now. Remember our wedding? How no-one has an anniversary even close to ours? Nobody wants to get married so close to a Malfoy wedding because they don't want to be upstaged."

I genuinely wasn't being a snob—it was just a fact about how Wizarding society worked.

"Well, I don't think that we have anything to worry about," she soothed. "I think you would definitely be able to tell if it was malevolent."