Draco and the Old Man

Six

"Draco, it's been months!" Daphne screamed at her brother-in-law. "Get your sorry ass up!"

The very hungover Draco stirred slightly. He peeked his eye open and looked at the angry woman. He groaned and slammed the pillow back over his head. Daphne screamed in frustration and walked out of the room she had lent to Draco in her ever shrinking house.

Daphne stormed into her kitchen. She spotted Scorpius and tried to pretend like everything was fine. He'd been through enough. Scorpius didn't need to know his father had become an alcohol too. But he did know. Scorpius know far more than he let on.

"Everything okay?" he faked oblivious.

"Yeah, yup." Daphne acted overly cheery. "Do you want to come to Diagon Alley with me today?"

"Sure. Sounds fun." Scorpius tried to keep his face neutral. He focused himself on peanut-buttering the bread in front of him.

Suddenly, a loud cry sounded from the guest room. Daphne hesitated a moment before sighing.

"I'll be right back." she said.

She walked back to Draco's room and threw open the door. The sight inside made her want to scream again. It looked like Draco had just rolled to far to the side and fell off the bed. Now, he was sitting on the floor with bedding falling over his shirtless body. He barely lifted his gaze when Daphne walked in. He took a swig of the maroon coloured liquid that was in the bottle in his hand.

"Jesus Christ, Draco!" Daphne had had enough. She wordlessly called the bottle to her hand with magic. With a quick sniff of the sickly sweet liquid, she deduced it was whiskey. "Are you kidding me?" At the end of her length, Daphne threw the bottle at the wall outside the room. The glass shattered and the rot dripped down the wall.

"That's my drink!" a drunken Draco whined.

"Tough luck." Daphne snarled. "You need to get your ass up and out of this house. I'm sick of your constant shit presence. You have a son. God forbid you think I'm going to raise him for you. Sober up, asshole."

Draco muttered something that couldn't be understood. He scrambled around on the floor, tangled in bedsheets. He finally stood, unsteady, and pointed and accusatory finger to his sister-in-law.

"Tha's my wine." He said, slurred.

"Get out of my house." Daphne didn't back down.

"Fine!" Draco threw his hands up in surrender. He pauses and looks around the room. "Where's ma wand." One of his eyelids drooped slightly.

"I took it."

"Why would you do tha'?"

Daphne deadpanned. "You're kidding, right?" she rolled her eyes. "You wand me to give your your wand so you can be an even worse public menace? Dumbass."

"I juss wanna go to tha pub."

"You're not going to the pub. You're going to get help."

"Who's gonna help me? You forgot, no on likes me." Draco tried to look determined and slightly menacing, but he just looked slightly constipated. He stumbled again and fell. He landed half on the bed, half on the floor.

Daphne closed her eyes and sighed. She held her wand again. Daphne pointed it at Draco and muttered a few incantations. Clothes lifted themselves off the floor and pulled themselves onto Draco's body. Once her was dressed, Daphne stomped her way over to him and put a death grip on Draco's arm. She apparated the two of them to a crowded location.

Daphne released Draco and there his unsteady body forward.

"This man needs help." She snarled. Draco looked up and saw rows of short-walled cubicles. A few of the workers stood but not one rushed forward.

"Ma'am, what sort of help?" A mousy man with a balding head stepped forward slowly. His hands held in front of his chest.

"He's drunk." Daphne said. "He needs help."

"Ma'am, we're the department of Intoxicating Substances." The mousy man said. "We're in charge of creating the laws and convicting the rule breakers. We don't have a rehab system."

"Well make one, because he needs help. I'm done with him stinking up my house." Daphne was about to apparate away, when two men burst out of the elevator, arguing loudly.

"You!" Draco pointed a finger at one of the men, it was Harry Potter. "You ruined my life."

***

The day after Astoria's death, Draco had gone AWOL. He had left, or rather abandoned, Scorpius with Daphne and disappeared into a bottle. He had gone through a full bottle of 17% alcohol level Berry Ocky Rot. He was damn ready to open a second, too. He felt hardly nothing. He grabbed instead a bottle of red currant rum. Rosmerta's finest of the Three Broomsticks. He had downed one overfilled glass before shakily standing. He waved the bottle of rum around as he screamed and cried. He discarded the glass and just drank straight from the bottle.

Draco stumbled over to his study in his giant Manor. He there books and ripped a few apart all the while screaming and crying. He shook his entire bookshelf and three books fell out on top of him. One hit him right in the head and landed face down on his desk, another landed face open on the floor, and the last landed right in Draco's hands.

He looked to the first book. Standard Book of Spells: Grade 1 by Miranda Goshawk. The second book, one of his father's book's, L'art de la Revanche, a French book on vengeance and retaliation. The third book was a mysterious one, written entirely in runes. Drunk Draco apparently is quite quick at deciphering runes as he recognized is rather quickly. It was an ancient book about witches and wizards in the Canadian Rockies. The page it was open to was vague and undefined, but he read with gaps:"was used by... to... send someone... gone... time..." Draco's mind filled the gaps and he understood it to be a spell to make someone disappear.

He looked at the three books. Standard spells, vengeance, and disappearing. Draco should use this disappearing spell to exact vengeance on those who wronged him.

His drunk and distorted mind ran down his list of who those people are. The first was the Dark Lord, but obviously that was a dead end. The second was his longtime enemies, Harry Potter.

Now, sober Draco had made peace with Harry long, long ago. He realized that Potter had done more for him than he had against. Everything Potter had done against Draco was either warranted or a petty childish act. Both were easily forgivable on Draco's end.

Drunk Draco, on the other hand, immediately started planning his revenge.

A/N: thank you for almost 50 reads! -J.C