Expecting The Unexpected

Chapter Nine: The Spanner in the Works

"What's your father doing here, Draco?" Harry snarled, not even looking at Lucius.

"I wasn't aware your permission was required to visit my family at Christmas, Potter," Lucius sneered. "I suggest you calm down; you look quite enraged, which surely, given your current situation, isn't good for your blood pressure." Harry was sure he hadn't imagined the slight sneer Lucius gave on the word 'blood'.

The situation was completely strange. Here was Lucius Malfoy, aristocratic pure-blood, sitting in Andromeda's floral squashy armchair in this modest, three-bedroom semi-detached house, in a quaint, conservative Muggle town in Hampshire, sipping mead and looking thoroughly comfortable.

"He Apparated here about an hour ago," Draco said. "He turned up unannounced. And completely and utterly inebriated, might I add." He shot a disapproving glare at his father.

It was obvious now Harry looked at Lucius that the man had indeed been drinking heavily; his eyes were bloodshot, and they scrutinised Harry with an unfocussed, unsteady gaze. Harry even thought he caught a whiff of alcohol emanating from the elder Malfoy, and felt his anger spike.

"So you thought you'd give him a glass of mead and make him welcome. How cosy," Harry said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

"I came to talk to Draco, not that it's any of your business," Lucius said. He took another sip of his mead. "I've tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to make him see sense. However he is still firmly of the opinion that you and your half-blood brat are preferable to his birth-right as my sole heir."

"So what are you still doing here, if Draco has told you he's not interested?" said Harry, refusing to rise to Lucius' clear attempt at goading him. He was tired, he felt sick from the Floo travel, and all he wanted was a bath then Draco's arms wrapped around him whilst he slept. He didn't want to have to deal with Lucius sodding Malfoy and whatever shit came with the man.

"Mother took pity on him," Draco replied, and Harry could hear the annoyance in his voice. This cheered him greatly. "Apparition when drunk is highly dangerous- the fucking idiot-" he gave his father a filthy look- "so we don't want to send him back that way in case he Splinches himself, not to mention the trouble Mother and I would be in if the Ministry ever found out we'd let him Apparate illegally without a licence. And Floo travel when drunk is as bad as when pregnant, apparently. And my father looks so pathetic, apparently, that she asked Andromeda if he could sleep on the sofa for the night, to sober up."

"Yeah, and giving him more alcohol is really helping with that," Harry snapped (thinking that a bout of Floo sickness or Splinching could actually do Lucius some good), and Draco had the grace to look abashed. "Where are your mother and Andromeda, anyway?"

"They're bathing Teddy," Draco said. "Apparently they wanted to give Father and I time to talk. All he's done, however, is drink more and call me a disappointment."

Harry was extremely tempted to Floo back to The Burrow and stay there until Lucius had well and truly fucked off, but the thought of having to make the journey for the third time in less than twelve hours was enough to knock the idea on its head. Besides, he didn't really want to leave Draco to deal with his drunken and verbally abusive father alone.

"Couldn't he go back to the Manor via Side-Along?"

"No," Draco replied. "Mother and I are not allowed to Apparate, and Aunt Andromeda can't. You can't take him because of the baby. He has to stay here."

"Fine," Harry said, defeated. He turned to Lucius. "But you leave tomorrow morning." It was still relatively early, but Harry didn't care. "I'm going to bed." He turned and stormed out of the room.