Attachment Issues
The summer past quite quickly for Draco and soon he was going to be heading off to Hogwarts. He had struggled greatly with the return of his younger brother. Don’t get him wrong, he loved that Hadrian was home, there was no doubt about that but he didn’t like vying for his parent attention, especially his fathers. He wasn’t used to sharing their affections. It was difficult watching someone else calling his papa, Papa, especially since that was what he called him but he had adjusted by the end of summer.
He did not spend a lot of time with Hadrian but he understood why. He knew it was difficult for his brother, being in a new place. He also knew that Hadrian didn’t have the greatest memories with children his own age but it still upset him. But Hadrian barely left the arms of Severus, and when he wasn’t in Severus’ arms, his daddy was still in the same room at least.
He would get upset when Severus left and Lucius could eventually calm him down although at the start that took a long while. By the end of summer, Hadrian could stay comfortably with Lucius and occasionally with Draco but would eventually get nervous after a while alone with him. With the boy’s mother it was a completely different problem all together. Hadrian just did not like the woman. He looked uneasy whenever he was near her and would flat out throw a tantrum, crying his eyes out and sometimes, if Severus and Lucius were not in the room, he would scream until they came back in.
The first time it happened, Draco had gotten so upset at the state of his brother that he could not be consoled and nearly threw up from crying so hard. He hadn’t been in the living room at the time but in the kitchen and had thought that his younger brother was being taken again. It had been very traumatic for him and he had to speak to his Papa the next day to explain what had happened, as he was at the ministry when it happened doing work, and he felt awful when his Papa had got upset too.
Draco thought his father had gotten the brunt of the upset though. It had taken him over two hours to calm his distraught child down, with no explanation of what caused it and no help from his wife. As Narcissa had been in the room at the time so she had obviously explained what had happened, which in her eyes was nothing, and it left all of them thoroughly confused. When it had happened a third and fourth time they had started to get concerned about what was going on.
When Haddy had finally gone to sleep, which was quite early as he was after all only six years old, Draco had sat down with his father and papa and told them his observations. They were obviously wary of his knowledge, it was their wife in question, but did see the logic behind what their son had told them. They both had also noticed a distinct change in Hadrian when he was in a room alone with Narcissa. He was more withdrawn, quiet and clung onto whoever was in the room apart from her, however he preferred Severus if he was an option. Neither Draco or Lucius minded, as they had seen the bond that had formed between father and son and knew that they could not even begin to try and break that, their own bonds with the child were growing just fine.
But the situation was peculiar. They had first wondered if Hadrian’s reaction was because he had been abused more by Petunia and that’s why he was wary of Narcissa, it would of course explain his behaviour but when they went back through his medical record, most of the physical abuse was done by Vernon. They then presumed that Petunia had mentally abused Hadrian and that it was that causing the massive reactions, and mental abuse wouldn’t show up on the medical records but as the weeks went by they realised it was way more than that. Hadrian had been introduced to the parents of Draco’s friends. They had been sworn to secrecy until the Malfoy’s released an official statement of his return, but he had been absolutely fine with the women and he even sat comfortably in Andromeda Tonks arms when she had come round to visit.
Now that had been a momentous occasion for them, especially since Hadrian had allowed Severus to leave the room to do whatever he needed to do. So they had no idea what was causing him to be so terrified and throw a tantrum every time he was left alone in a room with his mother. They did notice she was not doing anything to help herself though as she did not try creating a bond with Hadrian at all, and did not try to dissolve the friction they had between them.
At the start of the summer this was only a small problem, there was always someone around to be in a room with him when he wasn’t sleeping, not that they minded of course, they couldn’t bear to let him out of their sight anyway. But it was nearing the end of the summer, Draco was starting his first year at Hogwarts, Severus would be teaching at Hogwarts and Lucius would be working at the ministry full time, though he was applying for part-time, and so it would just be Narcissa and Hadrian in the house alone for the majority of the time. This, for obvious reasons, could not happen.
Hadrian would never recover from his mental injuries he received at the Dursley household and psychological trauma inflicted on him by Albus Dumbledore if he was left alone with her with the current hostile relationship they seemed to have right now. They still could not figure it out, but they needed to find a solution to a problem that they did not know the cause of.