in their memory, an alternate universe bittersweet one-shot
warning: character death
Hermione remembered the day she had finally decided on her baby girl's name. "Abigail Jean," she had said to herself with a self-fulfilling smile on her face, trying not to break out into a wild grin. The name Abigail meant 'source of joy' and Jean was her own middle name, her own touch of her heritage there. It sounded ordinary but the more that she said it to herself, the more that it felt extraordinary, the more that Abigail felt real. Hermione loved it. It was just a shame that she wouldn't be around to see it come to fruition.
Having both Hermione and Abigail in the world together wasn't part of the plan. Some cruel force outside of human control had decided it suddenly, without warning, and it was coming to pass. The air in the waiting room seemed thick with tension and it was most likely because it was a tense situation. Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy occupied the waiting room, neither man yielding to the other. While Harry sat and twiddled his thumbs nervously, Draco grinned to himself in the far corner. It had been quite a sticky situation that called both men to the hospital. Neither really remembered when they were told that the paternity was up in the air, but Harry had decided it didn't matter. He loved Hermione and he'd love Abigail whether she was Draco's daughter or his own. That didn't mean he didn't want her to be his own.
Both men practically teleported to the medi-witch as she exited the room. She looked confused but explained to them that the little girl had been born and they could go see her. Neither of them looked at each other but Harry mumbled something, faltered in his step, and headed back to the waiting room. Draco wasn't going to ask what was wrong, nor did he care, so he pushed forward and followed the medi-witch to Hermione's room. Before they got there, medi-witches and wizards were pouring in and out of the room. Draco scowled as one of them said to the other, "She gave birth already. We can't keep her here if she's...not going to make it."
He shoved the offending parties out of the way until he tripped himself through the doorway of the room to see her. He remembered why he hated hospitals so much as he glared at the white, barren walls of the room. There was furniture, sure, but not enough to make it feel less unwelcoming. Hermione lay in the hospital bed, her face contorted and pale. Her brown curls were frizzier than he remembered them being, fanning out across her pillow, sweat beading at her forehead as she took slow, deep breaths. She peeked open her deep brown eyes and at the sight of Draco at the foot of her bed, she smiled, raising her arm and weakly beckoning him to her. He obeyed, shuffling to her side and sitting down in the chair. He reached for her hand, trying not to frown more at the clammy palm she pressed to his. "Where's Harry? And Abigail? I want to see them, both of them."
His chest constricted slightly at the fact that she asked for Harry, but he pushed it away. "Potter got scared," he said quietly with a small smirk, "guess that renowned bravery needed a break." The normal condescending lilt in his voice drops away as he watched her with sad, gray eyes. She smiled at him in hopes that he'd stop looking at her that way, but he didn't. She squeezed his hand gently, brushing her fingers over his knuckles. "Abigail, huh? That's a —"
Before he can finish, the door opened. A medi-witch walked in carrying a tiny pink bundle and blushing sheepishly behind her is Harry. Draco pointedly rose from his seat and moved towards the bundle while Harry leaned towards Hermione, placing a gentle kiss on her lips. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned his head against hers while Draco took Abigail from the medi-witch's arms. She was quiet, twitching slightly with her eyes closed. It was hard to tell anything about who she looked like. Her head was full of brown hair like Hermione's and her soft features even mimicked the muggleborn witch. He hesitated before he walked over to Hermione and handed her the child.
Hermione and Harry both glanced at the blonde, Harry with a suspicious look and Hermione with a tempered smile. She turned to Harry and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I need to talk to Draco...alone." The dark haired wizard shot him another contemptuous look, but turned back to Hermione who appeared too weak to handle anything other than cooperation. He leaned in to kiss her again, his fingers sliding over the cheek of the baby, before he stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
"So," Draco started, returning to his seat in the nearby chair, "She looks like you."
Hermione's fingers wiggled in between the blankets to brush against the baby's hands and across her cheeks. "She does, doesn't she?"
"You're not well." Draco's voice sounds strained, like he's trying to talk through gritted teeth, like he's trying to talk through pain. Hermione looked up at him and her brown eyes stared until he returned her eye contact. She smiled warmly and held her hand out towards him. He tentatively took it and felt her squeeze it gently.
"I know. They said...I lost too much blood." She let out a small sigh, the smile on her face wavering as she gazed down at her daughter. He wanted so desperately to ask her about Abigail, but watching her hold the little girl washed all of those concerns from his mind. Hermione looked slightly worried but she dipped down to kiss Abigail's forehead and withdrew with a smile. It was frightening, the idea of knowing that you were going to die. Draco could have only imagined what was going through her mind and he dared not to ask.
"I'm okay with it," she announced as if she had an idea of his thought process, "I really am. Abby...she's got plenty of people to look after her." Hermione looked up at Draco pointedly and nodded softly towards him. Her eyelids fluttered gently and she looked down at her now wide awake baby. "Harry...Harry should be here."
Draco bit back a vicious comment as he stood but stopped the second that Hermione spoke again.
"She's yours."
He looked over his shoulder with a frown, watching Hermione sink back into the pillows, resting Abigail against her chest. He moved back towards the bed and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead sagely and on her lips chastely before lifting Abigail from her mother's arms. Draco opened the door to beckon Harry in and as the other wizard entered the room, Hermione shut her eyes. Harry collapsed at her bedside, taking her hands in his own and kissing them fiercely. She was warm and she squeezed his hands as tightly as she could, but keeping her eyes open was too much to ask of the slowly dwindling witch. She managed to murmur something to him and smile weakly before her body fell limp and lifeless, peacefully at rest. Draco turned away with a grimace before looking down at his daughter.
His daughter. He looked at her and saw the spitting image of Hermione. The contours of her nose, the shapes of her lips, the frame of her face and the dark brown curls scattered across her head. She looked exactly like her, except for when she blinked her eyes open slowly. Draco stared down into the clear grey eyes staring back up at him, his heart beating wildly. Abigail seemed to notice the man with eyes like hers and didn't rustle much in his grip. She whined a little and he shifted uncomfortably, leaving the room to go into the hallway and find a nurse to take care of her.
It was because of that decision that Draco was in the bathroom gathering his wits together when Abigail had passed away. The tiny infant girl with his eyes had just stopped breathing in the nursery without any rhyme or reason. He had returned to the nursery to be greeted with an empty space and terrible news that made a small part of his heartache. He didn't stop to talk to Harry, who most likely knew that Abigail was his child, and didn't stop to listen to the reasoning of the nurses. He just went home to the solitude of his flat where no one was dead and no one would tell him that anyone was dying.
He hadn't expected Abigail to be his, but he had prepared in the case that she was. He had cleared out an entire room in his flat that hadn't been painted. There were a few things still in bags in the corners of the room, but the most noticeable change had been a crib still in the box in the center of the floor. Draco wondered whether he should have returned those things now that there was no child, there wasn't even a mother of the child anymore. Just him, the father of a child who hadn't lived with a woman who wasn't his and hadn't lived either.
But then part of him settled with a melancholy frown. Maybe it would be better if he kept these things in this room for whenever he felt that gentle pulling ache in his chest. Maybe he could just keep this room full of these things in their memory.
notes: i renamed and rewrote this because i feel like it can flow a little better this way than the previous draft. i changed the title (and her name) because i wrote this before a large majority of canon (and the creation of the hp lexicon). enjoy!