Title: In Front of Your Eyes
Rating: FRK
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Just the idea.
Spoilers: OotP
Summary: The fireplace cackled as the parchment engulfed into flames, smiling faces smothered in a blue and orange flame. A husband is very, very angry. What has made him so?
'Me, Myself, and I want to know…
Hero Comes Home
Written by Rita Skeeter,
10 years, 10 long years since Dark Wizard You-Know-Who was vanquished, his conqueror returns to Wizarding Britain. Yes, Witches and Wizards, Harry Potter is home. The much anticipated appearance occurred today by Apparation near Ministry of Magic Headquarters earlier this morning. And just at the right time too. With the promotion of new Minister of Magic, Arthur Weasley, and the fifth birthday of fellow trio compadres, Ronald and Hermione Weasley's son, James, coming up, Mr. Potters visit couldn't have been any better. The convenient, not-so-coincidental visit also marks the recent birth of former flame, Ginevra's first child with hus...'
And with that, the study's only occupant threw the gossip filled Daily Prophet into the fireplace hearth, the floo cackling as the parchment engulfed into flames, smiling faces and words dripping with spite, smothered in by a blue and orange dancer.
But even so, the destruction of such did not make the Wizard happy.
Harry-bleeding-Potter was back! His blood boiled with very sentence. He couldn't believe it! After ten of the most blissful years of his life, that one sentence, that one name, could bring it all crashing down.
But why?
Why did the news fill him with such distain? Why did the name give such a foul taste in his mouth? Why were his retching reflexes in top notch with one glance at The-Boy-Who-Just-Wouldn't-Die, as his image burned into soot?
"Bloody hell!" the occupant sprang from his seat in front of the fire with rage, sending his tumbler of Brandy in way of the much demised Prophet. Glass shattering, and a volatile hiss as liquid met flame, was the response in the floo lit room.
Of all the Wizards in Britain, why was it that the speckled wonder boy gave him no end of grief…though he supposed the feeling was mutual. How he loathed him with every fiber of his being, all the way from his white-blond roots, down to his loafer encased feet. If there was one soul in the world that enraged him more than his father and cohorts, and that was a feet in itself, it was that four eyed Gryffindork.
Draco Malfoy let out a curse, quickly followed by another and another until a mighty impressive, very crude sentence was formed.
Throwing himself back into his wingback chair with a huff, he buried his face in his hands, shaking with rage. The answer still eluding him.
Why did such hostility arise at Harry Potter's arrival?
Launching himself out of his chair, he marched across the room, thrust open his study door, and stormed up the stairs to his chambers, cold fury in every step.
As he made his way up the escarpment at the Manor, somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he really had no logical reason to hate the fellow Wizard. Potter hadn't done anything to him, that he admitted, he hadn't deserved. On the contrary, it was the other way around. Draco had been the one to mercilessly hound the boy at Hogwarts, if not for his chosen associates, then his parentage or his Gryffindor qualities... which Draco silently mused, in the right person, those qualities were quite attractive. But his unjust anger in the return was clouding his ability to reason. He didn't know why he hated the boy, her just did.
His feet landed on the west wing hallway with a thud, venting his frustrations into the maroon carpet below him. He stomped thunderously, though quite elegantly, down the hall towards his chambers, only to notice a faint glow from the room adjacent, and to the right a little. Coming up to the doorway, he leaned against the frame, hands sliding effortlessly into his pockets, anger dissipating instantly.
The room was alit by the light glow of the fireplace, charmed to never go out. Ivory curtains hung from silver rods, above two casement double door windows, in the front and back of the room. A large armoire was to the left of the doorway, while a book shelf and table were on the back wall. A rocking chair sat with its back to the right window at a diagonal, while a bassinet was to its left.
All Draco could do was stare in awe, mouth slightly agape, eyes lidded with contempt.
Rocking back and forth lazily was the Witch he was immensely proud to call his wife, humming a slight tune, as her downcast eyes regarded a strawberry-blond infant at her left breast, pink lips latching on to the dusty rose peek.
He wasn't sure of how long he stood there, or when she even noticed his presence as her eyes never left the infant, but when she spoke in a hushed whisper, he was mildly shocked at her perceptiveness.
"You read the Daily Prophet."
His eyes tore away from the child suckling at her breast to her face.
"How…?" He was always amazed at how she could read him, and this was one of those times.
"I heard you storming up the stairs."
Draco inwardly cringed. In the state of rage he was in, his mind was completely void of the wife and child also occupying the wing. Shame engulfed him.
"I'm sorry." He apologized sheepishly, something he had taken to doing during their courting, if not to appease her than to reap the rewards… though nowadays he did it because it was right.
She smiled, but said nothing as her attention was diverted back to the 34 day old infant.
Tender moments passed as he stood and watched. The faint chime of a grandfather clock in the front foyer told him it was 1:30 in the morning, but he paid no heed.
He hadn't even noticed her eyes upon him until she spoke again.
"Come here." She gently prompted.
He did as he was told, making his way to crouch in front of her.
"What do you see?" Draco looked at her with a raised elegant eyebrow. "I don't follow."
"What do you see in front of you?"
Now, Draco had always prided himself on being an intelligent man, but her question had him baffled.
"You, breastfeeding."
"Look harder." To what she earned a crinkled brow. "Look past a woman feeding a child."
His brow creased futher. Was she half-twicked, or was the child sucking brain cells as well as mothers milk?
But nevertheless, he did as he was told.
Long, auburn hair lay atop her shoulders, little stragglies escaping indicating she must have been sleeping before being hailed for a midnight snack. Further south, whiskey eyes, a slight dusting of freckles, and delicate, kissable lips in a small grin. Even further south, a creamy expanse of freckle sprinkled chest, and a left breast peeking through from her off the shoulder nightgown (she refused to wear anything revealing until she got her figure back.). Attached to the nipple of her breast was the smallest pair of blush lips Draco had ever seen, eyelids fluttering while lapping at her mother's juices. Atop her head, lay a skiff of strawberry-blond hiar, and upon her body be a white jumper, underneath an ivory blanket Grandmum had woven her.
'Merlin, I'm a lucky man.' The blond Wizard mused to himself.
It was at that thought that was she was trying to see hit him square in the chest like a Bludger. He wasn't watching a wife breastfeeding a child, he was watching his wife breastfeeding his child. It was a roundabout way, but the easiest, of squashing his unbeknownst insecurities. That even if what he believed was rage at Harry Potter's return it really wasn't. In just looking at the scene before him, she managed to worm her way into his subconscious, take a hold of his anger, jealousy, fear and anxiety, and Obliviate it away. He wasn't angry at Harry Potter, he was afraid… an emotion that he rarely felt, and had up until now, dubbed it rage.
Yes, he was aggravated that his past had come back to haunt him…yet again…and yes, he was a trifle bit jealous of his wife's past relationship with King Gryffindor, but his fear and anxiety of the possibility of Potter ripping the two most important people…besides his mother… away, would have torn him at the seems, leaving a broken, bitter, incensed shell of a once gleefully happy husband and father.
And his ever so perceptive wife had noticed even when he didn't.
As if proving the aforementioned point, she adjusted the child in her arms so she was being held with one arm, to reach out her other arm and run her fingers through her husband's silky hair.
"Exactly." adoration in her eyes.
Their eyes traveled back down to the bundle just in time to see the infant pull away from its mother's breast, a bead of milk on her bottom lip.
Moving as gently as possible, Draco brought it hand up to remove the excess milk with his thumb, only to have five little fingers encase themselves around his index finger.
His heart nearly stopped as baby Malfoy's little mouth opened in a yawn… almost instantaneously with her mother's.
Draco gently pried his finger from his daughter's surprisingly vice like grip, and stood.
"Go to bed. I'll take her."
"Oh, I'm fine." Her body seemed to disagree when she yawned for the second time.
"You're tired. Go to bed."
"You're sure?"
Draco nodded. "Yes. Go."
"But you have to work tomorrow. You can't be late." Draco smiled watching his wife's inner battle of staying with her daughter, or getting a much needed sleep.
"You are forgetting, my dear, I am the owner." He said, referring to the Malfoy ownership of the ruthless, though highly skilled, Falmouth Falcons. "I can be late or away whenever I wish."
"You know, that's a poor work ethic." His wife said feigning a disappointed pout, only to be interrupted by a third yawn. Draco raised a superior eyebrow.
"Fine." She relented, handing over daddy's little girl, who promptly snuggled into the warm heat of her father's shoulder, Draco supporting her with hand on her upper back, and underneath her bottom, a white blanket on his shoulder for spill ups. His wife covered herself up after the feeding session, and placed a barely-there kiss on her daughter's ear.
"I love you both, very much."
Moving to her husband, she placed a hand on his chest, and tentatively kissed his lips. Draco bit lightly, but firmly, on her lower lip, insecurities coming out as if breaking lip contact would lose her forever, and his ways of saying 'I need you' would not be heeded.
His wife sensed this and allowed the kiss to go on further, though keeping in mind not to disturb her daughter for eternity if she caught her parents in a heated snog… not that she would know even if she did.
Throughout the course of their relationship, Mrs. Malfoy had known about her husband's jealousy, and not-holier-than-thou-when-it-comes-to–my-wife tendencies. The fact that the slightly arrogant, and much superior Draco Malfoy all but pleaded for daily reminders that his wife needed him, flattered her. It pleased her to know that even how unnecessarily it was, he was desperate to know that she loved him.
Pulling back, she almost cried when she saw the urgency of confirmation written across his face.
"You have nothing to fear, Draco." She told him. "He might be The-Boy-Who-Lived, but you are The-Man-I-Love." With that, she turned and headed for their private chambers, leaving a sleeping infant and a reassured husband in the nursery.
The next morning, Ginevra Malfoy woke to the chirping of birds, and a cold, vacant spot of where he husband normally lay. Throwing on a housecoat, she made her way across the hall to the next generation of Malfoy. Her heart burst at the sight.
There in the rocking chair was her blond haired, silver eyed husband with a month old infant drooling on his blanket covered chest, both fast asleep and unaware of their audience of one.
Author's Note: I love D/G offspring stories, so I had to write this… and Draco might be a tad OOC but damn is he so cute as a dad!