"That smarmy, good for nothing, son of a bitch, dickhead in the membrane, nincompoop, tweerpy little ferret!" Hermione cursed aloud as she stared at the stick in her hands. She shook it, hoping it was wrong, but the purple dot remained.

Someone was going to die.


A loud bang, followed by a never ending crash echoed form the foyer of the finest restaurant in Diagon Alley, startling its finest diners from their fancy dinners. Draco turned away from his date as the sound of loud voices, one angry and feminine, the other pleading and male argued back and forth, yet at the same time coming closer to the dining room. The voice of the maitre d' called out one final "Please!" before someone appeared in the doorway, appearing extremely angry and beautiful all at once. Diner's stopped their conversations to peer at the unexpected evening interruption and frown in dismay.

Draco was surprised to see Granger, not just with the attention gathering and rude entrance, but looking like she did. Her fists were clenched and her hair was no longer the silky tamed mass he'd known it to be last time he'd seen her. In fact, her hair looked wild and stressed out. Fury emanated from her body, her eye's narrowing in anger as they peered around the room, searching each table, while her lips pulled and pouted into a horribly thin line creating a look that promised hell to whomever she was searching for. She looked like one cranky lioness on a short leash, anger barely contained and ready to spill over at the slightest prompt.

Suddenly she was moving, striding with angry grace amongst the many tables, skirting patrons and lone chairs in her path as she moved across the room, unconcerned with the fact that she held everyone's attention.

Draco glanced down to search for his drink, wanting a liquid to go with the show that was about to start and when he looked up again, cognac in hand, Granger, in all her gloriously angry beauty, stood before him.

"We need to talk." She seethed out, her arms clenching by her sides once more.

Draco managed a quick look at his date to see that she had shrunk back into her seat at the arrival of the furious lion before them. She was attempting a pitiful move of trying to make her skinny arse self blend into the furniture.

Draco glanced behind the angry woman to his fellow diner's who where watching with unabashed interest and curiosity. No one seemed to be paying attention to the food on their plates, even the waiters had stopped in the tracks, still holding trays laden down with new and dirty dishes or drinks.

"Granger, unless you haven't noticed, I'm currently on a date and hence, busy."

Draco said smoothly, his voice low enough to make it clear that her intrusion wasn't appreciated and not allow fellow diners an in on the conversation.

Hermione let out a low, almost hysterical chuckle. "I have and I don't care. We need to talk now and we need to do it privately."

Draco held the gaze of the furious lioness before he looked away towards his date and took a sip of his drink nonchalantly. "Later Granger. Arrange a meeting with my secretary for tomorrow morning if it's that important." He said lazily.

Draco watched as she visibly tried to restrain herself. Her body quivered and her face tilted that much more.

Then, without further ado, she grabbed his arm and yanked him up out of the chair. Being so roughly and unexpectedly pulled in the wrong and awkward direction sent his chair falling over backwards and the glass in his hand falling to the floor.

"Listen here you smarmy little ferret." She hissed, her voice carrying to the nearest tables only. She dropped her hold on his arm and raised her left hand in a shocking and dead on punch to the shoulder. Draco stepped back with the shock of being hit by Granger, totally unprepared for a punch from the usually calm Gryffindor. "Because of you; right, you, the pureblood supremely stuck up Malfoy of high wizarding society…" Hermione let her voice drift as she watched Draco's eyebrow lift into an expectant and supremely smug expression. She socked him again in the stomach and while he was bent over, winded from the strength of her punch, she raised her knee and aimed for the money maker…or baby maker.

A groan was her answer as well as a few sympathy hisses and whispers from the diners, still enthralled with the scene before them.

"Maybe that'll make you think with your other head next time you try sticking that rod where the sun don't shine. I'm pregnant you dickwad and it's all your bloody fault!" Hermione screamed.

In the stunned silence that followed, both from diners and Draco, Hermione turned on her heel and strode out of the room, ignoring looks of shock and horror from the high society bigoted women and the scared resultant looked from the men in the room.

It was difficult to say which shocked the many people in the room more. For one thing, they'd just witnessed one member of the famous Golden Trio lose their cool in front of the public and the most calm and logical one at that. Hermione Granger was never known to raise her voice, swear or physically assault a person and yet in one evening, in five short minutes, the patrons of Le Cygne had witnessed history. To make things much more interesting, a well-known pureblood had slept with a mud-muggleborn and now they were expecting a child. And the point which made the many gossipmongers in the room even more excited with anticipation, Miss Granger didn't appear to like that idea. At all.


Hermione paced back and forth across her living room, her mouth twisting and turning as she muttered obscenities under her breath at one Draco Malfoy, father of her unborn child. She'd gone through her pensieve to recall exactly what had gone wrong, half certain they had used a contraception charm before their one night of bliss. The memory was blurred somewhat from the amount of alcohol she'd had at the celebration for the new Minister for Magic Myer Kingston, the first female Minister for Magic. Hermione had been a close friend of Myer's since she'd meet her randomly in Flourish and Botts, scrambling to buy the last copy of Hogwarts, A History's latest edition. After a tug of war (where Hermione eventually triumphed) they'd become best friends quick.

So of course she was there to cheer on her friend as she was voted in for Minister of Magic. And then stayed longer, surrounded by alcohol and guys who continually hit on her. She wasn't interested, and it was only as she was leaving that Hermione had run into Draco and he'd used her as a line of defence against the woman who he'd brought as a date to the party and had suddenly become clingy. They'd disappeared…miraculously back to his apartment somehow and done the one plus one tango, horizontal folk dance, party in the bedroom; however you would call it; mating dance.

And hadn't seen each other since.

So Hermione had recalled her memory, examined it from every angle (literally) and found the faux-pas in the whole contraceptive issue.

Malfoy had pronounced the words contra pre natus, slurring them under the influence of alcohol. Hermione remembered only one warning that went along with the contraception charm, a charm that every witch and wizard learnt during his or her teens and that was Do. Not. In any way. Mispronounce. The Words.

It had been drilled into them for a whole period and the only way they could have escaped the hell of that period was to be able to pronounce the charm correctly and repeatedly.

Hermione had seen herself in the memory reaching out to her wand to perform the spell herself but Draco had knocked her hands away and said he'd do it instead. He did and well, she was too busy moaning to hear him say it correctly, or as the case was, incorrectly.

A loud consistent banging interrupted her thinking and had her grimly smiling in the knowledge that Draco had finally arrived. Moving towards the door, she passed the kitchen bench and picked up an apple that lay resting in the fruit bowl. Scanning it for any blemishes, she took a bite as she slowly wondered towards the door.

The banging only persisted and it was a few minutes before Hermione finally deigned to open the door to a very irritated Draco Malfoy.

She leaned nonchalantly against the doorjamb and took another bite of her apple as she studied the sight in front of her. Draco was something to behold in this fractious, angry and infuriated state, all three emotions coming together to form one very, very unstable man. His steel grey eyes chilled as they fell upon her before he brushed past her into her decent sized apartment. He strode past her, into her living room and turned around to face her, his gaze settling solidly on her form, glancing once down at her abdomen.

Hermione remained in the doorway, leaning against it as she finished off her apple, her face carefully calm.

Silence reigned in the apartment, each looking at the other, one fuming and the other silently awaiting the inevitable outburst that was surely to come.

It did, not even a minute later.

"Who-, no." He paused, as if thinking better of his sentence and train of thought and changed his mind. "Your pregnant?" he asked, his voice eerily calm for the air about him. Something, Hermione knew was absolutely a sure sign that this man was really trying to control the fury that bubbled below the surface.

"Someone mispronounced the contraceptive charm." She stated a-matter-of-factly, adding a pointed look to get across the seriousness of the situation and the person on which the blame would thereby lay. With a slight sniff of distaste towards his stupidity, she finally shut the door and moved to stand across the room from Draco.

"I did?" He asked with the tone of incredulity, raising his hand to point towards himself as if the very thought of blame could not possibly be associated nor placed upon his very head. "For such a know-it-all, always right and perfect; you should know it took two to tango, what about your fault in all of this?"

"What?" Hermione asked, the hand holding the apple dropping to her side as she straightened indignantly. "My fault? If I recall, the problem of contraception fell solely in your hands. You wouldn't even allow me to reach for my wand to cast the charm. You knocked my hand away and said you would do it yourself."

Draco looked as if he was about to refute her claim, his mouth opened as if to do so but just in time, he closed it.

Clearly he was at a loss as to what he was going to say about this whole…ordeal. So Hermione stepped back into the short hallway and went to dispose of her apple core, careless of the fact that Draco Malfoy remained uncertain, unsure and still extremely furious in the middle of her living room. In fact she was over this whole deal of 'finding out' and 'working out' what they both were going to do about the situation they'd found themselves in. Personally she'd had the whole day to deal with the new situation she'd found herself in, she was pregnant and would have a baby to care for in another seven months. While not at the appropriate and designated time in her life (really by now she should be swinging up the proverbial ladder rungs on her career and sitting comfortably on a rung near the top), she was half way through her set career path and most definitely not attached to the father of her child in any way shape or form.

But she was pregnant, to her first child and whether by accident or on purpose, she was going to love and cherish her first child.

She would adjust her mind set, change her focus from her career to the financial and living security of her baby and she and her child would live comfortably and be well loved.

She'd been angry when she'd found out she was pregnant, yes. But she'd been angry at Draco (her last sexual partner, not that she was free and liberal with her sexual partners mind you) for not casting the charm properly, for knocking her hand away and taking 'responsibility' for the charm. For not saying it properly, for avoiding/making it difficult to contact him all day, for thinking he could just walk away the morning after…

But she'd gotten over it once she'd finally told him, finally had the pleasure of causing his precious image and reputation damage. It was like her anger had been sucked out of her, replaced with the smug pleasure of stunning the most unshakable man she'd ever met.

"So, now that you know you got me pregnant and will have a child through me in another seven months time, you can leave." Hermione said smoothly, as she moved back into the living room where Draco had remained.

Her words must have snapped him out of whatever daze he'd gone into, because suddenly he was charging forward, stopping just short of herself.

"I hope you don't expect me to play the invisible father roll in this child's life, because if you do Granger, then you've got another thing coming. That child shares my DNA, my blood and by Merlin he will know his father, his family and be given everything a Malfoy deserves."

Hermione was silently relieved that he had taken her word for the truth and hadn't called her a liar. She wasn't; this baby she carried was by far and wide Draco's without a single tiny percent of a doubt. Instead, what put her hackles up was the ideas or life path per say, that Draco was suddenly pushing on their child.

"My child will not grow up in a family like yours without me around to negate the teachings I have no doubt your family will gladly instil upon her. She will grow up with me. I will allow you visitation any time you want, but I plan to have sole legal custody considering I am the one that will be carrying this child and eventually giving birth to her. I heard the rumours and later, the recollections of what went on in your childhood, how you were treated by your parents and I will in no way allow my daughter to be subjected to that treatment by any of her relatives regardless of how high and mighty they think they are or how much more they can offer her. I too have a nest egg for my offspring which I will use to give my daughter the best of the best while maintaining a grounding of character. I do not want to have a spoiled, stuck up, arrogant and spiteful child on my hands rivaling the likes of you in our days of Hogwarts."

It was a rather large declaration of how things were going to go, but Hermione was satisfied that she'd gotten her point across. She was not going to let her daughter come into consistent contact with the likes of Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy no matter how much they proclaimed to the public they'd changed. She'd been at their mercy once before, she'd seen the results of their methods of parenting, their social circles and she was by far-

"Do not insinuate such slander against the names of my parents. They went through just as much as everyone else did in the war, if not more. My father has paid dearly for his choices and both my parents wish to firmly put the past behind them. Yes I may not have had the greatest nor easiest upbringing in the world but what do expect of a family that held close ties for a while with the most vilest and cruelest man in all wizarding history. Torture and killings were among some of the sights that most of us children witnessed due to their parent's social circles and I know first hand and with a vehemence that I will not in anyway subject any child to that loss of innocence, let alone my own. I vowed early on that I would bring up my own child with a stronger sense of morals and justice than what was developed in me by my parents. In fact Granger," here his scowl and thunderously dark look lightened most perceptively into that trademark smirk of his. "I think a Gryffindor like yourself would be most proud."

Hermione was at a loss of what to say.

Really, she hadn't expected that. Not the defence of his parents as that was more a sign of loyalty, but the idea that he'd raise his child with Gryffindor morals…?

Silence lingered in the room as each processed what had been said so far.

"I think we each need to sit down and hash out what is going to happen between us." Draco said eventually, his confidence slowly ebbing from him, giving Hermione the impression that he was determined to get his own way.

"And how are we going to do that. We each are determined to live out our plans in regards to our daughter."

"Son." Draco corrected automatically.

"Daughter."

"Son."

"Daughter."

The idea of a civilized conversation to discuss the issue of how they would raise their child quickly disappeared as their tempers once again escalated while they heatedly argued whether their child was actually doing to be a girl.

"Son!"