Written for Round 12 of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. Probably one of the shortest stories I've written, but enjoy! (Warning: I'm probably not the best at writing arguments)

Prompt #7 – Dialogue: "Keep looking at me like that, I dare you."

Prompt #12 – A blessing in disguise

Hermione was the first thing that Draco saw when he stumbled in through the front door, clearly drunk.

She was rigidly sat on his black leather armchair, arms folded across her chest and one leg crossed over her knee. She looked like a child in his chair; her small feet barely even skimmed the carpet beneath her, and Draco was unable to smother a lopsided smirk.

Hermione's eyebrows pulled together at his lack of seriousness and pursed her lips, angry beyond belief. He stood in the doorway for a moment, before trying to walk towards her with minimal swaying – and his little act of pretending as if he wasn't drunk would've been convincing for the most part, if he didn't smell as strongly as alcohol as he did. It was as if he had been rolling around in it.

Once he reached her, he ungracefully fell to his knees and slowly trailed his hands up her legs, placing sloppy kisses to the bared skin of her neck. Hermione knew what he was trying to do however; for the few moments that he just stared at her, she could tell that somewhere in the back of his mind it had registered that she was angry with him about something. Before his hands could even reach past her knees, she placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him away. He sat on his heels and stared up at her with the sad eyes that he used to get whatever he wanted, and she was loathe to admit it, but she did usually give in under that look.

But not tonight. It was bad enough that he had forgotten after he had promised - but he only made her even more infuriated knowing that he was out drinking with his friends again.

"Keep looking at me like that, I dare you," she said quietly. Draco stared at her for a few seconds, still with the fake apologetic look in his eyes, before standing up and replacing it with a guarded gleam in his eyes. Though she also knew that he was standing up to make himself feel as if he had the power in this situation and to possibly intimidate her, knowing about her previous relationship with Ron, she stayed seated in the armchair.

"What is it now?" He asked harshly, his words slurring together slightly. He turned around so she couldn't see his face, and walked a few paces away from her. "Did I do something wrong, for what - the thousandth time?"

Hermione glared at his back. She hated all of his tricks and ploys. Couldn't he just try, for once, and behave like a normal boyfriend – no kissing his way out of things, no begging looks and no guilt trips. "Stop it!" She spat. "Stop behaving like you're the only one who is suffering! Stop acting as if you're the only one who ever does something wrong!"

"But I am!" He growled suddenly. "I don't see you waking every night with the screams of those you tortured ringing in your ears. I don't see you having anxiety attacks every week or so because you're worried that today might be the day when the Death Eaters escape Azkaban – because, let's face it, it has happened before – and murder me, sending me straight to the one place I deserve. Hell." He punched the wall with a noise that seemed to be crossed with a sob and a feral cry. The picture hanging on it of them in Paris fell and smashed to the floor. He didn't seem to notice the glass crack beneath his shoes as he stepped forward to brace his hands on the wall.

"Will you keep quiet?" Hermione shrilled, trying to keep her voice low. She pushed herself up from the chair, disregarding any previous promises she made to herself about staying put. "Do you know what your problem is?"

He quickly cut Hermione off with his sarcastic reply. "Well, I'm sure as hell that you are going to fucking tell me-"

"Your problem," Hermione continued as if Draco hadn't spoken, "is that you don't think about anyone else. Remember that my two-year-old daughter is asleep upstairs. Or since you let us both start living here, did you forget that we existed?"

"I let you both move in out of kindness. Out of the kindness of my heart! How is that not thinking about other people?"

"No, you let us move in out of the selfishness of your heart! We were invited here because of this ludicrous idea that you have, that if you do these "random acts of kindness" then you'll not be sent to Hell, since you seem to believe that it exists!"

Draco whipped his head around and shot her a glare so harsh that she flinched. It reminded her too much of the way Ron would look whenever he came home drunk or angry, which she counted to be the number one reason why she hated it whenever Draco came home wasted. He had promised when they had first fallen in love that though he could be more trouble than he was worth (which she had understood then, it had barely been more than a year since the War), he'd be the man that Ron started off as. Months after he had confessed that to her, and he'd asked her to stay with him instead – because he couldn't stand to not know whether she was okay or not. She had straight up refused him the first time, saying that she would never leave her daughter, Rose, with him. A few weeks later, Draco had returned to her again in the middle of the night, urgent, saying to grab Rosie and as many clothes as she could because he had created a spare room for her and they were moving in now.

Needless to say, the rest was history.

"You chose for Rose to stay here because it was the only way that I would live here."

"Of course she wasn't on the forefront of my mind," he muttered. Still, it was loud enough for her to hear. "She's not my daughter. I don't owe her anything."

"So you admit it?" Oddly enough, Hermione didn't feel any less hurt now that she knew the truth. People lie, sometimes, when they that the truth will set you free. Sometimes, the truth will lock you in a room and throw away the key.

"What do you want from me?" He asked softly. "I tell you the truth Hermione, and it angers you. I don't tell you anything and you don't talk to me for a day or two." He turned around again, this time to face her. His shoulders were slumped forward slightly, showing defeat, but he still stared at her with as much pride as he could've mustered. "If you want the truth then Granger, I meant what I said about Rose. When I asked, I didn't spare a second's thought about her. Truth be told, I don't even like thinking that you had a child with thatlow-life. But you said you wouldn't leave without Rose, so I had to change the terms. Are you blaming me for saving your life?"

"And what about the Hell part?" She sniffed. "Are you denying that?"

"Why do you even care?"

"Because there's no such thing as Hell," she stressed. "And I don't like you constantly saying that that's where you're going."

"Oh, there is sweetheart. I'm not sure about a Heaven, but there's a Hell." He chuckled to himself as if he felt what he said was truly funny. "And I've got a one-way ticket."

Hermione sighed and fell back into the chair. She was tired and bored of the same arguments, and severely pissed off that this row – the one that should've been taken more seriously than their others – was just another game to him. She was ready to leave their problems for now and face them later. She had been getting exhausted quickly nowadays, and if Draco paid her a little bit more attention, she hoped he'd notice the little bump. Briefly, she placed her hand on her stomach and said a prayer to any deity who was listening, wishing that Draco overcame his demons by the time the child was born. Hermione pushed up from the chair moments later and muttered a goodnight to him as she made her way to the stairs.

"What are these?" He asked, sounding more sober than he was moments ago.

His voice made Hermione freeze and she turned her head around to see that he was holding the scan photos in his hands, going through each one with a curious expression on his equally tired face. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that she had left them on the coffee table, she thought. "Pregnancy scans. I had my first one today," she practically whispered. "You forgot."

She didn't need to see him to know that he was nodding his head. "So that's what you were angry about." He cut himself off suddenly, as if he didn't realise that the words had slipped out of his mouth until he had finished saying them. Hermione shook her head and let the first tear slide down her cheek, still facing away from him so that he would never know the extent of it. Her white-knuckled grip on the banister eased up slightly when she felt a hand slide its way from her waist to rest on her stomach, but when she remembered whom it was it tightened again. His alcoholic breath came out in puffs on her face, and she felt sick. "Hermione," he said softly. "Hermione, I'm sorry. You have every right to be mad, and I know I've broken the promises that I made to you already – I'm so sorry."

She choked on a sob as she tried to hold it in and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand before he could think of doing it for her. "Do you know that, no matter how bad he was at the beginning, he never forgot that I was pregnant with Rose? He always remembered; remembered when I had appointments, remembered what made me sick. Even after I had given birth to her, and he took the considerable turn down the abusive road, he still remembered that Rose existed.

"There's one more confession I want from you Draco Malfoy – one more. Was it the appointment you forgot about or did you forget about the baby? Because, it's your child. You owe them everything."

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