this is an outline of an expansion I'll never write that I jotted down for coffeequeen73. it's been on tumblr for a while and I finally moved a copy over here.
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Hermione wasn't that drunk. What she was was angry. She and Ron had had another fight, and this one had been bad. They'd both screamed they were done and fine and FINE and stormed out. It wasn't the first time, and, if history was any guide, they'd both apologize the next day, but she was angry and reckless and she went to a pub and had one drink.
So she wasn't drunk.
Draco wasn't that drunk either, but it was easier to pretend afterward he'd been too intoxicated to make good decisions than admit angry, reckless Hermione was a turn on.
She talked about Ron, though, and he knew she was going to go back to the miserable bastard, knew this was a one night stand and nothing more, and so lashed out because he didn't want to be the one who cared more.
And she hadn't had any intention of it being more than one night. She was angry and wanted to twist the knife in Ron's gut as hard as she could and fucking Draco Malfoy seemed like a good way to do that.
When she realized she was pregnant, she and Ron broke up. Again. This time for good. Ron hadn't exactly spent the night of their big fight alone himself, so they were able to reconstruct a friendship, but raising Draco Malfoy's bastard child as his own was more than he could manage.
For eleven years Hermione stayed at the border of the Muggle and wizarding worlds, not wanting her child - who was really, really obviously Draco Malfoy's child - to be tarred and feathered with the Death Eater stigma she was sure had to follow him around. Imogen grew up with the Weaselys and Uncle Harry and other than that had almost no contact with the wizarding world.
When Draco realized Hermione had kept his child from him he was so angry he wanted to throttle her, and far more hurt than he expected. How could she think he'd do anything but love a child?
He briefly fantasized about fighting her for custody, using every resource his still very wealthy family had to take Imogen and never let Hermione see her again. He dropped the idea only because it would hurt Imogen and it had taken him .001 seconds upon seeing the girl to know he'd lie to the dark lord for her and kill anyone who tried to hurt her.
He understood his mother in a way he never had and sent her flowers 'Just Because.'
It took Imogen less than a minute to figure out Draco Malfoy was the father she had that no one liked to talk about. She eavesdropped on adult conversations a lot and knew most of the people in her small world hated her father and that her mother had avoided him for years. Whenever she and her mother had fought, she'd fantasized her father, who would be rich and look just like her and buy her anything she wanted, would swoop down and take her away.
Not that she really wanted to be taken away. She loved her mother dearly, but they did fight.
She wasn't at all sure what a Death Eater was. No one talked about the war. At all. Ever.
The first flying lesson did a lot to assuage Draco's jealousy. He wasn't sure he'd ever forgive Hermione for letting Potter - POTTER - teach his daughter to fly, but that the man had been right shite at it helped tremendously. Harry could fly, but he didn't have any idea how he did it, and hadn't been able to explain. Draco had the patience to explain and explain he did and by the end of the afternoon Imogen could sit a broom better than she had, and was flying cautiously to and fro behind the Manor.
Hermione almost had a panic attack when she walked in the door, and Draco cursed himself for forgetting she'd been tortured there. They'd had their night of lust at his flat, but it didn't have yards and there was no place for Imogen to fly there, so he'd brought her to the Manor.
The first week she was at school he bought a large house with a big yard so he could fly with her without Hermione having to go to the Manor.
Dinner after they put Imogen on the train is predictably tense. Hermione hands over photo albums and Draco looks through them in near silence as they eat the excellent food and drink the excellent vintage and try very hard to stay civil and adult.
They go back to her flat so he can see more photographs. He tries not to cry as he flips through page after page of her life, a life he wasn't allowed to share.
Hermione suggests he take them home with him so he can have copies made.
Imogen sends an owl home to her mother with her Sorting (Slytherin) and Hermione tells Draco when he returns the albums, copies made. She expresses concern that the girl will struggle in Slytherin because she's a half blood. Draco dismisses those fears. If anything she'd be likely to struggle because she's a Malfoy, not because she's a halfblood. There are lots of halfbloods in Slytherin. It's not like she's a - and he stops.
Hermione gets dangerously quiet. Not like she's a what, she asks.
You know what I mean, Draco says.
She suggests he leave.
He comes back the next day to apologize and try to explain. She screams at him that she gets it, he's still the same prejudiced arse he always was, that Muggle-borns (excuse her, mudbloods, and Draco flinches at the slur) are lesser beings. It's their first real fight since Draco and Imogen met and it's ugly. They're both smart and articulate and they say horrible, horrible things to one another.
They don't talk for two weeks.
Draco owls her to see if there are any restrictions on what he can get Imogen for Christmas.
Hermione responds that she's sure his judgement is fine.
He asks if he can see his daughter on Christmas.
It almost kills her to write it, but Hermione says he can spend Christmas with them if he wants to
He shows up the next day, apologizing again for the Muggle-born comment. She listens as he tries to explain his prejudice, and she hears him trying to understand it himself and it makes her really fucking tired because she doesn't see why she, as the minority, has to help the bigot understand his feelings, but he's Imogen's father so she grits her teeth and lets him talk. At one point he says, "I'm an arsehole, aren't I?" and she says, "Pretty much." He laughs at that, a kind of forlorn, lost laugh, and that chips another hole in the very thick wall between them. He asks if he could take her out for dinner again. He's so desperate to talk about Imogen. He wants every story. Hermione agrees and they meet for dinner.
Dinner becomes standing, weekly event. Draco can be charming when he wants to be, and he does. By Christmas, they're almost friends.
When they pick Imogen up at the train station she's taller, wearing makeup, and talking nonstop about Hogwarts. She loves Hogwarts. What she doesn't mention is that she's been cornered three times by people who sneer at her for being a Death Eater's daughter, or that she beat one of them up pretty badly.
Harry and Ron taught her to fight when she was nine, suggesting she just not mention it to her mother.
They had a feeling Hogwarts might be rough.
Draco has bought WAY too many presents. It's actually obscene how many gifts she has to open.
They go to the Weasley's for Christmas dinner.
It's awkward.
Molly, however, adores Imogen, and she's had mixed feelings about Hermione's decision to keep the girl a secret from her father, and now that Draco knows, Molly decides she has to be nice and she really tries.
It helps that Draco really can be charming when he wants to be and he's smart enough to know antagonizing the girl's surrogate extended family doesn't end well for him.
Molly proclaims him 'delightful' after three glasses of wine.
This is when Hermione and Draco find out she's been getting flack for the Death Eater thing. She retreated to the library and learned everything she could about Voldemort, the Death Eaters, and her father's involvement. She's good at research. She basically knows everything and she's outraged as only a child can be that he was considered anything but a victim. They overhear her berating Rose at length about how dare anyone condemn her father. Draco's touched and Ron laughs so hard he almost falls off his chair. She's just like her mother, he says. Remember SPEW?
By the time her first year is done, Draco and Hermione are fairly comfortably friends.
Lucius and Narcissa take to Imogen immediately. It helps that she looks exactly like Draco and these are people who value family above everything. They have a harder time accepting Hermione,and Lucius makes noises about adopting the girl and cutting Hermione out, but Draco derails him. She needs her mother, he says, and Narcissa takes his side and decides she will win Hermione over if it kills her because Hermione is the mother of her granddaughter. It isn't easy, and they aren't ever bffs, but eventually they have a civil, pleasant relationship.
Draco and Imogen have their first fight during the summer holiday. She's being a brat because she's a kid and she screams she hates him, that he can go away now, she doesn't need a father.
He goes white.
Hermione lights into her. That is not acceptable, young lady, and you will apologize right now. We do not speak to family like that.
Imogen stomps off to her room with every inch of stomping force only an almost-12-year-old can manage.
Family, Draco asks Hermione once the girl is gone.
Well, yes, she says. Obviously.
And that's when they kiss.
Then they have sex. The first bout is bad. REALLY bad. And they both lie there afterward waiting for the other person to say something nasty. At last Draco says he hopes she doesn't plan to judge him on that alone, and they laugh, and everything is okay.
Except it turns out they are REALLY fucking fertile with one another.
And she gets pregnant.
Ron laughs himself sick and Harry demands to know if she's ever heard of contraceptive charms.
Hermione is embarrassed and furious and happy because it's so different this time and she doesn't spent her whole pregnancy angry
Narcissa holds the baby (a boy: Scorpius James) during the wedding.