Hi, everyone. It's a short chapter, but it gets through a few things. Please review!

They stopped on the way to Hermione's office to pick up an assortment of Chinese food. They arrived for their lunch appointment just on time, and were immediately welcomed into her office. They laid out the spread and had each had full plates before they got down to business.

"How is the house going?" Hermione asked with a smile.

"It's wonderful," Harry said, smiling discretely at Draco. They had been working hard on Draco's goal of christening every room in the house, and neither had been brimming with energy since moving in.

"I'm assuming that since you've agreed to come here Draco has shared his big decision with you."

Harry nodded enthusiastically.

"How do you feel about it?"

"Excited. Nervous. I want to be a father so bad, but to tell the truth I had sort of given up on it in the past few months."

"Why did you give up?"

"He just seemed so adamant about not wanting children that I figured I'd rather have him around and happy than have a child."

"So you were ready to give up on your dream for Draco?"

Harry took Draco's hand and squeezed it. "Of course, I'd be lying if I'd tell you that I would have given up on it forever, but I figured it was a lost battle for the time being."

"What do you think it's going to be like, being a father?"

"I think it's going to be great. I'm really excited about it."

"Do you have any concerns about it?"

Harry thought about it for a minute. "I just think I'm going to be a natural dad. I think my biggest concern is being overprotective."

"And Draco? What concerns do you have going into this?"

"That our respective backgrounds are going to affect how well we bring up the baby," Draco said, staring into his food.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, both of you have known since square one I'm afraid of becoming like Lucius. But," he said, looking at Harry nervously, "I'm also slightly afraid of how the Dursley's have affected your parenting style."

Harry looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that night when you told me to ignore Rose, that she'd stop crying all on her own, you knew that I didn't want to be babysitting that night, but you refused to get up to feed her and change her. That's a pretty big part of being a parent."

"I'm sorry I didn't go to her. I thought she'd calm down, and since I didn't hear her continue to cry I assumed I was right. I didn't know you got up to deal with her until you told me the next morning. If you had left her I eventually would have given her a bottle."

"There was more of it than giving her a bottle. She needed to eat, get changed, and be cuddled back to sleep. You can't just stick a bottle in her mouth and think that it'll keep her happy for hours. What if she didn't want to go back to sleep?"

Harry was silent.

"It's going to be a big change for us. We're going to have to balance work and being parents, we're not going to be able to go out as much, we're going to get a lot less sleep..."

"I understand, but it's something I really want to do."

Draco squeezed his hand. "I know. And it's something I want to. But I want to make sure we're ready before we've got a baby in the house."

Harry nodded.

Draco checked his watch and stood. "I've got a meeting with George that I'm half an hour late for."

"Do you always go to your meetings late?" Hermione asked, looking nervous.

"No. But he does. I'll still wait fifteen minutes before he shows up. You know how he is," he smiled as he gave Harry a quick kiss on the cheek before rushing from the room.

"How much convincing did you have to do to get him to agree to a baby?" Harry asked Hermione.

She shook her head. "I told him I wouldn't talk about what we talked about. Though I will say it was a decision he came to on his own."

"Do you think the Dursleys are going to have an effect on my parenting style?"

"I think they were pretty cruddy mentors in child rearing methods. One child spoiled to the point of becoming wider than he was tall, the other neglected and forced to sleep under some stairs. Neither way is the correct way to raise a child."

"I don't think I came out too bad."

"You didn't come out too bad because, when you were eleven, you were taken out of the situation and given what you considered a proper family. You were resilient. However they were the only parental figures you had."

Harry snorted.

"In a manner of speaking."

"So, what do you think I should do?"

"You know Ron. He was kind of the same way you were- he didn't want to get up to feed her or anything, and would ignore her until I did it or until he woke up. We just had to get creative about making sure he did right by Rose."

"Think it would work for me?"

Hermione shrugged. "You and Draco are going to have to figure out what works for you."

"What did you and Ron do?"

"There's that Muggle device called a baby monitor. We got one and put it on my side of the bed with the volume turned way up. He couldn't turn it off to ignore it, I would shake him, nag him, kick him, whatever until he got out of bed to deal with Rose. If I left for work or went out and he was napping I'd move it to a shelf across the room and put an anti-summoning charm on it, and charms to keep him from silencing it. He'd have to deal with it, and he'd have to get out of bed to do so. It took a while, but now he gets up when he hears the monitor go off."

Harry had pulled out a pad of paper and was furiously writing on it. "Any other tips?"

Hermione reached across the table and pulled Harry's quill away. "All your baby is going to want to do at first is get love and affection from you. You're going to have to hold him or her a lot, make faces at them, rock them to sleep, sing to them. It's very difficult, and Draco is going to resent you if he feels like you aren't pulling your weight as a dad. You need to make sure you don't wind up like the Dursleys or you might lose him."

Harry was quiet for a moment. "You don't think I'm going to lose him anyways, do you?"

Hermione smiled as she shook her head. "A man doesn't agree to do something he was dead set against because he thinks 'what the hell, I'll tie myself to a lifelong commitment today'."

"You better knock it off or you're going to sound like Dumbledore."

"Would that be a bad thing?"

"As long as you don't start wearing spangled purple robes, no."