Disclaimer: This is a work of FanFiction using characters from the Harry Potter world, trademarked by none other than J.K. Rowling. Other names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products solely of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Warnings: Marriage/Adult Fic / OOC / Debatable AU / Fluffy / Profanity / Explicit sexual content
Timeline: Post-Hogwarts / EWE
Thank you so much to the awesome beta whose pen name is Rose Davis for looking over this fic!
Draco couldn't sleep. He recalled his conversation with Potter earlier that day. The other wizard had been right. There had been a time when his and Hermione's relationship started to cool down. They started to feel less passionate with each other which was why they decided to try for a baby.
"Hey," Draco had greeted Hermione one evening after coming home from work. She was sitting up in bed, a book shoved in her face. She didn't even look away from her book when he started to strip off his dress suit he usually wore to work.
"Hey. How was your day?"
"Fine. Yours?"
"Fine, thank you."
Silence.
"Have you eaten supper?"
"I had a sandwich before I went home, Draco. What about you?"
"Yes."
Silence.
It had been that way for months. They rarely spent time together, both caught up with their jobs at their respective departments in the Ministry. They had sex once a week - twice at most. Draco was sure that his love for her never wavered but the fire was gone. He didn't know what to do so he let things lie. He was convinced that everything would go back to the way it was before.
When some months later, Hermione came up with a proposal: "I think it's time we try for a baby."
He quickly agreed.
The sex wasn't like before when they had been teenagers though. It was... a bit bland. It was good, they both came every time but it wasn't exactly mind-blowing. He tried taking her in a couple of different positions. It helped sometimes but then they got bored quickly. He thought of using toys but he wasn't sure that Hermione would be open to that. He might scare her off with his new ideas so he decided not to suggest it.
He was desperate after a couple of months. He found himself at Leaky Cauldron with none other than Harry Potter whose marriage always seemed be perfect.
"I don't know, Potter..." he had slurred at his third shot of firewhiskey. He had always been a lame drunk. "I've been married for almost two years and I don't feel the spark anymore. We only have... chore sex."
Harry, who was also on his third shot of firewhiskey but still perfectly sober, laughed hysterically. "Chore sex?"
"Yes! Chore sex! Boring sex! I tried everything and nothing! It's always boring! Not to mention we don't even talk anymore! The worst part is we don't also fight! We just... wait, did I mention? We're trying for a baby! Your Albus is very cute. I want my own. I like the name Scorpius."
"Scorpius." Harry laughed again, shaking his head. "I don't really want to talk about your sex life with my best friend, Malfoy. You figure that shit out by yourself!" He had never been one to curse but he spends most of his time with Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy. "You should go to a muggle bookstore and find a book called the 'kama sutra' though. It might help."
It turned out that it didn't help much. Hermione only managed a few new positions. He wasn't exactly flexible himself. So every time they tried something new and back-breaking, they'd end up with aching muscles the next day which they made up for massaging each other's aching muscles. Meh.
He tried a different approach. He started to surprise her by coming to her office right when their shifts ended and they would go out to dinner. It felt better. They started to talk again and they'd indulge in a little PDA to which Hermione always blushed and they'd visit their friends and their families.
Then those Lacey episodes happened and before he knew it, his wife had left.
Now as he lay in bed on his side, watching her sleep on her back, her hand over her stomach where the doctors had made the incision, he realized that despite their difficulties his love for never changed. Dry spells. It happens, he figured, but he won't let things fall apart again. They didn't know it but they had taken their relationship for granted, thinking that marriage secured it.
Now that they both had a taste of life without the other, they would never take each other for granted again. He wouldn't let it happen. Never. They could have another dry spell and they could fight until there was no more fight left in them and they could not have sex at all but he will never let her go. Never.
Suddenly, Hermione sat up, startling him out of his thoughts. "Draco," she gasped, looking around wildly with wide eyes. "Draco, where are you?"
"I'm here," he said softly, reaching out a hand to her. "I'm here." She sighed seemingly in relief and moved so she could lay her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her.
"I dreamed that you left," she whispered.
"It's just a dream," he crooned, kissing the top of her head. "It's not real. It's never going to be real."
"I'm sorry."
He ignored that because he knew that she will starting droning on and on about her leaving him. He didn't want to talk about that anymore. It was insignificant now. "Go back to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up. I'll take care of Verity the rest of the night. Would you like some sleeping draught?"
"No. I'm fine. Just hold me."
He remembered she'd never been one to cuddle during sleep. Nor was he, for that matter. He realized that they were still in a fragile state so he did as she asked shifting until they were both comfortable. He heard her breathing changed as she fell back asleep. A sense of deep contentment fell over him. He felt peaceful. He felt happy. He was aware that he was smiling when he, too, fell asleep.
Which lasted for about four hours before Verity woke the both of them with her loud wailing.
Hermione insisted on tending to Verity, telling him to go back to sleep.
He did, eventually, listening as their baby's wailing turned to sobs and to whimpers then the creaking of a wooden rocking chair at the corner of the room as Hermione put Verity back to sleep by singing a lovely lullaby.
When he woke sometime after dawn, just before sunrise, he checked up on Verity and saw that she was awake in her crib but she wasn't crying and she seemed to be fine. Hermione was sleeping (and actually snoring) on her side of the bed. He laughed a little and took the babe to bed for a little cuddling time. Time flew by so fast. He can't believe that he'd been in Aqua Falls for a full week already. Verity was a week old. Merlin. Before they knew it, she'd be a year old.
Verity let out a few mewling sounds against his chest and he placed her on the bed, between him and her mother.
"You look like you've grown a bit bigger over the week," he told Verity. "Slow it down, baby girl. I like you just the way you are."
Hermione moaned, shifted to her side, facing the two of them as her eyes opened gingerly. "Good morning you two," she murmured, smiling sleepily at them.
Yes, life was just perfect at that moment, Draco thought. "Good morning, baby. Did you get enough sleep?"
She yawned widely. "Think so."
"I feel really lazy today. Mmm. I think we should lie in and have Fifi make meals for us again." He smiled his best smile at her.
Her eyelids still drooping, she nodded. "Good idea. Just make sure to thank her and pay her around five galleons afterwards."
Draco sputtered, sitting up. "Five galleons! That's preposterous! What is she going to do with five galleons? Fifi is but a mere house elf!"
But she wasn't listening because she started placing kisses over Verity's head, probably smothering her, but the baby didn't seem to mind. So he shut up. What the hell was five galleons compared to this anyway? He grinned as he went back into position on his side, leaning over his pretty little ladies in bed.
Draco sighed as he entered the tiny kitchen of the cottage and caught sight of a familiar redhead and his significant other sitting across from Hermione. He had just put down Verity in her crib in the room and in his hand was a muggle device called the baby monitor. He wasn't exactly surprised that the other couple was here after the visit from the Potters yesterday.
"How's it going, Weasel?" He drawled, sitting on the chair beside Hermione. He placed the baby monitor on the table.
"Pretty good, Ferret," Ron Weasley greeted good-naturedly. "Congratulations on the baby by the way."
"Thanks." He grabbed Hermione's hand from the table, lacing their fingers together. She let him. She never let him do that before in front of the other man because of their history.
Ron and Hermione had tried to make a relationship work the summer before she went back to Hogwarts and finished her education. They liked each other for so long that they didn't realize how incompatible they were. Some kissing and a lot of fighting later, she ended their relationship much to his dismay. He wasn't clever enough to keep up with Hermione's idiosyncrasies nor was he patient enough for her unconventional personality as well. He did love her and she him. He thought that was enough to maintain a relationship but she knew otherwise. Ron, however, will always be Hermione's first love. Draco was mature enough to accept that.
When Hermione had gotten together with Draco, Ron had given them a difficult time. Sometimes Draco caught the longing in Ron's eyes when he looked at Hermione... but that was in the earlier years. Now Ron's happily married to one of Ginny's friends (two years behind them from Hufflepuff) and they were expecting.
He shifted his eyes to the petite woman sitting beside Ron and smiled. "Hello Cerise. Pregnancy suits you. You look pretty." He was just polite like that.
Cerise Weasley (formerly Anselm) beamed at him. "Thanks, Draco. I'm sorry we just missed Verity. When we came Hermione told us you were getting her to sleep."
He nodded. "Fine."
Hermione squeezed his hand. "They brought us a gift. Well, actually it's for Verity. It's in the living room."
"Thanks." Draco wasn't really a conversationalist. "We appreciate it."
Silence.
"So. Um," Hermione said. "How far along are you, Cerise?"
Cerise answered her then she and Hermione settled into an easy conversation on being a mother. The younger woman kept asking questions about pregnancy that Draco didn't really understand and he was pretty sure that the other man didn't as well. They listened as the two women conversed but not really comprehending anything. It was just one of those women things.
Draco avoided looking Ron Weasley's direction but his thoughts were mostly centered on him and Hermione. He'd always been jealous of him - not that he'd ever admit that to anyone other than himself. Ron and Hermione had a connection. Draco couldn't explain it but sometimes he would catch Ron and Hermione sharing a look and it was as if they communicated without words. Sometimes Potter does it with the two of them. Even Ginny. It always made him feel like an outsider in their little group. Well, probably because he was. Maybe that's why he tried pursuing a friendship with Lacey (which proved to be disastrous). He never had friends like that. He wanted friends like that.
But that was impossible, he thought a bit sadly. Several years after Voldemort's demise, Draco was still branded as a Death Eater. He wasn't a nice person, he admitted it as much, but he wasn't exactly a bad person either. He'd like to think of himself as... misunderstood. He'd made a lot of mistakes - but hey, shouldn't the others cut him some slack? He was raised to think that way and really, he was much improved now. Being married to someone who was regarded as a 'war heroine' and the 'brightest witch of her age' namely Hermione Jean Granger Malfoy as well as openly associating a friendship with the Potters, the Weasleys (just barely) and a few other do-gooders could have changed their minds about him.
He turned his head to look at his wife. The others probably didn't matter as long she stood by him.
Filled with renewed inspiration, he focused on the conversation and found himself animatedly telling Cerise about Verity's little quirks he'd learned in her week-long life.
"I sleep around for four hours a day," he told Cerise. "Five or six if I'm lucky. And the doctors warned us that this will go on for more than a month."
"I'm not much of a help because of my surgery," Hermione added, a little rueful. She squeezed Draco's hand. "In five to six weeks, you can sleep all you want. I'd be fully recovered by then."
"I don't mind it at all," he admitted.
She shook her head at him and addressed Ron and Cerise. "But I mind. He's grumpy when he doesn't get enough sleep." She grinned.
"How was she when she was pregnant? Horrid, I reckon?" Ron teased.
Draco frowned then quickly recovered. No one knew that Hermione left him except for the Potters and his parents. He opened his mouth to lie but his wife beat him to it.
"No," she said with a laugh. "I believe pregnancy agreed well with me. Some morning sickness but it was only for a couple of months. Some mood swings, but what's new? Just excessive urinating and uncontrollable passing of gas."
"Gah!"
"Oh, shut up, Ron," Cerise piped in, scrunching her nose at him. "You sometimes pass gas when we're making lo- "
"Gah!" This came from Draco this time. Although Cerise spoke delicately, he didn't want to acknowledge the fact that the Weasel actually had a sex life. Fucking disgusting. Well. No one had said Draco Malfoy wasn't a hypocrite. "I don't want to hear it. Please."
"And I would appreciate it if you limit those details to yourselves." Hermione sniffed indignantly. Despite their very brief relationship back when they were teenagers, she had never been really curious about those... things... with him and she had never been tempted to even peek under clothes.
To be honest, at first, it was the same thing with Draco... but her cunning former Slytherin knew how to get her interested. He convinced her to explore a different genre of literature because really all she read were informative books, technical books, classic fiction, general fiction and non-fiction. He gifted her with a romance paperback from a muggle bookstore (he admitted that he had done his research). It was... good and sweet and lovely, she concluded after reading. He kept giving her romance paperbacks with love scenes. The first books were mild then progressed into a bit detailed, but still nothing as grave as the last ones that were just full-blown erotica.
That was when she started to become curious. Then she started to have tingles in her stomach every time they kissed. Then there was some tongue. Then a lot of tongue. Then his hands would roam and tease. Then hers as well. Then before she knew it, she had Draco naked on top of her. Yes. It had been she who initiated but it was Draco who anticipated. The first few times were a bit awkward... but both of them were perfectionists and practice makes perfect.
She shifted in her seat. During her pregnancy, she had a lot of... urges... and it had been a hard time ignoring it but she managed it. Since her body had become used to such activities since starting it with Draco, she craved it all the time. She wanted Draco. She wanted him so much. She knew her stomach hasn't fully healed yet so she couldn't do anything with him but damn it was she tempted to!
Draco was on the slim side. Some shapely muscles here and there but he wasn't anything like the ones she saw on magazines and on the covers of the romance books Draco gave her and the ones she had bought herself. He wasn't the most handsome bloke she'd seen in her lifetime... but there was just something about him that made her all hot and bothered. Maybe it was the smile or the look in his eyes or the way he whispered her name or the way his hips moved against hers as he-
"Hermione?" Draco's voice broke into her reverie.
Her heart thumped against her chest. "Yes?" she breathed then she cleared her throat because her voice had been a little husky.
Her husband's eyes flared briefly before narrowing at her flushed face. He leaned over to whisper in her ear. "What are you thinking about?"
She shook her head, ignoring the shiver that went down her spine. Her heart was beating so loudly in her ears that she was afraid that he might actually hear it a few inches away from her. Good Godric. All those lonely nights while her body craved his during her pregnancy was catching up to her. He was finally here and she was free to touch him again in any way, in every way.
He looked at her for a few more moments before turning back to the conversation with Ron and Cerise.
Since he and Hermione cleared the air between them a few days ago, they both had been holding back just like when they were teenagers. Sweet, innocent kisses here and there and brief embraces and holding hands. It was a mutual decision. Just because they finally agreed to make up again that didn't mean they would pick up were they left off.
They were going to take things slow.
Just like before.
But that didn't mean she wanted him any less.
"By the way," Ron suddenly said to Hermione. He made a face as he buried a hand in his robes and produced a jar containing a gooey substance. "Ginny told me to give you this. It's for your stomach." He placed the jar on the table and pushed it towards her. "I don't even want to know. She said to take two measures once a day."
"Oh, thank you!"
Hermione was not able to hide her delighted grin. It was the potion from St. Mungo's to hasten the healing of her stomach.
After a week or two she would be fully healed.
Which meant...
She sighed and settled on tucking her head against his shoulder.
Draco Malfoy had better be ready for her.
