"Why am I not surprised?" Hermione asked, smiling. She sat down awkwardly -- Draco wondered for the umpteenth time how she managed to walk without toppling over with her stomach as big as it was now.
"You're sure that Madam What's-She-Called won't tell anyone she saw us together?"
"Draco, Madam Puddifoot makes a living out of staying out of other people's business; all those couples wouldn't come here otherwise. Trust me."
"Well, what about all the other customers?"
"Any other students who bother to get up this early just to come in here will only be thinking about whoever it is that they've come with. They won't notice that anyone else is here, let alone who we are."
"Alright... I'm blaming you if it gets out, though."
"If that'll make you feel better."
"It will."
"And what will you be having, dearies?" Madam Thingamibob appeared by their table and looked at them both far too curiously for Draco's taste.
"Peppermint tea, thank you," said Hermione politely.
"Coffee. Black." Draco glared at the woman to make her go away.
"Coming right up." She smiled and left.
Ha. The Draco Malfoy Glare of Death had worked its magic yet again.
"Draco, why are you furrowing your brow like that?" asked Hermione.
"Like what?"
"Like you're trying to read a footnote that's in really small print."
"I'm not!"
"You were."
"Was not."
"If you say so." Hermione sighed and crossed her arms over her stomach.
Draco harrumphed and crossed his own arms, and they sat there in silence.
"I'm sorry," Hermione said after several seconds of picking at her fingernails in a rather unseemly manner. "I didn't get much sleep last night because the baby kept kicking my ribcage."
Draco nodded, trying to look like he understood and was sympathetic. "Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes... it's just irritating when it keeps you awake."
"I see."
"I'm starting to wish it would just hurry up and be born, really," said Hermione. "Which is a stupid thing to wish because I've got a lot of work to do for my NEWTs already and once the baby comes I probably won't have time to do any of it, so I should work hard while I can, but... I don't know. I suppose I just feel like I've been waiting and preparing and anticipating for so long that I'm finding it hard to believe it's actually going to happen."
"Oh, it's definitely going to happen. And I'm quite content to wait as long as possible."
Hermione looked at him. "Draco... how do you really feel about all this? I mean, honestly."
He pondered this for a moment, then shook his head. "I really don't know." He shrugged. "I suppose we'll find out when it happens."
Still regarding him intensely, Hermione nodded. "Yes," she said. "I suppose we will."
They left seperately; Hermione first because she was more likely to be missed, then Draco half an hour later. When he walked up to the school gates Filch was there waiting for him.
"Ah, Mister Malfoy." Filch grinned his disgusting yellow-toothed grin. "You're to go straight to your common room."
"Why?" Draco asked, suddenly apprehensive.
"Not for me to say."
The creaking sound of the gates being locked made Draco feel trapped all of a sudden. But there was no choice but to obey.
The mood in the Slytherin common room was excited and, if Draco was reading it correctly, slightly apprehensive. This did not help his own suddenly disordered emotions, but he couldn't think about that right now. He had to find out what was going on.
He spotted a bunch of the other seventh-years by the fire and walked over to them. "What's all this about?" he asked quietly.
"They found a knife in the lake," said Pansy, who was sitting on Blaise's lap. "They said it had the Giant Squid's blood on it."
"That's impossible!" Draco hissed, willing what he said to be true. "Surely any blood would've been washed away?"
"Apparently it was buried at the bottom, in an air pocket," Blaise told him. "They only found it because the Merpeople were laying the foundation for a new house or something there."
"How the hell do you know all this?" Draco demanded. He did not like feeling so out of the loop.
"We were down by the lake when Sprout found it -- she was diving down there looking for some kind of plant for Madam Pomfrey," said Pansy. "They didn't see us because we were in that little... hidden bit..." She had to stifle a giggle; Draco didn't have to think hard to guess what she and Blaise had been doing down there.
"So what now?" he asked. He was hoping against hope that there would be no way anyone could connect the knife ot him.
Pansy shrugged. "They stopped letting people go to Hogsmeade about an hour ago. I think they're waiting for everyone who had already left to come back."
"I see."
So whatever was going to happen could happen quite soon -- Filch had locked that gates after him, which probably meant that Draco had been the last to return. Of course, he wasn't going to tell Pansy or Blaise that he had been in Hogsmeade this morning at all if he could help it... too many awkward questions.
"Well," he told them, "I might as well make a start on McGonagall's stupid essay while we wait." And he swept out of the room with all the panache he could muster.
Draco had been looking forward to a relatively easy time this year as far as schoolwork was concerned; after all, if all went well Hogwarts would no longer exist by the time he was scheduled to sit his NEWTs. However -- as his rather had drilled relentlessly into his skull over the summer -- a noticeable drop in Draco's academic achievements would draw attention, and from there it was only a small step to suspicion, which was something he could really do without. Therefore, he did at least need to put some effort into his schoolwork.
Draco sighed as he got out his books and an empty roll of parchment and wondered why he had ever decided to take Transfiguration at NEWT level.
Still, maybe it would at least keep his mind over the tight knot of worry his intestines now seemed to be weaving themselves into. He had completely forgotten about losing the knife until Pansy had told him it had been found... He only hoped they wouldn't be able to trace it back to him. Everything would be ruined.
The Dark Lord would kill him. If his father didn't get him first.
Draco shuddered, and realised he had dug his quill into his palm so far he had drawn blood.
"Dammit," he said, reaching over to wipe it on Crabbe's bed.
"Hello Draco!" said an unpleasantly cheerful voice.
Joshua Fizzlewinch practically bounced into the room.
"Don't you know how to knock?" Draco growled, turning his back and bending over his parchment in an effort to look extremely busy.
Joshua ignored all of this completely and eagerly sat down opposite Draco. "I've just had the most brilliant idea."
"I'm busy, Joshua."
"I've been meaning to ask you for ages, but things kept getting in the way... but now is the perfect opportunity!" He paused in case Draco wanted to make a guess as to what he was talking about, but carried on unperturbed when the only response he got was an annoyed silence. "There'll be no one on the Quidditch pitch because it's meant to be a Hogsmeade Saturday, so you could come out with me and help me with my aim and technique and--"
"No, Joshua! Just go away and leave me the fuck alone! Alright?"
Joshua looked like he was about to burst into tears. "But..."
"Go!" Draco snarled, standing up menacingly. He had really had enough of this boy, and didn't see why he should have to put up with him any longer when the only thing they now had in common was that they were both in Slytherin... not that Draco could for the life of him work out what Slytherin traits Jaoshua might posess. He had enough to worry about without Joshua's smarminess making him want to hurt someone.
Joshua, who had frozen in shock at Draco's last utterance, now stood up, trembling. "Fine!" he cried, and ran out of the room faster than Draco would have believed was possible.
Draco sighed and let himself fall back on his bed. What had started as an alright sort of day really wasn't turning out very well.
Thankfully nothing bad happened for the rest of it, although the coil of nerves in Draco's abdomen tightened steadily over the hours and was almost too much to bear by the time the dessert plates disappeared from the tables in the Great Hall that evening. Surely Dumbledore was about to tell the students to wait, was about to make some kind of speech about the knife in the lake like he had about the Hufflepuff girl a few months ago?
But he didn't.
Draco gasped involuntarily when people began to file out of the Hall. He knew his relief was premature -- he might still be called to Dumblesore's office at any time -- but somehow it felt as if the worst of the hurdles was behind him.
"Are you alright?" asked Millicent, obviously having heard his gasp.
"I'm fine," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "I just... swallowed something wrong."
Millicent nodded and walked off after Pansy, obviously hoping for some attention before she fell back into Blaise's arms (or, more likely, his bed.) Draco himself fled up several flights of stairs to Hermione's room as quickly as he could without being noticed.
She was already there when knocked carefully on the door -- when he went inside at her invitation she was sat on the bed, furrowing her brow.
"Is something wrong?" he asked uncertainly.
She shook her head. "No," she said, coming out of her reverie and standing up. "Just thinking about things. Do you know why they stopped the Hogsmeade visits today?"
"Yes," Draco said automatically.
It took Hermione's look of surprise to make him realise what he'd just said. Mentally, he swore.
"You do?" asked Hermione. "Why was it?"
"I can't tell you," Draco said, turning away.
"Why not?"
"I just can't, alright?" he said, more harshly than he had intended.
The hurt look on Hermione's face made his stomach sink. "Maybe I should go," he mumbled, reaching for the door.
"No," Hermione said, grabbing his hand before it could reach the handle. "Come on, lie down with me."
Draco obeyed because it was the easiest thing to do. The two of them lay on their sides, facing each other.
Hermione ran a hand pensively over her stomach for a moment before looking up at him. "I've been thinking," she said. "If the baby's a girl I think I'm going to name it Hazel after my grandmother."
"Oh." It was all Draco could think of to say for a moment; and then a burning need for some kind of confession suddenly, inexplicably gripped him. "Hermione, you know when you told me you thought she'd been killed by Death Eaters?"
Hermione stared at him, obviously trying to fathom why he would be bringing this up now. "Yes."
"Well..." Draco suddenly found that he didn't want to look at her, but forced himself to do so anyway. "You were right."
"What makes you say that?" Hermione asked wearily, unconsciously -- at least, Draco hoped it was unconsciously -- shifting further away from him on the bed.
Draco grimaced, all of a sudden wishing he could back out... but it was too late for that. "I found those newspaper clippings in your desk. I recognised the girls in the article. I saw them in-- In someone's dungeon."
Hermione let out a kind of squeaking sound from the back of her throat, looking at him with eyes wider than he had ever seen. "You... Y-you..." Then she gasped and her head snapped around in the direction of her hips.
There was a large damp patch spreading underneath her.
"Drat!" she cried, sitting up and taking in her sodden clothes. "I knew it!"
Now it was Draco's turn to gape. "You, you... What's going on!"
Hermione took him by the arm and guided him firmly off the bed and towards the door.
"I'm in labour," she said. "You'd better go."
Author's Note: To soccerpixie3000: Where the hell do you get off leaving me a review like that? Lazy, am I? Update 'whenever I bloody feel like it', do I? Where's your story that you update with 2000+ word chapters at least twice a week, eh? Writing fanfiction is my hobby, not, as you seem to think it should be, my main focus in life. Believe it or not, I do have more important things to do, as well as having more than one story that I'm currently working on (and no, abandoning my 24 story would not lead to this fic being updated more frequently), and when I do write I'm not going to make a rush job out of it just so I can meet some ridiculous quota of how many chapters I should post per week. I've been writing fanfic for six and a half years, something I seriously doubt can be said of you, and I'm not going to change the way I do things just because some arrogant little girl with no stories of her own insults me. Don't read WIPs if you haven't got the patience to wait for the next chapter, learn the definition of the word 'review' (hint: it involves discussing the content of the story), and for God's sake, get a life.
To all my other reviewers: I love you guys! Thanks to you, I now have more reviews on this story than on any of my others! Thank you so much for all your comments, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story (but please tell me if you don't!) :)
and to Taintless: You're awesome, thank you so much for all your many, many reviews and compliments. And you should watch 24, it's great:D