Chapter Twenty Five

A/N: Thank you to EriksAngeldeMusica for reviewing the last chapter.

Narcissa awoke in the morning to another familiar bout of illness. She had had the symptoms of a cold for a week at least, longer than anyone really should. It was a trickster of an illness, one which wracked her stomach in the mornings, abated by the afternoon and then returned before the sun had risen in the sky. Lucius had told her that it was something she would simply have to ride out, but she felt in her bones that there was something different, something wrong.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the familiar burn of bile rising in her throat. Narcissa bolted from her bed into the adjoining bathroom, barely managing to reach the toilet before she emptied the sparse contents of her stomach into it. The rigmarole had become a familiar routine now, but that did not mean the woman was inclined to like it any more.

She sat on the cold marble floor for what seemed like forever, retching and gagging and resting her head against the tiles of the wall. The icy surface did nothing to make her feel better, as there was no fever to cool and no headache to soothe. It was like she was ill, but with no symptoms other than the physical sickness she endured each morning.

The phrasing of her thought made her stop for a moment, as her eyes widened with shock. Her mouth formed the words she wanted to speak but she could not force them from her throat. 'It's not possible.' she told herself, as she had done countless times before, refusing to give herself any hope which might turn out to be false. 'That can never happen for me, not now. Not after what Sirius did.'

But her heart disagreed. For the first time since she had lost her first baby, a child she had never known was growing in her womb, a feeling of warmth and motherly love stirred within her, and that feeling told her that perhaps luck was on her side for once in her life.

It took a minute or so for Narcissa to come to the decision that she would rather know the truth, whichever option it turned out to be. Once the decision was made, she retrieved her wand from where it lay on the bedside cabinet and sunk down onto the bed, twisting her wrist in complicated patterns and uttering a lengthy spell under her breath.

Then she waited, resting her wand delicately against the flatness of her stomach. She waited for ten seconds, twenty, thirty, for a whole minute and then another, before the tip of her wand glowed a bright golden colour, the colour of the rising sun, to represent the new life beginning inside her stomach.

Narcissa leant back against her pillows, her mouth gaping open in shock. Although she had had her hopes about the cause of this mystery illness, she had never expected that those hopes had been any more than the longings of a barren woman for a child. However, the golden glow filling the murkiness of the bedroom said otherwise.

Without warning, Narcissa began to laugh, the joy spreading through her veins unlike any magic she had felt before, yet just as powerful. 'I'm going to have a baby.' she told herself over and over, trying to make herself believe that this really was the truth. 'I'm going to have a baby.'

Suddenly, the door edged open, revealing Lucius, his face an equal match of gladness and confusion at finding his wife in this way. He went to ask her whether she was alright now, whether the sickness had passed, but the words caught in his throat as he saw the golden glow emanating from the wood pressed against his wife's stomach, and realised what this meant for the two of them.

In an instant, Narcissa was wrapped tightly in her husband's arms, the two of them spinning together. Perhaps it was the room that was spinning, for Narcissa was giddy with delight, but she neither knew nor cared for which option was true. She knew now that she was going to be a mother and that her months of hopes and wishes had come to fruition at last.

"Tell me that what I am seeing is real." Lucius asked of her, his voice breaking with the emotion he was trying to restrain. Not that he would have needed to, for his wife had seen him through the best and worst of times, but he did not want to allow himself to hope for something that was not to be. It was one of the many things the two Malfoys had in common.

Narcissa did not speak, instead taking her husband's hand in hers and placing it on her stomach. Through the fabric of her nightgown, Lucius could feel that her abdomen was flat and smooth, as it had always been, but there was a hint of something underneath, something magical and new, that had not been there before. "This is real." Narcissa assured him with a smile. She knew well enough her husband's need to be convinced; she still could not quite believe the news herself.

Nodding his head, Lucius began to steer her in the direction of the bed. Narcissa opened her mouth to protest against this action, but the man held up a hand to silence her as he pulled the covers up around her waist.

"Narcissa, you need to rest." he told her firmly, though the tenderness in his voice was hard to miss. "We cannot be too careful with this child, not after all we have gone through to get it."

His wife did not protest again, for she felt Lucius' fear deep in the pit of her stomach and knew that this might be their only chance. She smiled widely as her husband placed a kiss on her forehead and left her to rest, but that smile faded when she remembered the letter from Selwyn at St. Mungo's, and the damage he had thought a child could do to her. 'It makes no difference.' she told herself firmly, dismissing her fears to the back of her mind. 'This is my child, perhaps the only child I will ever have, and I will sacrifice anything I have to keep this baby safe.'

A/N: Yay! Draco is on the scene! Please review!