Astoria had been brimming with confidence at the start of the custody hearing. Her lawyer had spoken incredibly well, and she knew he'd drawn the sympathy of the committee when he talked about her struggles with depression. Blaise's speech had been a bit of a blow, but it was to be expected that her ex-husband would put on a strong showing, so she'd tried not to let it affect her positivity. However, just when she thought they'd had a good morning, the contraceptive bombshell had been dropped and Astoria saw everything slipping away from her.
She couldn't even bring herself to react to Draco's smug smirk as he left the hearing with Hermione and Blaise. She was in total meltdown, and it was with a heavy heart that she quietly informed Ron and her lawyer that they needed to talk. Both wizards had already picked up on Astoria's discomfort, and they braced themselves for the worst as they returned to the hotel.
"Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?" Pike muttered once the trio were settled in the couple's sumptuous suite.
"You're not," Astoria whispered.
"Don't tell me Malfoy can make his case," Ron grumbled. "Did you know he'd been to the healers?"
"No," Astoria replied with a shake of his head. "Not that it would have made much difference, I can count on one hand the number of times we'd had sex after Mia was born. I'd given him his precious daughter, so he wasn't interested in me."
"Please tell me you didn't lie about the pregnancy," Pike demanded sharply.
"No, I was pregnant," Astoria confessed. "But I knew Draco wasn't the father. He couldn't have been."
"So you were having an affair?" Ron asked quietly. He found he couldn't really bring himself to blame Astoria for having an affair, as he knew just how badly Draco had treated her during their marriage.
"Yes," Astoria whispered. "He was an older wizard, and unlike Draco, he was interested in me. It was him who helped me leave. He gave me a chance at a life away from Draco."
"It's not ideal, but we can still use it," Pike mused thoughtfully. "You were stuck in an unhappy marriage and you had a brief affair. We'll deny that you knew the child wasn't Draco's, and instead say that you thought it was more likely to be your husband's baby. We can then say the miscarriage sent your depression into overdrive and you took the chance to run off with the man you'd had an affair with. How long were you with him after you left Draco?"
"Not long, but that's not the problem," Astoria replied.
"What aren't you telling us Astoria?" Pike asked forcefully. "I can't help you unless I know everything."
"I didn't have a miscarriage," Astoria whispered as she wrapped her arms around herself and began to cry. "I had an abortion," she managed through her tears.
"Shit, this just keeps getting better," Pike exploded.
"I'm sorry," Astoria sobbed.
"It's alright," Ron said soothingly as he gathered his girlfriend in his arms. "But why did you lie to us? Why lie to me? It wouldn't have changed how I felt about you."
"I felt guilty about it," Astoria confessed, speaking to Ron and ignoring her simmering lawyer. "When I found out I was pregnant, I was terrified. I was already trapped in a loveless marriage, and I was fairly certain the baby couldn't have been Draco's. I could have slept with him and then tried to pass the baby off as his, but the idea horrified me. I knew if I had another child, I would never escape. I knew another baby would kill me, so I had an abortion. I didn't bank on the guilt though, and I couldn't carry on as though nothing had happened so I ran. I ran and I pretended I'd lost the baby. It was the only way I could cope."
"I wish you had told me, I could have helped you," Ron said gently.
"I didn't want you to hate me," Astoria whispered.
"I could never hate you," Ron promised as he wiped at Astoria's tears with his thumb.
"It's not great, but I still think we can work it," Pike said, interrupting the moment between the couple. "However, we need to pre-empt the public revealing of the facts. With your permission, I'll leave you and start working on something to present first thing in the morning."
"Do what you can," Astoria said. "Although there is likely going to be one more thing that crops us."
"What now?" Pike demanded with a frustrated sigh. He was sure his fee wasn't large enough to cover the extra work he was doing to try and win Astoria's case.
"There won't be any record of my third pregnancy on my medical notes," Astoria answered.
"Why not?" Ron demanded sharply.
"I hadn't gotten around to visiting the healers to have it confirmed," Astoria admitted. "I'd been pregnant twice before, and all the home-made tests were positive. And if you recall Ron, I wanted to wait before telling anyone, but you were too excited to wait."
"Yeah, I was a bit gung-ho," Ron admitted sheepishly as he recalled that he'd announced their pregnancy to his team-mates almost as soon as Astoria had told him the news.
"But what about the miscarriage?" Pike asked. "Even if the pregnancy hadn't been confirmed, the miscarriage would have been documented in your records when you went to hospital."
"I didn't go to hospital," Astoria whispered.
"What do you mean, you didn't go to hospital?" Ron asked with a frown. "You told me you went to hospital."
"I couldn't face it," Astoria sobbed. "I woke up in the middle of the night in agony. The bed was covered in blood and I knew I'd lost the baby. I couldn't bear to go to the hospital and have them confirm my baby was dead. Not alone. I couldn't do it by myself, Ron."
"I'm sorry," Ron whispered, gathering a crying Astoria in his arms and shedding a few guilty tears himself. He could understand Astoria not wanting to go to the hospital alone, and he could also understand her lying about going so that he didn't feel even worse than he already did for not being there for her when she lost their baby.
"I'm sorry Ron, I should have gone to the hospital," Astoria wailed. "Now Blaise will use it against me and say I was never pregnant. They'll try and make it sound as though our baby never existed."
"Sod what they say, I know the truth," Ron hissed. "And I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."
"Don't worry about the lack of records, I won't stand for them trying to claim you weren't pregnant," Pike reassured Astoria in a gentle voice. "Just because you didn't go to the hospital, didn't mean it didn't happen. I won't deny that all this is a bit of a set-back, but we can get out of it. Keep the faith Astoria. I'm not finished yet. We can still get custody of your daughter."
"Of course we can," Ron agreed. "We just have to be strong. Just a few more days and then we can go home and start our new life together. And you never know, in a couple of years we could be ready to try again for a new baby and then our family will be complete."
"That would be great," Astoria replied, even as she kept her head lowered so Ron couldn't see the look of distaste on her face at the idea of having another child.
Draco and Hermione arrived for the second day of the hearing, feeling confident that Astoria was going to be exposed as the master manipulator she truly was. While Draco was hoping exposing her lies would put an end to the hearing, Hermione was also hoping it would make Ron see sense. Besides having the hearing ended in their favour, all she really wanted was for Ron to see he was being used and that Astoria was lying to her for her own purposes.
When they arrived, shortly after Draco, Hermione and Blaise had settled at their table, Astoria and Ron looked as cosy as ever and they barely spared their opposition a glance as they settled at their table with their lawyer. There was an air of calm around the trio, and it certainly didn't look like they were worried about the day ahead.
"I don't like the look of that," Blaise muttered to Draco and Hermione.
"Me either," Draco agreed. "Why isn't she worried? It's going to come out she didn't have a miscarriage the first time and the baby wasn't even mine. Not to mention it's bound to emerge that she wasn't pregnant the second time."
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see what they've got planned," Blaise remarked with a slight frown.
Not that they had to wait long as no sooner had the hearing being declared open for the second day then Astoria's lawyer asked to speak. Before her medical records could even be looked at, he wanted to explain their contents to the court.
"Very well Mr Pike," Judge Henson said, giving Astoria's lawyer permission to speak.
Astoria's lawyer began by stressing that his client had no idea of the contraceptive charm Draco had secretly had placed upon himself. He then described how Astoria was feeling so unhappy in her marriage that she briefly had a liaison with another wizard. When she then discovered her pregnancy, she had no reason to think the child wasn't Draco's since she didn't know of the contraceptive charm. Unable to bear having another child with a man she was growing to hate, she made the soul-wrenching decision to abort her baby. Afterwards the guilt and the depression she was suffering from combined to leave her fearing that she wouldn't survive for much longer. She'd then reached out to the wizard she'd had a brief fling with and he'd helped her leave her husband and start a new life.
"Miss Greengrass is very sorry that she claimed it was a miscarriage that affected her, but it was the only way she could deal with the horrors she had to endure," Pike finished off. "She was depressed young witch, stuck in a loveless marriage with a child she hadn't bonded with, and she felt trapped. She took the only way out she could think of, and she's had to live with that choice for the rest of her life."
"Do you have anything to say, Mr Zabini?" Judge Henson asked.
"No, we just want the record to show that the child Miss Greengrass aborted was not Draco Malfoy's," Blaise said. "I have a sworn statement from Mr Malfoy's healer confirming that he performed the conception charm himself and has checked it every three months, and as of last week, it's still in place and hasn't been removed."
"We're happy to let the records show that Mr Malfoy wasn't the father of Miss Greengrasses second child," Judge Henson confirmed. "Although we do have our own questions to ask. While checking the records we can find no mention of the second miscarriage that has been so widely referenced in this hearing."
"Miss Greengrasses third pregnancy was still in the early stages when she miscarried," Pike supplied. "She hadn't had the pregnancy confirmed when she tragically lost the child."
"Then how could she be so sure she was even pregnant?" Judge Henson demanded.
"This was her third pregnancy, and all the home testing came back positive," Pike answered smoothly. "As for the miscarriage, Miss Greengrass awoke in the night in excruciating pain and a bed filled with blood. There was no way the child could have survived, and since her boyfriend was away at the time, she couldn't bring herself to go to the hospital alone. She suffered the trauma of losing her child all alone, and I really don't think we can judge her for being too grief-stricken to go to hospital by herself and be told what she already knew – that her baby was dead."
"Ron's buying this," Hermione hissed to Draco as she watched Ron place a comforting arm around Astoria. "I can't believe she's lied her way out of this."
"Weasley's not the only one buying this," Draco muttered, watching the committee and seeing the sympathy for Astoria in their eyes yet again.
"I think it's time to leave this for the time being," Judge Henson said. "Although I have to warn you Miss Greengrass, these lies, no matter why you told them, will not help your case. Honesty is always the best policy."
"I know, and I'm very sorry," Astoria said solemnly. "Until yesterday I didn't feel strong enough to even admit to myself that I had aborted my baby. It's such a painful time of my life, and all I want is the chance to have a fresh start with my darling daughter."
"Now is not the time for speeches, Miss Greengrass," Judge Henson interrupted. "You'll have your chance to speak at the end. For now, we've got some questions we want to ask."
For the rest of the morning the committee threw questions at the two couples. Most of the questions had been asked on the home visits, but it was chance for both couples to elaborate on their answers and sell themselves as the right people to be bringing up Mia. By lunchtime everyone was ready for a break, and even though Astoria and Ron had answered all their questions easily enough, Draco was confident he and Hermione showed more passion and they certainly showed that they knew Mia better than her biological mother and her boyfriend.
After lunch, Blaise submitted a few more statements of people who'd known Astoria when she was married to Draco and could testify as to her previous experience as a mother. Astoria's lawyer did try and get the statements dismissed as irrelevant, but Judge Henson let them be submitted into evidence. After that the only thing left to do was for Astoria and Draco to give their own statements as to why they should be awarded custody of their daughter.
As has been the way, Astoria went first. However, she really just repeated what her lawyer had said the previous day and while it clearly gained her sympathy, it did little to really explain why she now thought Mia would be better off with her. In fact Mia featured very little in her speech and it was mostly about her, and how she'd come through the difficulties of her past and was ready to start again.
Draco hadn't needed to listen to Astoria speak to know what not to do, as he was already aware that what he had to say wasn't about him, it was about Mia. Like Astoria, he could have repeated what Blaise had said earlier and laid out how he'd always been there for his daughter, but instead he chose to focus on the little girl who was the light of his life.
"Mia is happy," Draco began. "She's always being a shy child, but over the last couple of years, she's really began to blossom. She excels at school and she loves to learn. She has friends and a family here, and she loves them all. To take her away from everything she knows, would in my opinion, not only be cruel, but detrimental to her well-being. She's a young girl, who if left as she is, will develop into a talented and strong witch. My daughter has so much potential, all I'm asking is that you don't take that away from her. Mia's happy and loved, and at the end of the day, isn't that all that really matters?"
Even though his speech was short, far shorter than Astoria's, Draco felt as though it was perfect. Granted he could have gone on for ever about how amazing his little girl was, but he felt less was more. In his speech he'd shown that Mia was his priority and if the hearing didn't see that then they were fools. Beside him, Hermione gave him a reassuring smile as she took hold of his hand. Like Draco, she felt that he'd pitched his speech just right and while he hadn't said much, it had been clear in every word he did say that Mia was the centre of his universe and all he wanted was for her to be happy.
"I think we have now heard everything we need to hear," Judge Henson announced. "This hearing will be adjourned for the day. We will reconvene at ten o'clock tomorrow morning and hopefully a verdict will be ready to deliver."
Knowing that they'd done all they could, and all they could do now was pray that the worst wouldn't happen, Draco and Hermione left the hearing room with Blaise. Heading to the manor, they then dined with Draco's parents as they prepared themselves for the longest wait of their lives. In a few short hours Mia's destiny, and that of the entire family, would be decided.