Draco found himself standing outside Hermione's room with his mouth hanging open for what seemed like an eternity after she had gone off to ask Potter and Weasley to take her to the hospital wing.

I must be on the edge of a nervous breakdown, he thought. Too many thoughts to process.

However, eventually he managed to kick-start his brain into making his feet move back in the direction of the Slytherin common room, which was at least something.

But he had practically told Hermione that he was a Death Eater! What was he thinking? She obviously hated him now, and his father would kill him if he ever found out... What good could he have possibly thought might come out of such a confession?

In his mind, Draco threw himself repeatedly over a ragged cliff edge, but even that didn't seem quite enough of a punishment.

And on top of that, Hermione was about to have his child. He wasn't sure if the timing of this was the worst or best possible.

They had agreed that no matter how much she might want him there, there was no way he could be with her for the birth. Which had initially come as a relief to him -- after all, why wouldn't he want to miss something Hermione had told him involved a lot of pain and screaming and sweating -- but now, as he found himself trudging downstairs to the common room, he couldn't help wondering what exactly was going on all the way on the other side of the castle in the hospital wing. He wondered if everything was going alright, and how you could tell if it was. He had heard of people dying in childbirth... Why had he not thought to mention this to Hermione?

Unable to think of anything else to do to help ease his mind, Draco fetched his homework from his dormitory and joined the others working by the fire. However, he soon found that he couldn't concentrate even on the tasks he could normally do without thinking. His mind was just too overwhelmed.

He decided to go to the library for some peace and quiet.

He was half tempted to make a detour via the hospital wing, but Hermione would probably have Potter and Weasley there with her and would kill Draco if he showed his face. So he made his way to the library, hardly aware of how slowly he was walking, and, carefully avoiding Madam Pince lest she harass him about returning his books on time -- which he always did, so her infrequent but persistent reminders were beyond annoying -- sat down in a corner.

He stared into space for a while before the title of a book on the shelf opposite caught his eye:

Keeping Up Appearances: How to Gain and Keep Respect

An ironic chuckle escaped Draco's throat. Yes. Right. Respect. He wondered if anyone had any respect for him at all anymore. His father certainly didn't. Draco hadn't received one letter from him since he'd been back at Hogwarts. He usually wrote at least occasionally to tell Draco he had to do better in this or that subject, but now... nothing. If Draco had any siblings he was sure his father would have disowned him by now.

Draco stood up and ran a finger down the spine of the book. This was where he'd found the virgin-detecting spell, what seemed like years ago now. If Hermione didn't want to brutally murder him already, she certainly would if she ever found out about that.

For the first time, it seemed to sink in just how many secrets he was trying to keep.

Different secrets from different people, for different reasons, in different ways. The simple grouping of all people into friends and foes which had been all he needed for so long was now, Draco realised, completely inaccurate. Hermione, who used to be firmly in the 'foe' category, was now the only other person to know one of the greatest secrets he kept. His father, however, who usually was the one who told Draco his biggest secrets in the first place, was completely in the dark, and would have to remain that way forever if Draco didn't want to have to pay dearly.

Draco was hiding his involvement with Hermione from both his friends and family and his greatest enemies. He was keeping the spell from Crabbe and Goyle, in whom he had confided everything only a year or two ago, and from Hermione, who -- yes, fine, he would admit it -- he was terrified that he might be in love with.

Everything was so complicated, with tendrils of trust and secrecy stretching and bending into places they had never been before, growing thinner and closer to breaking the further they went, and surely eventually everything would snap and break and crumble from the stress.

No.

It couldn't. It wouldn't. He could control it, he could keep it coherent and contained and together. He had to.

Shaking his head, Draco began walking through the shelves, looking for a book, any book, which might be engrossing enough to distract him from such disturbing thoughts. He found himself in the Health & Mediwizardry section and his eyes rested on a book called Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Despite himself, he picked it up.

He took the book over to a table next to a small window and opened it at a random page.

He saw the words 'mucus plug', read enough to know more or less what they meant, and shut the book again quickly.

It seemed pregnancy was far more disgusting than he had thought.

He looked out at the sky, from which rain had begun to drizzle, and sighed. Eventually a kind of sickened curiosity got the better of him and he opened the book again, closer to the back this time.

Printed on the page was a simple drawing of a tiny baby, nursing at its mother's breast.

Draco stared at it, mesmerised.

He wondered how long it would take for Hermione to have the baby, and if she would then feed it like this, with only a sheet to preserve her modesty, and the child naked and perfect in her arms.

Probably not.

It was too cold to just be wearing a sheet, for one thing.

Looking out at the rain again, Draco realised that it had also been dark outside for rather a long time. Glancing at his pocketwatch, he saw that it was almost eleven o'clock.

Perhaps he should return to his dormitory and try to get some sleep.

With one last look at the picture, Draco closed the book and put it back on the shelf before heading downstairs.

Sleep, however, proved practically impossible, and not just due to Goyle's loud snoring or the suspiciously female noises coming from behind the closed curtains of Blaise's bed.

Had the baby been born yet, with Hermione now sleeping peacefully? Or was she going to be awake all night in agony? If so, how much longer would the whole thing take? Draco wasn't quite sure what kind of timeframe to expect for this... he should have asked Hermione before she had gone, or looked it up in that book earlier...

In the end he drifted off into a rather restless sleep, and was woken several times by the imagined sound of a baby crying.

In the morning at breakfast Draco was bleary-eyed and couldn't seem to keep himself from yawning. He chewed almost automatically on his slice of toast, eyes fixed on the Gryffindor table across the Hall, where Hermione was nowhere to be seen.

Potter and the two youngest Weasleys arrived late, looking even more tired than Draco felt. They gulped down some eggs on toast seemingly without swallowing and disappeared right out of the Hall again, no doubt hurrying back to Hermione's side.

Oh, how Draco envied them. He wondered for the thousandth time what exactly was going on in the hospital wing, which had somehow overnight been transformed in his head into a mystical fantasy land somewhere far away rather than a place he could walk to in under five minutes if he didn't want to incur Hermione's wrath.

The famous Gryffindor trio was also conspicuously absent in the double Transfiguration lesson that morning. Draco sat with Blaise, totally unresponsive to the latter's attempts at conversation, and stared at the empty desk across the room where Hermione usually sat with that expression of endless concentration on her face as she scribbled notes at a fearsome speed and somehow still managed to put her hand up to answer every single one of Professor McGonagall's questions.

Draco's own notes for this particular lesson mainly consisted of long squiggley lines meant to represent Hermione's hair. He dared not draw more of her lest somebody recognise that he was thinking about her.

Unfortunately, McGonagall noticed that he was not paying the remotest bit of attention to what she was actually saying. "Mr Malfoy!" her voice suddenly echoed sharply somewhere above his head, and he looked up to see that she was standing right next to him. "Kindly stop daydreaming and pay attention, if you please."

"Yes, Professor," Draco murmured, cutting the creation of his umpteenth artistically drawn hair short. Still, he could not for the life of him understand any of what McGonagall consequently continued saying, and he knew any notes he took were bound to seem like incomprehensible nonsense when he looked at them later. His mind kept drifting back to Hermione...

After somehow surviving the rest of Transfiguration and then twiddling his thumbs nervously for most of his Defence against the Dark Arts lesson, Draco decided that he would skip lunch and sneak up to the hospital wing to see what exactly was going on.

The sound of an infant crying echoed down the corridor even as he approached.

Draco suddenly felt dizzy and... well, terrified, and seriously considered running right back downstairs. However, in the end his pride got the better of him. After all, what would his father say if Draco told him he had run away from his own child?

...Actually, considering the circumstances his father would probably applaud him for that small show of good judgement before killing him violently due to those very circumstances, but that was neither here nor there.

Swallowing, he crept slowly along the wall and peered carefully around the door to the hospital wing.

He could see Potter, the two Weasleys and Madam Pomfrey all standing by a bed with their backs to him, and half obscured behind Madam Pomfrey was the back of Hermione's head, resting on a pile of propped-up pillows.

"Careful now, Mr Weasley," Madam Pomfrey said gently, and Draco realised with a start that Ronald Weasley was holding his child. He just about had a heart attack, and almost lost his grip on the door frame and fell head-first into the room.

"She's beautiful, Hermione," Ginny Weasley said.

She. A girl, then.

"Yeah," said the red-headed idiot currently entrusted with Draco's offspring. "So, I don't suppose you'd like to tell us who the father is now?"

"Ron, for the last time, it's none of your business," said Hermione's voice tiredly. "I'm not telling you or anybody else, and that's final."

"Say," said Potter, "It's not Malfoy, is it? Only her hair does look a bit... blonde..."

There was a pause. "Don't be obscene, Harry," said Hermione. "My hair was blonde when I was little."

Potter sighed with relief. "Just checking."

Feeling ever-so-slightly insulted and seeing that there was no point in staying here at the moment, Draco withdrew and began walking down to the Great Hall to see if he could scoff down a sandwich or two before Charms.

So. A girl.

Damn. He had really been hoping it would be a boy. At least he had some experience with small boys, having obviously once been one (and an exemplary one too, if he said so himself), but a girl... that was just completely foreign to him. He only hoped Hermione would know what to do with it.

No, not it. Her.

Hazel Almeta Granger, his daughter. With his hair colour and everything.

Draco suddenly found that he wasn't very hungry after all.

However, Potter and his Weasley minions obviously were, as only moments later they traipsed down the stairs past him -- ignoring him completely, of course.

Draco turned to look back up the staircase.

If they had left, maybe it meant that Hermione was alone now...

Making the decision quickly before he could bottle out, Draco made his way back to the hospital wing.

"Can I hold her again?" he heard Hermione ask as he once again poked his head around the door just enough to see what was going on.

"Of course, you can, dear," said Madam Pomfrey, bending down to carefully place the white bundle of blankets she was holding into Hermione's waiting arms. Hermione looked exhausted but exceedingly happy as she gazed down at the child.

"Now, I'm just going to go and tell Professor McGonagall that everything went well," Madam Pomfrey told her. "I won't be long, but if you need anything just call for me. The walls will pick it up."

Hermione nodded, not looking up as Madam Pomfrey left the room.

For his part, Draco rushed to hide around the next corner and then, when he was sure she was gone, entered the hospital wing.

"Hermione," he said quietly as he approached.

At this she did look up. "Draco," she said, her face breaking into a grin.

He found himself returning the smile, and pulled up a chair by her bed a little nervously.

"We did it," Hermione said. "Look at her, she's here..."

Draco stood up again, and leaned over the bed to meet his child.

Her hair was indeed an almost white shade of blonde, very similar to his own. It was also rather curly -- he presumed these were Hermione's genes asserting themselves -- and there was a lot more of it than he would have expected. Her face was bright pink and completely scrunched up, including her eyes, which were closed. Her nose was the tiniest he had ever seen, as was the single hand peeking out from underneath the mass of blankets she was wrapped in. Draco marvelled at her minuscule fingernails.

"Isn't she perfect..." Hermione sighed. She looked at him. "Do you want to hold her?"

Draco stepped back, terrified. "Er, no," he said.

Hermione looked hurt. "Why not?"

"What if I drop her?"

Hermione tutted, dismissing this concern as if it was of no consequence. "You won't. Come on, take her." She began to hold the child out to him, and Draco impulsively reached out to catch her lest Hermione drop her.

Hermione let go, and Draco was left crouching over the bed with their daughter in his arms. She seemed to weigh barely anything.

Hazel Almeta Granger opened her dark blue eyes and looked at her father.

Then a sudden gasp sounded behind him, followed almost immediately by one from Hermione.

Draco craned his neck to see without having to move his body. Then he froze.

Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall were standing in the doorway, looking just as shocked as him and Hermione.

"Professor, Madam Pomfrey..." Hermione implored. "Please, you mustn't tell anyone!"

This seemed to snap at least Professor McGonagall out of it; she strode into the room. "Is he the father?" she enquired incredulously of Hermione, coming to a stop on the opposite side of the bed to Draco with her robes billowing angrily. Madam Pomfrey followed more slowly, wringing her hands.

Hermione nodded. "Yes."

McGonagall stared at Draco, who barely dared to look back. "Well..." she declared almost to herself. "Well I never..."

"Professor, please," Hermione pleaded again, "Please don't tell anyone, for all our sakes..."

"Who else knows?" McGonagall demanded.

Hermione shook her head. "Just my parents, and they don't really understand..."

"My parents mustn't find out," Draco declared vehemently.

Professor McGonagall looked from one to the other, looking slightly overwhelmed by the situation. She shook her head. "Very well," she said. "If that's what you want, I'm not going to disrespect your privacy."

"Nor I," said Madam Pomfrey.

"Oh, thank you Professor, Madam Pomfrey...!" Draco was sure Hermione would be kneeling at their feet by now if she weren't confined to a hospital bed.

Draco himself merely shrugged his shoulders in a restricted but vaguely thankful manner.

McGonagall nodded.

There was a silence. Draco shifted his position uncomfortably.

"May I see the child?" McGonagall enquired at last, in a much softer tone than Draco had ever heard from her before.

He looked at Hermione, who nodded.

Carefully, he stood up straight as McGonagall circled the bed and came towards him. She reached out gently to touch his daughter's cheek.

"She's delightful," McGonagall said. "Congratulations."

"Thank you," said Hermione.

The professor nodded again, and she and Madam Pomfrey disappeared into the adjacent office, closing the door behind them.

Draco and Hermione looked at each other.

"Well..." said Hermione.

"Do you really think they won't tell anyone?" Draco asked, gingerly sitting back down. The baby seemed to have gone back to sleep.

Hermione nodded. "I don't see why they would."

"Even Dumbledore?"

"Maybe Dumbledore, but knowing him he's probably worked it out already."

"Hmm."

Hermione leaned back against the pillows, blinking slowly. She really looked as though she was about to fall asleep. But, Draco realised, there was something he needed to ask her first.

"Hermione?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"You know... what I told you last night..."

She looked at him more intently. "Yes."

"You don't... you don't hate me or anything now, do you?"

"Draco..." Hermione shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure I could ever go back to just hating you. And all that stuff... that stuff which makes you the worst possible person for me to be with, let alone have a child with... well, in the end it's all just stuff. I tried being without you, remember? It didn't work. Because without you I just feel... broken."

Draco didn't know quite what to say to this. He settled for "...Oh."

Hermione smiled. "Come on, you'd better give her back to me or you'll be late for Charms."

He did as he was told. "Bye then," he said, leaning over to give Hermione a quick kiss. He was about to turn around and leave when he changed his mind.

Gently, he took his daughter's tiny pink hand between his fingers and kissed it.

"See you soon, Hazel."

On his way to the Charms classroom, he couldn't stop a grin from spreading over his face.