AN: Welcome To Night Vale is such a beautiful, wonderful show. I love it. Everyone go listen to it. Also! This chapter is for Nancy, Lori, and all the awesome new people I've met in the Draco/Harry facebook group. You guys get me.

Chapter 29: The Forgotten

Did Grace feel pathetic? Yes. Did she look pathetic? Yes. Did she care what she looked like? Thankfully, no. A giant stomach took care of that problem, rendering her unattractive to even herself.

She'd left a note for when Draco and Harry got back from work to find their mother hen had flown the coop for a walk among the unwashed masses.

Grace had a stainless steel spoon in her left hand and a plastic tub of cake icing in the right hand. She needed a walk, goddammit. The house of Malfoy-Potter was lavish with luxury, but she had to get out of there before cabin fever got the best of her.

To prevent that from happening, Harry and Draco had scheduled all sorts of things for her to do.

Birthing classes. Massages for pregnant women. More shopping sprees. She was living the life of an heiress who'd been prematurely knocked up.

That day, however, nothing had been on Grace's itinerary. Not even a meal out with the prospective parents. They were both busy celebrating with the Weasleys even though the birth had been a week ago, and Grace could only imagine what would happen when they got their own kid. She wasn't really going to stick around to find out, but she predicted centuries of celebration.

A positive of having the two mysterious and wealthy older men out and about was that she got some privacy. She never used to get that at her house.

Even when she walked down the street scooping icing out of its container and eating it like ice cream, she felt solitary. Nobody in this side of town knew her. Nobody would judge her for her messy bun, bare face (she never used to even leave the dorm without makeup), or her giant pretentious sunglasses. Hey, they kept the sun out of her eyes.

Grace licked the spoon clean of her latest scoop of chocolate icing.

As far as the people in the neighborhood knew, she was a glamorous and young trophy wife of some Russian mafia boss. None of them had to know she was a teenager when her tits had gotten so big. That was always a plus.

Grace looked down passed her chest to her jar of icing. It reminded her of the cake she had baked back at the Malfoy-Potter house and had become so horribly overwhelmed by.

The offending cake was right on the counter cooling off from the oven when the dreadful sense of disability hit Grace. Cakes didn't usually send Grace into a flurry of emotion and general panic, but this one seemed to be an exception.

Maybe it was that she realized she was going to have to ice the cake on her own, without any assistance from a third party since Draco and Harry were currently out of shouting distance.

It made her head throb. She had to ice the cake all by herself. She was in a house she didn't really know with men she didn't really know.

Her green eyes locked on the cake as it stood there naked—taunting her.

Grace's stomach churned with an unshakable nausea that made her hands shake when she looked up at the offending cake and the container of icing next to it. She would have to open that container. She would have to get a knife. She would have to ice the cake alone.

Instead of doing that, she panicked.

Grace grabbed the spoon she'd used for her breakfast cereal and ripped the lid off of the icing in one swift motion. In an act of defiance against some unnamed force she dunked the spoon into the icing, brought it back up, and lapped up every last drop of it.

Now she didn't have to ice the cake alone, she could just eat the icing. It had made much more sense at the time, she supposed.

A startling thought hit her in the present. She was an adult. A grown woman eating from a tub of icing in public.

Nobody could stop her, and that was terrifying.

Grace's life was suddenly without consequence. She could eat whatever she wanted, jump in front of a muggle car, drop everything and start screaming… There were no professors or guardians around to stop her.

The thought of screaming haunted her as she passed the maternity clothing store Draco had taken her to earlier in the month. She could totally do it.

She could absolutely just start screaming and nobody could tell her to stop. Grace Burbage was a free woman with a free mouth. It struck her then and there that she had to do it. She had to find some place where she could sit comfortably and howl her brains out.

With reckless abandon she navigated the streets. Because it was a Wednesday afternoon the witches and wizards in the village were all at work.

There was a little bench and water fountain nearby, definitely behind one of these buildings… Her eyes searched in panic. Grace could feel the scream growing in her throat already.

The scream was close to bursting when she finally found that stone bench. It had been warmed by the summer sun, but it thankfully wasn't hot enough to keep her from sitting down.

Grace gingerly put the spoon and icing to the side, gripped the bench with two puffy hands—wasn't pregnancy a miracle?—and screwed her eyes shut.

She opened her mouth in a horrendous scream.

It was high-pitched, a wail that carried across the fountain and the nearby shops. The first few seconds of it were gravelly in texture, but the rest came out as smoothly as a river. She held it at that one excruciating note for only Merlin knows how long.

When her cracked lips finally came back together she didn't regret her decision. Sure, her throat hurt like hell and she still had a splitting headache, but Grace didn't regret screaming.

She had avoided icing a cake alone only to scream alone it seemed. Nobody was rushing over to see if a young and impressionable girl was being dragged into a white van. It was almost as if no one had heard her.

But Grace, as she usually did, miscalculated. The world may have been without consequence in that moment, but someone had heard her scream.

This young wizard-in-training dashed to the scene of the damsel in distress. After all, he had promised to do right in the future! Here he was, saving an innocent woman from some peril—

"Grace?"

She didn't need to open her eyes to see who it was. In fact, Grace was dead set on keeping them screwed shut.

"Grace, is that…?"

"If you don't leave me alone," Grace said shakily. "I will scream again."

Zeke didn't really know how to respond to that. So, he just stood there in the pinnacle of teenage futility. He was in no power to change the situation in front of him and was attempting to be a 'better man' by respecting the requests of women whose lives he had come deathly close to ruining for good. The end result was him shutting his mouth.

This was the first smart move he'd made in a while, even Grace had to see that.

"I'm not icing your fucking cake," she said, eyes still closed.

"What?" Zeke took that as his cue to speak. "Look, you have every right to be mad at me. I was an asshole. I have a job now, I can try and support—"

"No."

"I'm sorry I freaked out, I really am. Grace, like, you have to understand how hard this is for me."

Grace let another scream out. This one was much shorter, but made Zeke quiver in his skinny jeans all the same.

"Uh."

"I am," she said slowly once the fire in her lungs had died down. "The size of a fucking whale. And you are telling me that you're having, 'like', a hard time?"

Zeke opened his mouth to respond, but Grace cut him off before he could even form a syllable.

"I took care of things. It's impossible for me to ice this dumb cake on my own, so I'm leaving it to someone else. Well, multiple someone elses. Two. They can ice it, because the thought of raising this thing alone is the stuff of nightmares," Grace blathered on. The headache, sugar rush, pregnancy, and general emotional trauma all added up to one strong punch to her sanity.

It was only then that Zeke realized she was talking about the baby, and not an actual cake. Also, the empty can of icing next to her was kind of creeping him out. Had she seriously eaten that right out of the packaging? "You don't have to raise it alone."

Finally, Grace opened her eyes. "You're right. I don't."

"I have some galleons saved up from my bar mitzvah—"

"I'm not raising this kid with you, Zeke. I told you, I've taken care of it. I have adoptive parents that are well off enough to raise it."

That was news to him. "You…? You found a couple?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"Yes."

"Don't I have, like, father's rights or something?" he stammered. "You know, in court! You can't just give away something that's half mine." He'd seen that on muggle television before.

Grace shot him a dirty glare. "Go fuck yourself, 'half yours'. You made it pretty clear when I told you about the positive test that you weren't taking responsibility. You disappeared. I've already made arrangements. Have you talked with Her Highness about suing me? I bet she'd love an illegitimate grandchild from a muggleborn milling around her home because I'm certainly not watching it."

'Her Highness' was code for Zeke's mother whenever they argued about her. Their arguments used to be simple and sort of stupid. 'She doesn't like me', 'she insulted my outfit', 'she gave me the evil eye all night'….

"Shit. Fuck." Zeke hadn't even thought of that.

"You don't have the funds to pursue me in court."

"Well, neither do you," he snipped just to get his last word in. Zeke was always doing that in arguments, like it was a battle to win.

"I don't," Grace admitted. "But this thing—" she motioned to her stomach "—has rich, rich daddies."

Zeke made yet another fatal error in the conversation that he'd been failing at from the start. "'Daddies'? Like, two of them…?"

"Oh my fucking god, Zeke. If you say something about gay parents I am going to murder you and hide the body under the foundations of a Soho drag queen bar I know about—"

"I was with you, Grace. Miss liberal lefty," he reminded her. 'Was' happened to be the operative word in that sentence, though. "I'm not homophobic. It just shocked me, okay?"

Grace huffed and crossed her arms. "How is it a shock that homosexuals want to raise children just like everyone else?"

"You're twisting my words! Merlin fucking god, Grace. Gay people are great. Gay people dress better than me and will always have better comebacks to insults!" His voice climbed, and it was really a wonder nobody else had stumbled upon them. They were a sight for sore eyes and a sound for sore ears.

"Now you're sticking to stereotypes!"

"Will nothing please you, dammit?"

"No!" she yelled. "Nothing will. You're right. You've caught me. I'm too mad at you to not nitpick. What a fucking surprise."

Zeke huffed. "I get that. That's justified." His sister had told him to say that a lot so Grace knew she was appreciated and stuff. "You just… You should have owled me or something. When you made a decision."

"Don't tell me what to do," she mumbled, resigned. Maybe it was a mood swing, but that didn't make her exhaustion any less real.

"I'm not. You'd never listen," he muttered. Zeke wondered if all couples were supposed to fight like this; spewing hate at one another until they tired. He wondered if the two blokes she'd promised their kid to did that. Those guys were married, though. They probably made up afterwards and told each other they loved each other. Grace and Zeke didn't even love each other.

"Can I at least have an address? I mean, to keep me updated. I want to be there when the baby is born at least before we give it away."

"I am giving it away, and no. You can't be anywhere near the hospital during the birth. Draco and Harry—"

Those were the magic words.

The crew of paparazzi that had sat in waiting in the designated two-hundred fifty feet away from the Malfoy-Potter home after weeks upon weeks of work undoing Lucius' meticulous spells—though they still couldn't get anywhere near the house without feeling the need to throw their guts up—leapt from the shadows.

The world had more consequences than Grace could have ever dreamed of.

Her nightmare was a press field day.

"When are you due?"

"Do you think Draco and Harry will be good parents? Or will they ruin the kid like they were ruined by the Lupins?"

One of the photographers grabbed a snapshot of Zeke while the rest creating a babbling, flashing circle of light around Grace. So many people had heard her scream, more than she could have ever dreamed of.

xxxxXXXXxxxx

Draco put down the knife once he had smoothed the last patch of bare chocolate cake over with a new tub of icing from the store. The coating was uniform and prim, just like his house elves used to do it. His written correspondence with his mother had actually mentioned Gerda quite a bit lately.

"Want a slice?" he asked Harry and Grace. If they didn't, Draco hardly minded shoveling chocolate cake in his face alone. Malfoys were experts at filling emotional voids with everything from jewelry to cocoa.

Harry, being a Malfoy-Potter, supposed he could give it a try. "Just a small slice."

"I don't ever want to think about cake again," Grace responded.

"So I'm going to take that as a firm 'no'," Draco snarked as he cut a piece off for Harry and a chunk off for himself. He got them both plates and forks before heading back into the dining room where the other two were currently stewing in their own thoughts.

Harry was undoubtedly filled with some soul-rending angst over someone close to him that happened to be carrying someone he would grow to love and see as a daughter had been harassed by paparazzi before she had the sense to run for cover in a building.

"Here, love." Draco set down Harry's plate.

It never seemed to matter what mood he was in, that soothing voice of Draco's always managed to make him feel safe. "Thanks."

They were safe, weren't they? They were behind closed doors and nobody was asking probing questions. Well, nobody but Harry.

"Are you sure you don't want anything, Grace?"

"I'm sure."

Harry picked apart his slice of cake with his fork. He watched the little crumbs scatter before impaling them with the prongs and bringing them up to his mouth. Watching his cake was the only way Harry could keep from making a desperate attempt at conversation.

Nothing Draco Malfoy-Potter did was desperate, though, so he was the first to speak. "Are you sure Zeke is the father?"

"Yes," she grumbled. It was almost depressing that she had only been with one guy before conceiving a living, breathing child.

If Grace had paid attention in her birthing class she would know that fetuses don't breathe and actually take their first breath when they are born, but there was no way in hell she was going to listen to that woman blather on about bodily functions.

"Then a DNA test won't be necessary," Draco sighed. The test would be invasive and dangerous to the baby, too. "Don't worry, I'll have my father come over with the lawyers tomorrow. We can work all of the legal documents out there. As the one carrying the child, you can feasibly go right over Zeke's head once we prove him to be an unfit parent." That wouldn't be hard, considering he was sixteen.

Harry usually dreaded seeing the Malfoy family lawyers. "I'm sure they'll seal everything up air-tight to keep us from court. That's not what I'm worried about."

"What are you worried about?" Draco frowned.

Instead of answering his husband, Harry turned to Grace. The next question would sort of say it all anyway. "Do you still have feelings for him?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything," Grace responded quickly. "I hate him. He's an arse and a dick all at once and I dated him at one point. That's it."

"Grace… Is there any chance—"

"No! Harry, if you think I want to be living in some group-home with a screaming kid, then you are mistaken. I'm not going to work at McDonald's to pay for diapers."

Draco's frown turned to a look of curiosity. What was a 'McDonald's'?

"You're sure?" Harry asked again.

Grace was almost offended by the questioning before remembering she was in no position to be offended by someone who had taken her into his home and life for the next few months. "I'm sure," she answered in a solemn, serious tone.

"Of course she is," Draco murmured. Harry's protectiveness was a trait that he often admired and found a bit sexy. In the moment, however, it was redundant. "My father is coming tomorrow; this will all be resolved."

Harry put his hand on Draco's knee under the table. "Okay." When Lucius visited, one problem was resolved and three more were ripped open, but he was sure Draco didn't need to hear that right then. Just because Draco looked composed on the outside didn't mean he wasn't just as worried as Harry. Draco was just better at hiding it.

"So. Any more pressing secrets or shocking revelations? Are your aunt and uncle going to show up at your bedside?" Draco went on, revealing a little bit of that worry.

"No. That was it, I think," Grace said. Well, she hoped.

"Alright. Harry," Draco turned to his sweet, sweet boy with the emerald eyes and the arms that held him every night. "Bed?"

"Bed. Goodnight, Grace."

She took out her messy bun and let her hair fall down. "Goodnight." When the door to Draco and Harry's room clicked shut, she let out a little puff of air.

The worst part was that Grace hadn't even been worried that she'd upset Zeke, or broken some horrible news to the public… She had been scared that this meant Draco and Harry would drop her from some other girl with a less dramatic life.

Even when she was spiraling out of control and screaming in public, Grace's heart was in the same place. She wanted her girl to have a life of ease, sitting firmly in the lap of luxury. She would have the baby, hand it over, and be done with it. Zeke, the public, lawyers, Lucius, and everyone else be damned.

xxxxXXXXxxxx

The taller of the two sister lawyers reminded Grace of a crane. A proud, angry crane. Even her bony finger pointing at the line where Grace was to sign looked bird-like.

Grace hadn't decided what animal the other Bagley sister resembled.

Lucius led in the family lawyers early that morning—which to an old man like Lucius, meant six in the morning. Harry had answered his knock on the door in slippers and Draco's pyjamas, glasses askew on his face.

It was no surprise that Lucius had responded to Draco's owl post-haste. This was a threat to his family, an offense Lucius held in the highest ignominy. It was a threat to his entire line of heritage, name, and fortune too, but that was beside the point.

"Sign," said the shorter of lawyer gruffly.

Grace would sign whatever the hell she needed to get this kid out of her realm of responsibility, even if the woman telling her to sign had smeared her austere lipstick on her teeth when putting it on. Maybe her ponytail was pulled too tight and it was starting to get to the poor woman. Materialism-wise, the rich woman. Lucius compensated them well.

"Alright, where else?" Grace asked. She was overplaying her eagerness for Lucius' benefit, and she supposed her own benefit, since Lucius was looking slightly murderous that morning. He had been a Death Eater, after all. He'd been there at her mother's last hours.

She didn't want to think about that.

The lawyers flipped through the forms. "Initial there, there, there, there, and there. Then sign the bottom of this."

"Father," Draco said to break the uncomfortably silence that came about whenever Grace was busy signing. "Did you want anything to eat…?"

"I had breakfast with your mother. I'd rather have this resolved, considering what The Prophet has to say about it."

Shit, Draco hadn't even hopped to the nearby market to get a copy. Half of him wanted to ask what absurd lies they'd printed, but the other half knew his father had a much more resigned and sensitive sense of humor about fame.

Harry and Draco exchanged looks before Draco outstretched his arm to him.

Harry immediately flocked to his side so he could feel a warm, encouraging hand on the small of his back. He hadn't slept well at all, so he rested his cheek on Draco's shoulder.

They'd both had a hard time getting to sleep. Draco tried everything from warm milk to back rubs on the both of them but nothing had soothed their mutual anxiety. "Everything is stupid," Harry grumbled into his husband's skin.

"Yes, yes it is." Draco watched Grace get hounded into signing again, and again, and again… "She's due in five weeks. Five. That's thirty-five days."

That helped Harry's pout significantly. "Then we have our baby."

"Exactly."

"I'm going to put in the application for paternity leave to Kingsley today at work."

Draco turned to look Harry in the eyes, slightly shocked. "Are you sure? We could both work half-time, we could get a sitter…"

"Nope." Harry shook his head. "No nannies. Ever. If anything, we get Remus and Sirius to babysit."

"So we can come back and find our daughter is marching on the Ministry building in hemp clothes while she protests civil injustice?" Draco asked playfully.

"Yes. We'll take her to London Pride every year, too. We'll be those obnoxious gay dads who lift their kids on their shoulders and walk the streets laughing in the faces of the people who tried to legally stop us from adopting."

Draco smirked. "Sounds perfect. You sure your department won't fall apart without the Head Auror?"

"Ron's going to watch over things," Harry shrugged. "For however long I'm out. I'll still be doing paperwork for cases at home, of course."

'However long' he was out…? "Well, how long are you planning to be out?"

"And sign here, and here, and here… Flip the page over and sign on the line as well," one of the Bagley sisters commanded Grace on the other side of dining room.

"I don't know," Harry shrugged. "Most of the preschools we've looked at say they start accepting kids at two years old. Speaking of which, do you prefer the Place for Kids or Building Blocks? I think Building Blocks has nicer teachers."

Draco couldn't believe Harry was being so calm about this.

"We could visit this week, hm? Some of them have pre-registering requirements like essays and things. I think we could just write 'Malfoy-Potter' on the application and they'd accept us, though," Harry chuckled.

"You would really take two years off of work?"

Harry frowned. "Well, yeah. For the baby, anything."

"I could help, you know," Draco reminded him.

"You love your job."

"So do you."

"Your hours are more concrete," Harry countered. "I can't be on-call and leave the kid home alone. I like my job, sure, but I wouldn't mind taking a break."

"A break…?"

"I've been digging up bones this past month, Draco. I had to investigate the triple-homicide of a family yesterday," Harry murmured as he saw Grace was getting to the end of her law packet. "You help people, Draco. I think I just pick up the pieces when it's too late to help."

That was so wrong. Harry brought killers to justice, he repaired broken families and helped people grieve their spouses, their sisters, their children. Draco thought that was valuable, and was proud that his Harry did it.

"Finished," Grace announced triumphantly before putting down her quill. "She's all yours."

Lucius wasn't at all pleased with Draco's choice of a mother, but that was admittedly reassuring. His granddaughter was all his. In writing.

"Satisfactory," Lucius said. He didn't like sounding eager. "Now, let's talk names."

"We have one," Draco told him quickly. If he didn't cement that in Lucius' brain quickly then the man would surely pull out the star charts to browse for baby names.

Lucius cocked an eyebrow. "Is it a deceased relative's name?"

Dammit. Harry wished he wasn't so predictable. "I think you'll like it," he told Lucius carefully.

"I doubt that."

"Father."

"Yeah, come on, dad," Harry teased. Lucius' icy glare didn't affect him like I used to.

Still, the glare held some power. Grace was caught in the middle of it, too. She hadn't even known they'd picked out a name.

"I'm going to go up to my room now," Grace interjected before leaving whatever fight was soon to come behind. No need to stress out Fiona, or Bella, or Cassidy, or whatever they were naming the damn thing. She couldn't think of anyone besides Nymphadora Tonks that had died in the second war that they would spend time naming their daughter over.

Grace wasn't even alive for the first war, so she almost forgot entirely about Lily Potter née Evans. She didn't even know that once the baby was born, Lily's name would never be forgotten by a soul in the wizarding world ever again.