Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Dedication: For Aya!

Hogwarts: Ravenclaw, Assignment #7, Write about someone taking time to relax and recharge.

Content Warnings: Chronic illness; parental anxiety

Ease My Mind

Most nights, I am restless and quiet won't come

So I lay there and wait for the sun

There's a trouble that won't show its face

You came out of nowhere

And you cut through all the noise

I make sense to the madness

When I listen to your voice

Darling, only you can ease my mind

Help me leave these lonely thoughts behind

-Ease My Mind, Ben Platt

She fought to keep her eyes open as she lay on her side, Draco's arm slung over her, watching the little boy nestled in the bassinet at her bedside. His hair was as wispy as dandelion seeds, and the biggest thing about him seemed to be the belly that rose and fell as he breathed in and out, sleeping soundly. He was small, but that hadn't been a surprise given how difficult the pregnancy had been. The healers and midwife were satisfied with his birth weight so Astoria decided it was alright by her too. It was about the inside of her baby boy that she worried—about the heart beating in his chest, the lungs filling with air, the blood pumping through his veins, and the one million other little things that had to go right for him to be okay.

"Let yourself fall asleep," Draco said quietly. The arm he had around her slid up so that he could squeeze her hand. "You've been incredible; you need to rest."

"I just can't stop watching him," Astoria said quietly—even if the rest of her body was begging her to shut down and close her eyes.

"He's beautiful," Draco agreed softly—and a smile he couldn't see stretched on her lips because yes, yes he was, and he was theirs. Draco let a beat pass. "Can't or won't stop watching him?"

Astoria chewed on her lip. She didn't like that question.

"My mother said that I should get prepared to worry for every single second of my life, rain or shiny, night and day," Astoria said. "She said that was normal."

"Alright," Draco said.

"But I'm… I'm worried about him inheriting the blood curse and that feels bigger," Astoria said quietly, as if saying it softly would make it any less true or frightening. Draco squeezed her hand and she exhaled.

"I know it's rare," Astoria said. "I know it doesn't surface in everyone in my family or in every generation—and rarely twice in a row, but… but I'm going to worry until the bloodwork comes back and I know for sure."

She swallowed hard once she'd said it and guilt swirled around the pit of her stomach. Because if this baby was sick—if he was going to spend his childhood feeling like a piece of glass everyone wanted to keep safe, dizzy and tired and breathless, worried that every bleed may spew and spew and never stop—well that would be on her. Because it was her curse and because she'd decided to have him, had wanted him so very badly, even knowing that it was in her blood.

"Even if they do the bloodwork, we won't know for sure," Draco said. He kissed her ear. "That's not something we'll be able to find out until he's older. And by then, who knows what the Healers will be able to do?"

"I know," Astoria said. Magical illnesses were strange like that, and curses worst of all since they were built to ruin.

"You're going to have to sleep before then," Draco said. "What's your plan, Stori?"

"I don't know," Astoria said quietly.

He kissed her ear again.

"I'll keep watch while you sleep," he said. "That's the plan."

"And we'll trade off after?" Astoria asked, warming up to the idea.

"No, I'll be okay," Draco said. Astoria turned away from Scorpius for a second, just a second, to scrutinize her husband.

"How are you doing this?" she asked quietly.

"How am I doing what?"

"Being so… hopeful," Astoria said quietly. Her husband knew how painful the curse could be; he'd rushed her to the hospital, had helped her in and out of bed during flares, had spent nights awake with her when the potions meant to help her sleep through the pain weren't enough… of course, they'd both known what it meant for her to have children. But Draco was distinctly calmer than she was.

He didn't answer her question immediately, which was something of a comfort to Astoria. It seemed to mean that he was thinking it through properly to give her an answer that was real.

"It's just coming to me," Draco said. "I'm sorry. I know that's not very helpful. But I've been in so many bad places, especially alone, where it was so impossible to have any kind of hope. When I'm laying next to you and looking at our son…" his voice caught on the word. "It just comes, because there's nothing there to possibly stop it."

Now it was Astoria who squeezed his hand. She ran her fingertips across the side of his face before flipping over to face the baby again. She drew Draco's arms around her and focused on the softness of his sweater, the warmth of him, the familiar smell of him. Then she opened her eyes to look at her son again. At that wispy hair, at his tiny feet, at the belly that expanded so freely every time he breathed in… when she brought it down to just that, to just the things that she could see and touch, it was much easier to be hopeful. And so she looked at her son and sunk into his father's touch and closed her eyes.

WC: 944