Hermione lay exhausted on the bed after the birth of her twins. She could barely keep her eyes open as Cora instructed one of the omega females to wash and clean the new mother. By now, Hermione had spent enough time observing the werewolves at Bleidd she was certain she could tell who fell where in the pack hierarchy. The omegas were easier to spot by their generally submissive behaviour; they lacked confidence, walked around with their eyes cast down and addressed the betas with titles of respect.

When the omega rubbed Hermione's tender flesh a little too harshly causing her to yelp in pain, Draco let out a low growl of warning which left the omega quaking in fear but did funny things to Hermione's insides. It wasn't the first time she noticed that, unlike the other men and women at Bleidd, she did not respond to any show of aggression on Draco's part with fear. Though she wasn't the kind of person who revelled in needless violence, quite strangely she often felt the distinct urge to bite Draco during such moments. Even in her current state of exhaustion, far from being afraid or even annoyed with his behaviour, she only felt desire. It did not help that he was currently looming over everyone in the room like Hades himself, while expertly holding the twins, one in each hand, carefully against his chest as if they were the most precious thing on Earth.

As the omega went about completing her task, more carefully this time, Cora approached Hermione, health-replenishing potion in hand, which she held to Hermione's lips in a signal for her to drink. No sooner had she swallowed the potion, Hermione began to nod off for some much needed rest.

Hermione had only just drifted off when she was woken up the sound of a baby crying. Her eyelids fluttered open to see Draco struggling to pacify the little monster in his arms. The baby continued with its energetic bawling until it was red in the face.

"They're hungry, we need to try and feed them," said Cora, drawing Hermione's attention to the child peacefully nestled in her arms.

"She's completely wiped out. Let her rest a while," replied Draco, so focused on trying to calm the baby in his arms he had not noticed she was already awake.

"Nursing within the first hour of birth is good for the mother too," explained Cora as she went about swapping the babe in her arms for the howling infant in Draco's. "This one's got quite the pair of lungs on him," she said, seeking to calm the child in her arms by rocking him. "Besides, Hermione's already awake."

Draco immediately turned towards Hermione, a look of deep concern in his eyes.

"Hey, how are you?" he asked cautiously. There was something strange about his tone, distant somehow. She feebly nodded in response, lacking the energy to muster up a response or even object to Cora's manhandling as she went about moving Hermione's shift to expose her breast to the crying baby at her side.

Hermione could feel Draco staring at them intensely but there was something different about this look from the heated ones he usually gave her. He was scrutinising her. His entire body exuded tension, as if he expected to have to leap to action at any moment. But his attention wasn't focused on any potential threat, as suggested by his posture, just her. She could feel the same distance between them, she had sensed in the past few days, but she was too tired to start any kind of discussion about it right now.

The baby lying beside her did not stop wailing until Cora directed its mouth to Hermione's nipple. It shocked Hermione to see how quickly the baby grew quiet once it latched on just as she was surprised by the sensation of her milk letting down when her child greedily suckled at her breast. Having watched Tonks and Fleur nursing their children on a couple of occasions, Hermione thought she knew what to expect from this part of motherhood. It had seemed simple enough. She winced in pain, not prepared for how much it hurt to have a baby suck on her nipple. As her son fed from her, tears began to sting her eyes but she choked them back. She wasn't sure which of the two things were making her emotional, the pain from nursing or the unreal feeling that she was now a mother of not one but two sons.

"Why don't you try a different position?" asked Cora, most likely having seen her grimace more than once, "Nursing a child shouldn't be painful."

Hermione did as Cora suggested. With great effort, she sat up and took the baby in her arms to nurse it from the new position. It was better than the previous one and she was just beginning to get used to the sensation of a child suckling at her teat when Cora pushed her other son against her other breast. As Hermione limply sat there, tits out and a child attached to each nipple, instead of the deep satisfaction she expected to feel while feeding her sons, she felt like some cow getting milked. Physically and mentally drained by this point, she was disconnected from everything around her. The eager sucking motion the twins made with their mouths signalled they weren't quite done yet, but there was no milk left. Her nipples were cracked, her breasts sore and her sons upset, both now crying over the lack of milk.

Her vision grew blurry. She had tears running down her cheeks. When did she start crying? Why was she this upset by the discomfort caused by nursing when she had endured both physical and mental torture in the past?

Her sons cried as they were taken from her without passably satisfying their hunger—why did that make her feel inadequate, like a failure?

She did not care. She was not supposed to care about them. It would make no sense for her to begin to care about any of these things when she planned to leave them behind and escape with Ginny. There was a war going on, and she was a witch—a soldier—not a cow. She had bigger things to worry about than crying hungry infants.

She could feel Cora's judgemental gaze. Even Draco looked at her as if he found her lacking somehow. She could not care less about what any of them thought of her. Soon as Cora moved the babies away from her, Hermione pulled the covers over herself and rolled to her side so her back was to Draco and Cora. She closed her eyes and willed her thoughts away from this place and the unrealistic expectations these people had from her. Before she lost consciousness to sleep, one question lay heavy on her mind.

Who is Hermione Granger?

Hermione's eyelids felt heavy as she drifted to consciousness. A baby was crying somewhere but she lacked the energy to even blink, let alone look around to see where the sound was coming from. Her nipples felt sore. Her sons must have finished another round of feeding.

Through half opened eyes, she watched the back of a woman walking away from her bed. The unknown woman moved out of her line of vision so Hermione could see Draco, sitting slumped in a chair with one of their sons peacefully asleep on his chest. He was watching their other son in the arms of the woman, who now stood far too close to Draco for Hermione's liking. She felt a pang of envy as the other woman expertly rocked her son to sleep.

Now Draco and a different woman were huddled over a bassinet. She could hear her sons but could not see them. Her head felt heavy, as if she had spent the last hundred years asleep, yet her body felt like she had rested for all of five minutes. She closed her eyes.

When she reopened her eyes, Draco had his back to her. He was leaving the room, bassinet in hand. She wanted to chase after him and demand he tell her where they were going and why he was taking her sons away. Tears rolled down her face as she lacked the strength to even call out after them.

There was no one now. They had all left. She did not even have Ginny by her side. She was alone.

Hermione woke up feeling a lot better physically but everything else felt off. She was alone on her bed, her pups were gone and so was Draco. She grew further alarmed when a quick glance around revealed she wasn't on her bed or even her room anymore. This was a strange new place, but where? And where were Draco and her babies? She began to worry something untoward had taken place, then remembered seeing Draco take their babies and leave. Her heart hurt from the grief the memory produced.

Hermione tried to sit up, to go look for them, but some kind of magical binding prevented her from moving. The agony of her heartache made her scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. She felt an invisible power force her legs apart and wedge itself between them. However hard she struggled, Hermione could not move enough to shove the thing away or even see what it was.

Soundlessly, she screamed, calling out to Draco, in vain. The helplessness plaguing her since the birth of her twins frustrated her. She grew angry, and as her rage built something within her let loose.

Suddenly, Hermione's magic, which had lain dormant within her the past several months, swelled and built inside her till it flowed free within her veins like molten lava burning her up from the inside. The next time she opened her mouth, instead of a scream, her magic burst out of her. Uncontrolled and unstoppable, it blasted everything around her.

Hermione sat up with a start, panting. She was surrounded by firm flesh and the comforting scent of Draco.

"Shh," he cooed into her hair, "it was just a dream. I'm right here."

She looked up at his face. He was here! Relieved, she flung her arms around his neck. Hermione clung to Draco, comforted by the sound of his heart beating as she pressed her cheek against his chest. So great was her relief at finding him there, she did not think to ask him how he knew about her dream.

...

Draco wasn't sure what was happening but he sensed Hermione's distress when she should have been asleep thanks to the health-replenishing potions Cora insisted he feed her every two hours. During the shorter than normal course of her pregnancy, her body had been forced to endure far more pain than natural. Now that the twins were born, Cora had explained, Hermione would need healing and strengthening potions to ensure a full recovery. He was already on his way back to Hermione's room after his meeting with Fenrir when he sensed her reaching for him. He could not explain how, but he was able to sense her loneliness and despair at not finding him there. Draco ran all the way to her so he arrived just moments before she awoke from her dream. Ever since Hermione went into labour, he had so little sleep he could not be sure if he had imagined it, but for the briefest of moments before she woke up, Hermione's entire body was wrapped in an ethereal glow.

However, Draco was preoccupied with more pressing matters to dwell on such things. Pleasant as it was to have Hermione cling to him, once she had calmed down Draco fed her the last dose of the healing potion. Over the course of the week, he had religiously followed Cora's instructions, giving Hermione her potions at the proper intervals and making sure their sons nursed without interrupting her rest. He kept close watch over Hermione and their pups, never leaving their side, until now, when he was summoned by Fenrir

Fenrir was away at the time the pups were born but news of their birth had reached him in whichever part of the world he was wreaking havoc on behalf of the Dark Lord. Within two days of receiving the news, Fenrir had triumphantly returned to check on the latest additions to his pack. Draco gathered from their meeting that instead of rushing home, the alpha had made a detour by the Parkinson Estate, where the Dark Lord was currently in residence. It was a matter of great pride to Fenrir that of all the fertility trials and multiple attempts at crossbreeding, the only successful outcome had come from his pack. Not only had a werewolf mated with a witch in wolf form and got her pregnant, the witch had given birth to not one but two pups and done so in only six months! Hoping to earn the Dark Lord's favour, Fenrir had gone to deliver news of their success in person. The giddy excitement shown by Fenrir left Draco feeling uneasy. This could not bode well for Hermione or their sons.

In the days before the birth of their sons, Draco made an effort to keep his distance from Hermione. After listening to her conversation with Ginny Weasley, he realised he had made a mistake in thinking they could ever have a future together. Hermione was determined to escape and while he did not think her capable of hurting any innocent, let alone her own sons, the same could not be said of her friend. Ginny Weasley seemed broken, not even a shadow of her former self. As a precaution, he decided to have his pups live with the pack, away from Hermione and Ginny, lest they end up a casualty of any escape attempted by the two witches.

Now, though Draco sensed that the witch did have feelings for him, after his meeting with Fenrir, he was certain his pups would be safer with the pack. Considering how important children were to his kind, he was confident the pack would do anything to protect his pups—even defy their alpha, should the need arise. Hermione too would stand a better chance at defending herself if she only had to lookout for herself.

Soon as Hermione recovered, he planned to train her so she was never defenceless or vulnerable again. This meant getting her a wand, so she stood a real chance to make it out of Bleidd alive.

Hermione watched Cora checking on the babies while Zoey went about tidying the room. Ginny was nowhere to be seen so they must have moved her elsewhere. She made a mental note to check on Ginny's whereabouts later.

Draco hovered over the babies protectively. The tension in his body remained even after Zoey left the room. It occurred to Hermione she had been so out of it during their interactions, she could not describe her own sons.

"Can I see them now?" she asked no one in particular, looking at the bassinet shielding her babies from her view.

Draco gave Cora a look, to which she nodded and quietly left the room. He drew the bassinet close to the bed and reached into it for the quieter one of their two sons.

While his brother was an angry shade of red from having just bawled his eyes out before Draco finally managed to get him to be quiet, this one was pink-faced and Hermione thought he looked like an adorable piglet wrapped up in blankets in his father's arms. She sat up and reached for her son. "Oh, you look like a Wilbur to me," she cooed taking the little bundle into her arms.

"Wilbur?" asked Draco in confusion.

"Yes. I think the name suits him perfectly. Doesn't he remind you of Wilbur in Charlotte's Web?" she asked.

"Charlotte's Web?"

"Ah, yes, well, you probably never heard of it. It's a Muggle children's book about a wise and gentle spider, Charlotte, who decides to save Wilbur, a pig, from ending up as breakfast meat—I loved watching the animated movie as a child, and this little cutie looks just like Wilbur," she insisted, gently stroking one of his chubby cheeks with her index finger.

"Granger, if I've understood you correctly, did you just name our son after a pig?" He picked up their other son and approached Hermione.

"Not just any pig. He's some pig."

"I can tell from your expression that's supposed to mean something, it's still a bunch of nonsense to me. Now what made you think you could name our pups?" he asked, settling himself on the bed beside her. He felt a warm glow in his chest when she immediately leaned against him. They sat side by side, their sons nestled in their arms.

She chewed on her lip. "I'm sorry. Did you already have a name in mind?"

Draco opened his mouth to respond and shut it almost instantly when he realised he had none. Yes, he had eagerly looked forward to the birth of his children but had given little thought to more practical things like, names.

"Not really, but surely we're both clever enough to come up with something better than Wilbur. What does it even mean?"

"Resolute, brilliant."

Draco did not want to admit it immediately, but he liked the sound of that. And to be fair, with no hair and a chubby body that was pink all over, his son did currently look more piglet than human. He studied his other son. This one, unlike his brother, was more prone to crying fits and was consequently still sporting the same angry shade of red he did half an hour earlier.

"Well in that case, this one's going to be Mars... or Martinus?"

"Ah, I see what you mean ... How about Martin instead?"

"Martin? Do our children really need to have such common names?"

"Well, not everyone's conceited enough to name their child something as pretentious as Draco."

"That's rich, coming from someone with a name like Hermione."

He had her there. Her parents did deliberately choose a name others had difficulty pronouncing to show off how clever they were.

"I know this'll sound silly, but I can't help hoping that maybe if our sons had regular names they may end up having some kind of regular life."

Draco tried to ignore the fuzzy feeling he got in his chest hearing Hermione refer to the pups as theirs.

"I would really like our sons to have a regular life," he said after considering what she was proposing. "Though, one only needs to look at Potter to see that having a regular name is no guarantee for a regular sort of life."

Draco put his arm around her shoulder, at the feel of her burrowing into his side, the tension finally left his body. Maybe it was just exhaustion making her behave this way, but it felt so good to go back to how things were between them until a fortnight ago.

"Well, we'll just have to stay alive and watch over them so Wilbur and Martin don't suffer Harry's fate."

Draco stared ahead of him and smiled. "Wilbur and Martin... Not sure which is more surreal, that I'm a father now and responsible for these two lives, or that our sons have names like Wilbur and Martin."

"It has to be the former. Can't believe we made two human beings," she whispered in awe. Draco simply nodded, equally affected by the realisation.

AN 1: In case it wasn't clear, Hermione suffers from postpartum depression for a few days but gets better thanks to the healing potions.

AN 2: Wilbur and Martin are the names of real life twins of reader 'ofthemoon' (read the comments for chp 12 on AO3 if you wish to know how this came about). If you don't like the names or they ruin the fic for you in some way please find another fic to read. I understand readers have certain expectations when it comes to baby names in Dramione/HP fics- that's okay, just don't leave any comments telling me about it.