Chapter 2

Incarceration


Hermione nipped at the tip of her quill as she tried to shorten the length of her argument for the next court session. Most of the Wizengamot had been gazing off into the distance by the time her presentation ended on Tuesday. If she recalled correctly, some had even looked half-asleep. She tried to focus, but her thoughts kept straying to Scorpius' face as he cried in Malfoy's arms. She hadn't meant to wake the baby up, but she couldn't help her outburst. If only his father wasn't so bloody infuriating!

Knowing she wouldn't be able to concentrate, she dropped her quill on the desk and leaned back in her plush office chair. She didn't know why she had to shorten the argument anyway — one hour and forty-seven minutes seemed like a perfectly acceptable duration to her. How was she supposed to address all of her points in just forty-five minutes? Especially if a mere thirty was enough to make people doze off. Their attention span was truly abysmal.

At least Malfoy had the common decency to stay awake, although verbally attacking her within an inch of her life wasn't any better. Not to mention he was the reason she had to re-present her argument in the first place, so she wasn't about to give him any credit. She supposed that wasn't entirely true either. After the first session, she'd spoken to a few Wizengamot members only to find out that not one of them planned on voting for her proposal, telling her that it was too 'ambitious'.

Even so, she'd been doing incredibly well until Malfoy decided to open his snarky mouth, wearing those glasses. Those gold wire-sodding-rimmed glasses that made her blood boil hot and something unidentifiable in her core boil hotter. It wasn't that she couldn't identify the feeling, really. She just didn't want to. Once she started thinking about it, she didn't think she'd ever stop.

Especially since he worked with her every waking hour, smirking at her with that godawful, sardonic, sharp but somehow pillowy mouth—

A creak of the door cut off her thinking, and in swept the very subject of those traitorous thoughts. Hermione felt her face heat as he made his way over to her, Scorpius tucked snugly into his chest and gnawing on the fabric of a tie she was sure cost half of her Gringott's vault.

"Perkins asked me to deliver this to you," Malfoy said by way of greeting, using his free hand to extract a purple slip of parchment from the pocket of his robes.

"Couldn't send one of your precious house-elves to do the job?" she asked, her tone light but the words true. Three days hadn't been long enough to cool her ire, and Hermione had to make the dig. Besides, it was because of him that she was irritable in the first place. She took the memo from his fingers and quickly skimmed through its contents. Before she could reach the end of the missive, however, she heard a distinctive thud.

She lifted her gaze from the parchment but her line of vision was obstructed by a pair of shiny, dragon-skin Oxfords, polished to perfection. "Malfoy," she warned. He hummed in response, relaxing into his chair. "Kindly refrain from putting your feet on my desk."

He should know better by now, really. Her avis oppugno was a thing of the legends at the Ministry. She wondered how he would look with a flock of canaries pecking at his arms.

"I'm tired," he sighed, taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes. "I love this little menace, but carrying him around all day is hard work, you know?" He nodded his head fondly at Scorpius' sleeping form.

Well, that wasn't her fault, was it? She wasn't the one who went to Kingsley last month and manipulated the Minister into letting him bring the baby to work every day by playing the pitiable single father card. He was.

"Exhaustion doesn't excuse your lack of manners," she told him, swatting at his ankles. "Now, get your bloody—"

"No swearing in front of the baby," he interrupted, covering Scorpius' ears. "Irritation doesn't excuse your lack of manners either, Granger," he said, his lips forming a smirk.

She leveled a glare at him, and his smirk widened. "Get your wretched feet off my desk or I'll have a dozen canaries shooting at you before you can say 'Protego'."

'Wretched' was probably not the best word for his feet. She'd seen them clad in socks a few times, and they were actually quite lovely— perfectly sculpted with a high arch and ideal spacing between the toes. But that wasn't the point.

"You need to work on your threats, you know," Malfoy said, his eyebrows knitted as he moved to swing his legs back to the floor. "Tiny, yellow birds don't sound very intimida—"

A sudden crash made her whip her head to see her inkwell shattered on the floor, black liquid spilling all over the wooden floor. It must have been knocked over while he was taking his legs off the desk. And he wondered why she made these rules. With an exasperated sigh, she drew her wand to clean up the mess when she heard a shriek.

"Damn it," she muttered, seeing Scorpius awake with tears streaming down his face as he screamed. Malfoy seemed to be whispering an odd mix of consolation and obscenities as he tried to calm the baby down.

Merlin, it was only eleven o'clock in the morning, and this day was already turning out to be a disaster.

Ditching her attempts to get the floor clean, she took in the scene before her. Scorpius was chewing on the flesh of his stubby palm, tears and saliva dripping down his chin. When he began to rub the back of his hand against his gums, her lips formed a silent 'o' in recognition.

"That's quite a lot of teeth he has for his age," she noted, her inner dentist flaring to life. She thought back to the diagrams in her parents' office. "The last two incisors usually begin to erupt at about ten months. Scorpius already has all eight of his in, and he's only a little past seven months, isn't he? Well, I suppose it could be hereditary. Did you or Astoria begin teething—"

Her mouth snapped shut at his look. This probably wasn't the best time to lecture on about every possible reason for the premature growth of teeth in a child, she realized. Instead, she held her arms out across the desk, an unspoken question in her expression. Hermione had had plenty of experience with handling crying children in the past and, judging by the dark bags she'd been seeing under his eyes for the last half a year, Malfoy looked like he could use some help.

"I know a spell that could ease the pain," she offered when he didn't say anything. "It would help with the soreness of his gums." She remembered using that particular charm to help James when he was teething a year ago.

After a moment of hesitation, he leaned ahead, handing the baby over to her. She settled the thrashing boy onto her lap and reached for her wand. Smoothing a hand over his silky hair, she brought it to his mouth. She tried to imitate the tone she heard Ginny use at home. "Can you hold still for me?" He writhed in her grip in reply, shrieking even louder. "Just keep your mouth open and I promise you'll feel better after this," she cajoled.

He complied, his mouth moving to catch the tip of her wand between his gums. Hermione quickly pulled it away before it snapped in half. "No, no, you don't eat the wand. You just need to keep your mouth open for me, alright?"

Looking up at her with watery grey eyes, he opened his mouth even wider, and she smiled a little. The stubborn man in front of her could learn a lot from his sweet, compliant baby.

"Frigus," she muttered with a small flourish of her wand, and a cool gust of air breezed over his face. She could've sworn she heard the room sigh in relief when his cries began to subside. Her gaze lifted up only to meet Malfoy's unreadable stare. His brow was furrowed low on his forehead, head tilted slightly and lips pursed into a thin line.

He looked… different. More open, in a way. She thought she saw a crack in that cool shield he always seemed to guard himself with, and she couldn't quite bring herself to look away.

"You're, er… You're quite good with him." His gaze drifted down to the baby sitting contentedly on her lap, and her own followed, watching as pink gums gnawed on stubby fingers.

"I spent a lot of time with James when he was teething," she said in explanation, smiling down at Scorpius fondly. "His tantrums were even worse than this. He drove Harry absolutely barmy."

She looked back up just in time to a steel barrier building over the grey irises, diminishing every last hint of depth in them until they were flat once more. Her smile faltered.

He cleared his throat, his lips stretching into an all too familiar smirk. "Experience, then. I'd have thought someone who consults a book before getting dressed every morning would have done the same for this."

While she rolled her eyes on the outside, Hermione felt an unexpected rush of disappointment course through her at the words. Just when she thought she'd broken through his shield, it had mended again, hiding him behind layer upon layer of snark once more. What was the point of being let out of Azkaban if he was only going to incarcerate himself again, this time within his own fortress of defense mechanisms and Occlumency?

The sharp scraping of metal against the floorboards as Malfoy abruptly stood up broke off her thoughts. She stared at his expectant arms for a moment before realizing that she was supposed to give Scorpius back to him. With great reluctance, she handed the baby over. He turned to make for the door and she closed her eyes, determined to not let him distract her from her work any further. Just when she began to think back to what points she could cut from her argument, he spoke again.

"By the way, Granger." Her eyes shot open. "Unless you're going for a matronly look, you should consult a new book." He looked down at her feet pointedly and left the office, leaving the door open behind him.

Hermione let out a sharp exhale, picking up her quill to scratch at her parchment furiously. There was absolutely nothing wrong with sensible clogs. Nothing.