Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Word Count: 517
Prompt: #dhrfavorites march: family prompts
The baby was vigorously kicking at the railings of her crib, and the creaking jerked her up.
The whisper of her son's name was chased away as his soft snores were briefly heard between the intervals of the fidgeting.
Their baby was reaching its palms up, its mouth clamped around her necklace. Her gums must be itching, and then she would have to be taught not to stomp her growing teeth onto the smooth, hard stone.
Her baby was smiling, the pink bow of her lips widening when she noticed her audience and she took the stone from her mouth and waved.
His baby was tugging on her own blonde hair, and in the middle of untangling the necklace from her, switched from her left hand to her right so that her wedding ring wouldn't catch on the curls.
Her throat was dry and her eyes were wet when she suddenly quieted down, her frail chest rising slowly and falling, her star-like eyes even brighter than the moonlight, surveying her, reading into her own soul and she had to look away.
Her husband, somehow- perhaps he had been feigning all this time, would chant her name over and over again until Albus would smile, too, and intertwine his own fingers around hers, as if they had known where to look for their lifelines since they were born.
The little girl's name was scrawled on the wall of their room, had been a silver-lining in the shallow end of hell, her best friend's last words, then carved into her father's chest and upon her father's last wish― it was not a name meant to be spoken with gripping pain, it was not meant to be spoken with haunting ghosts.
Her name was meant to be spoken by the two people who loved her so much even before she was conceived.
She was a nomad, travelling stiffly and reluctantly from her grandparents' mansion in soft pyjamas and cotton swaddles to the warm household in tiny Weasley sweaters and patch-work pouches.
She was a delicately breathing reminder of the people they had to lose, and the people they had left behind to remember them.
She was a pardon, an apology, a chance, a choice, a secret, a reckoning, a commitment, a promise, a future, a sacrifice, a decision, a wish and a tragic ending all wrapped in one.
The baby grasped her necklace and held it up, something she was very keen on doing in the past few weeks. It was a request that pained her and everybody else who loved the little girl and had loved her parents.
She complied, brushing her thumb across the words, like a ritual. "Hermione Granger. Draco Malfoy." Their little girl blinked once, twice, and then blossomed a wide smile: a smile as haunting as her mother's fierce loyalty, as blazing as her father's will to protect, and she caved.
Ginny tested the name in her mind, and at the tip of her tongue, and then picking her up, sponged her name into the crown of her small head,
"You are so loved, Eirene."
A/N: Eirene is the personification of Peace in Greek Mythology.