t was the middle of the night when Harry appeared right in her bed.
"'Mione! 'Mione!" He was shaking her body and took her blanket away from her.
She let out a grunt slowly opening his eyes.
"It happened!"
Still tired, she reached for her wand and cast Lumos. "Harry, I have no idea what you are talking about."
"We've got a little daughter," he announced proudly, "We're going to name her Lily after my mother."
She blinked a couple of times and wiped her hands over her eyes. Did he just say what she thought he had? "Ah, Harry that's amazing. Congratulations!" She swung her arms around him and hugged her best friend with all her strength.
"Yeah, I still can't believe it. Pinch me. Ouch!"
She giggled.
"I should go back."
Hermione nodded and he disapparated right in front of her.
Working with child was much harder than she thought it would be. She had to have a million things in her mind at any moment and while her colleagues were rather efficient workers and didn't need a lot of orders and supervising that was part of the problem.
Because her team worked so efficiently, she had a lot of reports to read through and she couldn't skip them because the results affected where she would take the research next. The break was the only time where she could take a deep breath.
Her colleagues gathered on the table around her. Even at lunch, the discussions circled around work. Ever since she had started working here, she had taken things in a new direction, but that also meant that they had to start at near zero.
With Rose in her arm, they discussed whether to add the Bubotuber pus needed to be added before or after stirring clockwise. The results they have gotten were inconclusive which meant that either someone has made a mistake or there were factors at play that none of them had considered yet.
Rose kept making noises, but they were ununderstandable. She got angry because they didn't include her in the conversation. It wasn't like a baby could contribute a lot to the research.
Not wanting to risk that Rose got so upset that she started crying loudly, Hermione was forced to ask her little baby about her opinion the same way she asked her colleagues. She felt very weird, but technically she was the boss and that meant no one wanted to complain.
On the flip side, Rose conquered the hearts of her team immediately. She was generally such a nice girl, or at least as long as she was kept busy and didn't feel excluded. Since a large junk of her workday consisted of reading reports, her daughter wasn't in the way and for the times she was conducting an experiment, Andrea was more than willing to babysit.
"He's driving me insane!"
Harry and Draco exchanged a glance.
"What?"
"What did Father do this time?" Draco asked pouring a shot of Firewhiskey.
Harry glared at his husband. "The one time Hermione visits us and you really want to talk about your father?"
"Ow, you don't know my father," Harry looked like he wanted to protest, but Draco didn't let him. "No, you don't. Take the girls and I'll talk with Granger about my father."
Harry looked at them. Reluctantly he stood up with Rose and Lily in his arms and went to the children's bedroom. He shot them a last glance before leaving.
"So, tell me everything about my father, give me the juicy details."
Hermione drowned her glass in one gulp and smashed it back onto the table. "Are you sure that you want to know about the juicy details?"
"Urgh. What?" Draco emptied his shot and looked at her. "There are no juicy details, are they?"
Hermione raised a brow daringly but Draco didn't rise to the challenge.
"I have taken this job as a head researcher, and I've stumbled upon a few interesting things, but your father won't let me take the research in this direction because he hadn't figured out how he's going to turn it into a sellable product. This is his job and not mine, I'm only the researcher and we're at a point where we hand Rose over at the company because this is all we're going to fight about anyway."
Draco took another shot. "This is exactly why this was always the very last job I would have taken. Seriously, our relationship has never been the best, but how am I supposed to ever live my own life if he overrules my every decision?"
"Exactly. He's such a difficult person. Lucius has a talent for driving me insane. Can't he just let me do my work in peace?"
Draco and Hermione hooked their arms into each other and drank their shot.
Harry was standing in the door and cleared his throat. "The children are all sleeping. What is going on here?"
"I have a difficult father," Draco explained and Hermione nodded.
"I've been trying to get the two of you to spend more time together for years and now… I won't ask."
Hermione and Draco exchanged a glance and continued discussing Lucius. The list was very long and so it was no surprise when it was up to Harry to tuck them in early in the morning.
"We're celebrating Lily's delivery," Harry said. "You have to come."
"Sure, I'll be at your place early," Hermione said, looking up from her research reports. She hadn't managed to read through them all, Rose had been unusually whiney and demanded her attention.
"Em." Harry looked at the floor. "We're not celebrating at our place, we're at the Manor."
"I won't go there!"
"'Mione! Don't be silly. This is my daughter and she deserves to be properly welcomed to the family and you have to come."
"No, I don't, I still have a lot of work to do," she said stubbornly.
"You can't avoid Mr. Malfoy forever, he's family."
"I don't avoid him, I see him every day."
Harry stroked through his messy black hair. "At Malfoy Medical where you fight about work. You can at least try to be civil with him for one evening. Don't cut everyone out, you need to see people from time to time."
"I see people all the time," Hermione argued, "I see my team at work and I've dropped by you a couple of times this month alone. I'm just very busy with work and Rose."
"And I'm happy for you, I really am. You're doing so much better, but just because you've seen more people than in the last years doesn't mean you're participating in society in an appropriate way."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Her hair was standing up in all directions.
"That I want to celebrate to welcome Lily into the family."
"I won't come to Malfoy Manor to see Lucius and his wife do whatever looks good to other purebloods!" She turned away from Harry.
"Hermione? Are ok? Are you crying?"
"No" She wiped the tears from her eyes and turned back to Harry. "I won't go to Malfoy Manor."
"You like him, don't you?"
"No, we're fighting the entire time, I only deal with him because of work and Rose. He always disagrees with me and his obnoxious and knows everything better."
"And you're into this, aren't you? You actually like the debates and the discussions."
Hermione bit her tongue. That wasn't true. She had done well hiding away in the archive, not interacting with anybody. She didn't need an arrogant pureblood, with his beautiful smile and his clever remarks to make her life difficult.
Just because, he was well-spoken and had actually managed to contribute something useful to the conversation didn't mean she needed him in any capacity let alone want him. And just because Rose adored him and was calmer in his proximity, that didn't mean that the same applied to her.
She was calm enough on her own and she didn't need someone to share her bed. She could always buy a new dildo and take care of her own needs all by herself. Who needed a and attractive wizard who knew exactly how to touch her if she had a right hand.
No, she didn't miss him, she had never needed someone in her life and a Malfoy wouldn't change that.
"If it helps you. We did invite Narcissa, but I don't think she'll come so shortly after the divorce," Harry said.
"Divorce?"
"You didn't know that?"
Hermione shook her head. It's not like she wanted to know about Lucius' private life. She didn't care.
"You should talk to him," Harry urged her.
"Why?"
"I think he likes you too, he spends a lot of time at our place and I highly doubt that it's me who he is interested in."
"He's just happy that Draco isn't upset with him anymore."