Chapter XV:

They flooed back to the house in Cornwall from Hogsmeade, he didn't say so but she had a feeling Draco thought his father would be lying in wait at King's Cross. Besides, the train had already left a few hours ago. The others were apparating, or if they couldn't, grabbing onto someone who could. Hermione pitied Ginny. She'd just given birth but she hadn't escaped the nausea of side-along. The Gryffindors all hugged for so long that Draco started tapping his foot impatiently, having said goodbye to Blaise and Daphne rather swiftly. She just ignored him. "Promise to stay in regular contact?" Harry asked her, casting a still suspicious eye at her husband. She nodded and embraced him once more before backing up and tossing some powder into the flames before she could stop herself from clinging onto one of them and the warm familiarity of the Burrow. She took a long exhale when she arrived in Cornwall though, realising how wonderfully familiar this place also felt, despite having lived in it for less than a week. It had become her home immediately. "You hungry after what I'm sure was a workout of the Weaselette's emotion?" She was starving actually. The last thing she'd eaten was breakfast and it was now almost eight in the evening. She should have had lunch on the train, but adrenaline had kept her going through the birth and then the goodbye. "My mother said she magically transferred a load of supplies from their kitchen to ours."

"I bet your father was pleased about that," she said, speed-walking towards the kitchen. She was so not in the mood to cook- ooh! They could get takeaway! It would be a fascinating new experience for Draco. Surely there was some sort of muggle civilisation nearby and where there were Britons there were Indian restaurants and kebabs.

"I'm sure he wrote out the shopping list," Draco scoffed. He pulled open the door and gestured her through, so she waddled in- only to be assaulted upon arrival by a tiny excited house elf.

"YAY! THE NEW MASTER AND MISTRESS IS HERE!" The elf leapt up and down in excitement, as Hermione stumbled back into Draco's chest in shock. "Winky has been waiting and waiting for days now! Winky has cleaned and polished and cleaned and cooked! Oh! Dinner is ready!" She took Hermione's hand and led her into the dining room. Having recovered, the bushy haired witch sent an amused look back at her husband.

"That sounds fantastic Winky. Nice to meet you." She was momentarily distracted by the spread at the table. Finally she understood how her friends felt about food. She wanted to ravage this table of beef and perfectly roasted potatoes and vegetables and Yorkshire puddings and, oh Godric, that gravy smelt phenomenal!

"Winky made rhubarb crumble with custard for afters!" The elf said proudly. Hermione wanted to kiss her.

"I love you Winky!"

Draco laughed. "I should take more of those cooking classes, if that's all it takes!" It might have been a little awkward in another circumstance, but her stomach was growling and her baby was kicking as if to say 'feed me right now Mum!' She scoffed down three times the amount her husband ate, plus a good half a dozen of the chocolate truffles Winky offered when they'd finished eating. Draco gave her an impressed look. This time she did flip him a backwards V. He raised his hands in surrender. "I like this new side of you!"

"Don't expect it to last. I think I've got a little foodie in here." She rubbed her stomach, which was still now that the baby was satisfied.

He grinned. "Great! I'll take him to Tokyo for unagi eel, then Bologna for spaghetti, Lyon for cervelle de canut, New Orleans for gumbo and beignets, San Sebastián for pinxtos..."

She rested a hand under her chin, her mouth watering. "You're making me hungry again."

He smirked. "Don't worry. You're invited on these trips too."

"The most genuinely multicultural I've been is eating haggis in Scotland."

"You've got a lot to catch up on then." They just looked at each other in silence for a moment, letting all the possibility of a future wash over them. She wondered what their relationship would be in a year, five, ten? Whether they stayed together or split up, as they'd originally planned, this child meant they would always be in each others' lives. That thought was a lot less unpleasant than it used to be.


The arrival of a howler was an eerie burst to their bubble letting them know Lucius could reach them. Draco stood up to go read it outside but she reached across the table and tugged him back down. "You can do it here. You don't have to hide from me."

His lip quirked upward in a somber smile and he tore the envelope open as if he were ripping off a plaster. "YOU WEAK IMBICILE, THINKING YOU CAN MAKE AN ESCAPE SO EASILY WITHOUT SPEAKING TO ME! YOUR MOTHER WON'T TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE BUT WITHOUT ME YOUR REACH IS LIMITED. I AM GOING TO HUNT YOU AND THAT MUDBLOOD BITCH DOWN AND CUT THE HALF-BREED OUT OF HER STOMACH BEFORE IT EVEN GETS A CHANCE TO TAKE ONE SOLITARY BREATH UNLESS YOU COMPLY WITH MY DEMANDS!" Hermione took a wretched, sobbing gasp, cradling her stomach.

"I won't let him touch you Hermione," Draco swore, his face so full of disgust and fury- but underlying that, always underlying that, fear. "We won't let him touch our baby... But he's got so much power. So much reach."

"What are his demands?" She asked, knowing he was right. They would have to appease Lucius if they wanted to live in this heaven away from his complete control over their lives. "Apart from the stupid front page spread."

Draco ran a hand through his hair tiredly. "He wants to see the baby once a month."

"No," she snapped without thinking about it.

"I don't want it either-"

"He could- he will hurt them, like he hurt me, like he hurt you. He'll try to inundate them to his racist way of thinking."

"We'll turn his rule about supervised visits for your parents back on him in return." That was quite a good idea. Obviously she'd rather Lucius never come into contact with her child at all, but this meant they could at least monitor his influence. At her agreement Draco scribbled a response. "The next thing was our guarantee to be at all his social functions and socialise with him and his friends and enemies." Again, she wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of networking to advance Lucius' reputation and perpetuate the falsehood that he was accepting of 'her kind', but she could make the best of it. Maybe Harry and Ginny would be at these things like they had been at Christmas. "He still wants to send us a list of names."

"That I'm not doing," she said definitively. "We can't compromise on something so important."

Draco nodded. "Alright. If he's the reasonable, albeit ruthless, businessman I know him to be, hopefully he'll be willing to negotiate." He looped his signature at the bottom of the page, attached the letter to an owl and sent it off.


They didn't even have to wait twenty four hours for the reply. It turned out Lucius was willing to negotiate, sort of. He wasn't giving up on some control of the name, and if he couldn't give options for the more important and identifiable first name then he was only giving one for the less significant middle. Any guesses?