Chapter Five
"Hello Gabrielle," Mandie said as she and Ginny walked in from their long lunch.
The beautiful blonde looked up from her book. "Good afternoon ladies. Mandie, your one-thirty meeting eez in with 'ermione."
"Goodness, Mandie," Ginny laughed. "By the end of the month you're going to owe Hermione an entire year's worth of lunches."
"Thank you for that reminder Ginny," Mandie said, rolling her eyes, before turning to Gabrielle. "Did Mr. M. want to reschedule?"
"Yes. 'e went in at one-forty-five, so zey should be done quite soon." Gabielle turned to Ginny. "And Ginny, your mozer called. She wants to know eef we would like to have brunch with my seester and Bill at your aunt's house."
Ginny groaned and rolled her eyes. "Auntie Muriel?"
Mandie looked from one upset girl to the other. "Wait, what's wrong with Aunt Muriel?"
"She eez rude to Fluer, bossy to ze twins, judgmental to Bill, and eez just not a nice woman," Gabrielle said. "I only go for support for Fluer and Ginny, but she 'ates me because I am not blood related. Eef it was up to 'er, I would not even come, but Molly insists zat I am part of ze family."
Mandie whistled at the explanation. "Remind me not to marry into the family. What about Harry, though? Does she like him?"
"The thinks that he is a goody-goody boy who needs to learn to mind his own business and stop getting into trouble," Ginny said flatly.
"And zat 'e needs to get a 'aircut."
"And on that note I will dig around my bag for my planner so I can be ready when the mysterious Mr. M comes out of Hermione's office." Mandy opened her bag and began pulling out stuff like make-up, two wallets, a bag of peanuts, three unused condoms and a sunglass lens before finding her little blue organizer.
"Soon she'll be singing 'Supercalafragelisticexpialidocious' if we don't watch out," Ginny joked.
Just then, the door to Hermione's office opened and the mysterious Mr. M walked into the lobby.
"Potter, Mandie," he nodded to the two stunned women before turning to Gabrielle. "Has Ms. Clarke come in yet?"
"She eez right be'ind you," Gabrielle told him, confused about the hostility filling the room.
Draco turned around and looked at Mandie. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans that ended with enough space to show off her blue pumps. She had on a black shirt under her blue jacket(/blazer). Her hair was up in a neat bun and her face was full of shock. He held out his hand in a business-like manner and looked her square in the eye. "Ms. Clarke, pleasure. Sorry to have missed you earlier, but I was hoping to reschedule if you weren't busy."
Mandie blinked a few times before taking Draco's hand to shake. "N-no. Not at all. I was just taking out my planner." She looked back to Ginny to signal to block the mess on Gabrielle's desk. "I am actually free right now. I cleared most of my afternoon for our meeting, if you would-"
"Sorry," Draco interrupted, "but I have a previous engagement, but I have a flexible schedule if you would care to meet at my office any time within the next week-"
Mandie took her hand from Draco's and threw open her organizer. The only way to make this whole situation worse would be to add Hermione, not even thinking about Harry and Ron, who, from what she heard, were friends with Draco before the bitter divorce. " I have Thursday at ten free if you would like to meet."
"Perfect. Just make sure that no one knows who you are."
"If a brunette named Leslie Grey comes knocking at your door, don't turn her down."
"Good then."
"Great."
"I should be going."
"Take care."
Draco walked briskly out of the building and apparated as soon as he was at a safe location.
"You know 'im?" Gabrielle asked as soon as the door was closed.
"That was Hermione's ex-husband," Ginny explained, looking at Mandie.
The three girls jumped up (in Gabrielle's case) and rushed into Hermione's office, where they saw her with a glass of scotch on her desk.
"I can't drink the scotch," she said in a depressed monotone.
"Who cares about the scotch when Draco Malfoy was just in your office?" Mandie urged, pushing the subject.
Hermione sat up and fixed her hair. "Well because someone was late for a meeting I had to cover, only to find out that my ex-husband wants you to check out not only someone at his company, but someone who he is lying about."
At this, Gabrielle, Mandie and Ginny were so interested, they locked the door and took seats all around Hermione.
"What do you mean by 'lying'?" Ginny asked.
"I mean that I met this guy at our anniversary dinner a few years ago," Hermione told them. "They were really friendly and the guy didn't even need a job! He's a buyer for this big department store in France. Draco said that he was a lower-level man in the company, though. Mandie, you need to check out Draco as well. He might be up to something. This guy is nice. He's a good friend of Viktor's."
"You still talk to Viktor?" Mandie asked.
"Of course," Hermione said. "We're friends. Plus he was really there for me during my separation."
"Well make sure that Draco doesn't find out, or else he may think that there's something going on between the two of you."
"Gin, we were never even together for real, at least not since we were kids" Hermione said. She sighed and looked back down at her glass of scotch.
"Well if you're going to keep staring at it then why don't you just drink it?" Mandie asked. "This way you can be more relaxed when we pump you for more information."
"The spell that I gave him, it wasn't real, "Hermione mumbled.
"What?"
"The fertility spell or whatever, it's reversible." Hermione looked back up at her friends. "We didn't want it to be permanent because we did want to have kids someday. For a while, for a while I thought that getting pregnant would bring us closer when we were starting to grow apart. I placed a spell on him during the first year so that I would only get pregnant if the time was right, but the spell was on both of us."
"'ermione, are you pregnant?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean that you ended up in Hermione's office today?" Aiden asked Draco from his mobile phone.
"I mean that it turns out that I was supposed to see Mandie, of all people, but she was running late, so I ended up meeting with her partner who, of course, was Hermione." Draco slammed his head on his desk. This was not a good day.
Draco was sitting in his office at his desk trying to figure out what he was going to do about his ex-wife entering his life he had worked so hard to keep her out of. He looked at his left ring finger. It looked so free finally. Before it used to feel naked and vulnerable. Why did this have to happen to him?
"Well maybe this is all supposed to mean something," Aiden suggested.
Draco lifted his head from his arms on his desk and looked at his phone. Aiden was on speaker.
"You say that about everything you can't explain, dude," Draco mumbled. "Why does everything have to mean something?"
"Listen, Draco, I have to be in a meeting in two minutes, but here's my advice," Draco nodded, even though he knew that Aiden couldn't see it. "Just deal with Mandie. It's not like you're going to be seeing much of Hermione from what I've heard about their little…business, so just suck it up and forget about her. I mean," here it was, "just because you two ended up on a double date together then in the same office after a night of-"
"Don't you have a meeting to get to?" And with that Draco ended the call to sigh into his arms.
He lifted his head, told his secretary to tell anyone who called that he was out, and headed over to the pub around the corner for a quick drink.
Draco woke up the next morning with all of his worries as far away as he could push them. The lovely redhead in his arms stirred and he got up to go take a shower. A minute or two into his shampooing he saw the leggy woman walk in with her clothes on.
"Just wanted to say that I'm leaving," she said. "I'll see you around sometime."
Draco nodded at her and watched her tight skirt as it clung to her body as it walked out of the room and soon the house. A one-night stand was exactly what he needed.
As the water splashed on his face, he re-lived his meeting the previous day. Why did it have to be Hermione?
"I loved her," he said to no one. "Loved. I don't anymore."
A week later, across town, Hermione, Mandie, and Ginny were at the Potter's house. It had taken Hermione a few days to feel comfortable and brave enough to find out whether she was pregnant or not. The girls sent Ron and Harry out with Luna and Gabrielle and were using every pregnancy test they could think of, muggle and magical. It was too soon for many of the tests, but Hermione was confident when many of them ended up negative, but not all. One of them, a generic muggle test, was positive, but because it was five negatives before they decided that it was faulty, Hermione, Mandie and Ginny called the boys and met everyone for drinks.
Mandie and Ginny dressed Hermione in a special 'I'm Not Pregnant' outfit. The outfit consisted of a pair of skinny jeans, a black cami, heels, and whatever they could throw in as far as jewelry went. The girls their on their own outfits and headed out the door.
They all ended up at a nightclub one of Ginny's clients owned.
"I'll get the drinks," Hermione yelled to her friends over the music.
She headed over to the bar and stood between two girls a year or two younger than her, but who can tell these days, and a couple of men in a group celebrating something.
"The guy you met here last night?" The shorter of the two girls besides Hermione asked her friend.
"Yeah," the other one said. "We went back to his place. It was brilliant."
Hermione smiled, remembering the last time she…remembered talking about her nights out.
"Wait, the blonde one?" The first friend asked.
"Yeah, Draco something."
Hermione felt a jump in her stomach and her world crashed around her.
KNOCKKNOCK
"Draco, I'm pregnant."