The Start of Our Lives
Summary: After a drunken one night stand, bushy-haired bookworm Hermione Granger finds out that she is pregnant to none other than Master of Apathy, Draco Malfoy. They begin their lives as teenage parents and learn to live together and maybe even eventually fall in love? Read & Review.
Chapter Seven: Life At Its Own
The two teenage parents-to-be stared in equal disbelief at the four people they had last expected to see standing in the Gryffindor common room.
"Hermione!"
"Mum? Dad? Wh-what are you do-doing here...?" Hermione managed to stutter out.
But Dr. and Mrs. Granger didn't reply. Well, they did. But in quite an unexpected way. Hermione's father lunged out at Draco and her mother ran toward Hermione and tried to gather her up in her arms, but Hermione quickly jumped back and screamed, "Daddy! Get off of him!"
William had both of his large hands clasped around Draco's neck and was practically squeezing the life out of him. Draco was on his knees, frantically flailing his arms around, slowly turning blue.
"Professor, do something!" Hermione cried out to Professor Dumbledore who calmly waved his wand in one fluid motion. Dr. Granger was thrown backwards across the room, landing smoothly in one of the armchairs.
"Dr. Granger, I understand that you are upset about this situation but we do not allow violence within this school, especially toward our pupils," the aged Professor spoke gravely and his light blue eyes scanned Dr. Granger, making him feel as though he was being X-rayed, a feeling shared with most students and staff at Hogwarts whenever the Professor eyed them.
"But-that- that- scumbag!" Dr. Granger pointed wildly at Draco, who was collapsed on the floor, rubbing his throat, Hermione kneeling next to him, tears pouring down her face. "He knocked up my daughter! He deserves to be dead!"
"Please, sir, calm down."
Dr. Granger shot up out of his chair as though he had just sat down on a hedgehog. "NO! I WILL NOT CALM DOWN, YOU STUPID OLD MAN! DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT AWFUL BOY HAS DONE? HE HAS RUINED MY DAUGHTER'S LIFE AND YOU JUST EXPECT ME TO CALM DOWN!" Dr. Granger roared fiercely, spraying spit eveywhere.
"Daddy, please," Hermione held up her hands. "Please, let me explain!"
"There's nothing to explain, Hermione! I thought you were smarter than this. I thought we taught you better. We didn't raise a daughter to start having sex at fifteen years old!"
"I'm sixteen!" Hermione snapped.
Dr. Granger was about to open his mouth to retort when Mrs. Granger timidly sat down next to her daughter and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Hermione jumped back out of her reach.
"Hermione, whatever is the matter?"
"What do you think?" Hermione shook her head and spoke in a small voice. "I got your damn letter today. How could you possibly think that I would want to get an abortion? You know my thoughts and concerns on that!"
"What?" Mrs. Granger wrinkled her brow in confusion.
"And now you're here to try to pull me out of school! Well, guess what mum, that isn't happening! You know how much I love Hogwarts, this place is my home! You made me feel so terrible and even more ashamed than I already am! I was only just starting to feel happy and accept the fact that I'm having a baby at my age, then you had to go and ruin it! Thanks a lot!"
And with that, she crumpled into a heap and weeped, her arms covering her humilated face. Draco, who had recovered from almost being strangled to death, rubbed her back in circular motions. "Shh, Hermione, you shouldn't do that, it's not good for the baby," he whispered in her ear.
"Hermione, honey," Mrs. Granger began tearfully. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"What-do-you-mean-you-don't-know-what-I'm-talking-about?" Hermione choked out between heaving sobs.
"I don't know anything about a letter but I know that I would never tell you to get an abortion when I understand that it's your choice," Mrs. Granger said gently.
"What? Yes you d-did! You wrote it in the letter!"
"No, I didn't, Hermione. I never sent you a letter."
Hermione shakily reached a hand into her coat pocket, pulled out a scrunched up piece of paper and handed it to her mother. Mrs. Granger's eyes quickly scanned the contents of the letter, her face growing more and more disbelievingly.
"Hermione, dear... I swear to you, I didn't write this letter!"
"Oh, please. If you didn't, then who did?"
Immediately, mother and daughter came to the same conclusion. Slowly, they both turned their heads to glare at Dr. Granger, who had been watching the commute unfold. Agitated, he crossed his arms over his chest and gazed sternly down at the pair.
"William," Mrs. Granger said slowly. "Did you write this letter?"
Dr. Granger didn't reply, just continued to frown down at the two increasingly angry women.
"William!" Mrs. Granger repeated. "You wrote it, didn't you?"
"So what if I did?" Dr. Granger snarled. "I meant every single word of it!"
"Daddy!" Hermione gasped. "You... you wrote it! Daddy, how- how could you! How could you possibly want me to have an abortion? God, I should've known that mum would never write junk like that!"
"Just because you're extremely smart in your studies, young lady, doesn't mean that you know everything about everything!"
"William, I am Hermione's mother first and foremost. As upset as I am over finding out my daughter will be a teenage mother, I would never demand her to have a abortion if she didn't want to, and I especially wouldn't tell her in a letter. Really, did you actually expect Hermione to fall for that?"
"She obviously did seeing as she thought that you wrote it!" Dr. Granger countered.
"It said Mum!" Hermione retorted.
"Didn't you notice that the handwriting was different?"
"As much as I love family squarrels," Professor Dumbledore injected loudly, forcing all three of the Grangers to stand up straight and face him, "as I've been involved in many of them myself, I'm afraid that we have some students coming back from their trip to Hogsmeade and I am sure that we do not want to cause ourselves a scene. May I suggest we take this into Professor McGonagall's office?"
"That is an excellent idea, Professor Dumbledore." Professor McGonagall motioned for the Granger family plus Draco to follow her. She couldn't help but give a cold sneer toward Dr. Granger, who kindly returned the glower.
xox
"I do not want any more outbursts of arguments from anyone. I want this matter to be discussed as quickly and calmly as possible. And Dr. Granger," Professor McGonagall added as he showed signs that he was about to disagree, "I can do magic and you cannot. I can seal your mouth shut if I wanted to."
"But wouldn't that be considered-" Mrs. Granger began but McGonagall shot her a stern look and she backed down.
"Now," Professor McGongall lowered herself into a straight-backed chair behind her desk. "Dr. Granger, why don't we start with you? What made you so compelled to write a letter to your daughter, that would make her think it was your wife and not actually yourself?"
"My daughter is a child! What kind of father would I be if I allowed her to have a child at her age?"
"Is that the only reason?" Professor McGonagall asked tiredly, glancing at the clock hung up on the wall.
"That's just the start of it," Dr. Granger said firmly, making the Professor regret asking. "What will I do when people start to find out? She has brought shame to our family! Why, her grandmother almost suffered from a heart attack when she found out!"
"Nana! Is she okay?" Hermione wailed.
"Barely," Dr. Granger grumbled and crossed his arms.
"Nana's fine, darling," Mrs. Granger reassured her daughter. "Your father just seems to be a little bit of a drama queen today, aren't you, dear?"
"Tell me about it," Draco muttered, rubbing his bruised neck, still upset about the previous events of the morning.
"Shut up!" Dr. Granger barked at him.
"Don't you tell me to shut up, you crazy Muggle!" Draco shot back, furious.
"Don't call me a crazy Muggle, you foul, low-life, evil, twisted little-"
"DADDY!"
"Dr. Granger, I have had it up to here!" Professor McGonagall raised her voice to be heard. "All I want to do is have Madam Promfrey make me a Sleeping Draught so I can get some rest!"
Hermione had never heard her Professor shout like this and it made her abstemious. "Professor, can I say something?"
"As long as it doesn't involve yelling, then fine."
"Mum, dad," Hermione turned to her upset parents, forcing herself to maintain direct eye contact with the both of them. "Please, please, please don't pull me out of Hogwarts. You don't understand how much this place means to me. If you take me out of here then I'll be losing everything that's important to me."
"Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall began brusquely. "Perhaps your parents are right..."
"What?" Hermione and Draco both snapped together.
"Think about it, Miss Granger. Do you really think that a school would be a suitable place to raise a child? You both still have two and a half years left to finish your education. Wouldn't you rather go home, Hermione, where you have both your parents to help you out?"
"But Professor McGonagall, Hogwarts is my home! And to be frank, I don't want to be anywhere near my father. Not after what he has said and done."
"But who will look after the child whilst you two are in school? Where will it sleep? How will you manage to balance homework and assignments?"
Hermione, for once in her life, was left without an answer but thankfully the Headmaster came to her rescue.
"Minerva, there is a way." He started seriously. "There is a way that Mr. Malfoy and Miss. Granger can raise their child here at Hogwarts."
"R-really?" Hermione's eyes looked brighter than they ever had before. "How?"
"We can simply rearrange a small... home... for you two to live in."
"What? Where?" Draco enquired shrewdly.
"Right here at Hogwarts. I can simply add a room onto the Gryffindor Tower, where you two can live. If you wish to live together?"
"But am I allowed to live in the Gryffindor Tower when I'm from a different house?" Draco asked nervously, wondering how he could ever face his Slytherin mates when they found this out. Would he have to sit with the Gryffindors in classes from now on, eat at their table? Sure, he didn't mind being with Hermione, but he didn't think he could stomach being around her friends all the time.
"If you want this to work out, Mr. Malfoy, then arrangements can be made."
Hermione and Draco exchanged a glance in which they somehow read each other's minds and knew that the other thought it was a good idea. "Are you serious?" Hermione asked, beaming.
"Yes, I'm deadly serious." The twinkling light had returned to Professor Dumbledore's eye. "I can provide you with the proper facilities such as a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms, one for the child and one for yourselves-"
"Wait, what?" Dr. Granger interrupted. "My teenaged daughter is not sleeping with him!"
"Stay out of this, please!" Hermione's anger levels rose whenever her father had to have the last word.
"They can always have two beds," Professor Dumbledore said and Hermione swore that he gave her father a teasing wink for a tenth of a second.
"No, that's stupid," Draco remarked.
"Then one bed it is. I suppose this would be a great way to get to know each other properly." The Headmaster smiled kindly down at the two and Hermione felt a flood of relief wash over her as she felt such gratitude towards her Professor for making this situation so much easier. There were still some things she wasn't sure about, however...
"What about when we go home for the summer?" Hermione voiced a thought that had been gnawing at her for a few days. "What do we do? Draco doesn't live anywhere near me and... I'm not sure his parents will be perfectly okay with this..."
"I'm sure you two can figure that out for yourselves," Professor Dumbledore calmly replied. Of course, even the greatest wizard in the world couldn't give them all their answers to their problems. There were some things that Hermione and Draco had to figure out by themselves.
Hermione turned to Draco expectantly. "Well? Are you okay with this?"
Draco looked from Professor Dumbledore's kind face, to McGonagall's disapproving one, to Dr. Granger's furious face to Mrs. Granger's tearful one. And then he focused on Hermione, smiling nervously up at him, one hand resting on her 18-week stomach, looking so innocent to practically tore him.
"Yeah. I'm okay with it."
They didn't even hear Dr. Granger's angry complaints or Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Granger agreeing with each other that this would "never work out." They just gazed at one another, feeling as though this was only just the beginning of a lifetime of complications. But they were ready to take the risk, at whatever cost it came with.
A/N: YAY! ANOTHER CHAPTER UP! How good am I? Fast update=happy readers :) So. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! I'm not updating until I have idk...50 reviews. Does that seem fair? Or am I just a review hogger? Well I'll try to update by at least next week coz I'm going on holiday next week! YAYY! ok. REVIEWREVIEWREVIEW :)
oh, and I still need names!