A/N: I'm trying to get back into the swing of things; after not writing for this fic (or this fandom, or any other fandom) it might take me a little bit to get back into my old writing style. I hope the new chapters don't seem too disjointed or anything.

Thank you to everyone that reviewed, favourited, and followed this bit. Especially those of you that have been waiting for updates for like two years. You guys are great. Again, I'm striving for regular updates, but I can't promise anything.

George's POV

"It's not as bad as I thought it would be," she says. She stirs the thick, dark blue potion simmering in one of our experiment cauldrons. We're in the basement beneath the shop, where Fred and I develop, create, and test potential products. It lacks the bright colour scheme of the shop and the flat; it's small and stuffed with disorganised ingredients. "The whole thing is almost anticlimactic, to be honest. I was expecting something so much worse and…well, we don't really talk much. We sort of just go about our lives, you know."

I nod, watching her as she gathers her dark hair into a messy bun. She sits on the stool by her knees. "I miss you, George," she says quietly. It's hard for us to see each other as often as we'd like to. In between her job and mine, free time is rare.

Somehow, talking doesn't seem like the right thing to do. She looks she has more to say, something that she's trying to find the exact words for. When she looks at me, I see something like fear in her eyes, something like pleading. "Angie, whatever it is—"

"I'm pregnant," she blurts out. "We consummated right away, the second night," she rambles, sniffling. "I just wanted to get it over with."

I reach my hand across the table to grasp hers, but she won't look at me. I revel in the spark I never get with Katie, the feeling I get from her and only her, that I crave in her absence. "I'm sorry, George," she murmurs.

"You didn't really have a choice," I say, but my voice sounds so numb and hollow to me. I know I can't blame her for something she was forced to do, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it either. When this is all over and she leaves Zabini, will their child stay with him or with us? When these fake marriages inevitably crumble, where will all these children go?

I don't ask her; it's the last thing she needs to think about right now. In times of crisis, the future seems so far-away and unreal that you can't plan for it. You just focus on living from day to day; small steps forward are all we can really manage right now. "He didn't say anything," she tells me. "When I said your name," she clarifies, when I give her a confused look. "He just looked kind of like he pitied me, you know, and we didn't talk about it."

I want to tell her to keep saying my name, to never let it lose importance. The bracelet around her wrist glints. Whatever it's putting in our veins, I want to tell her to overpower it, to resist. I want to tear it off her. Instead, I ask her about baby names.

She shrugs. "I haven't come up with anything. I'm trying not to think about it."

Can we bring ourselves to love the children we never wanted to have? How will they feel, knowing their parents would never have had them if they had the choice?

"Sorry," I say quickly.

"It's okay."

"There is a perk to this, you know."

She raises an eyebrow. "There is?"

Drumming my fingertips across her knuckles, I point out that now that she's already pregnant, she wouldn't be able to get pregnant from me and conceive an illegitimate child.

"Well," she says, her voice suddenly husky. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"What would you ever do without me?" I ask jokingly, leaning across the table. With my free hand, I push the cauldron aside, careful not to let the liquid slosh over the side.

"I don't know," she whispers, leaning over to meet me halfway. She puts her hands on my shoulders and presses her lips to mine. She pulls back, her dark eyes boring into mine. "I don't know."

Draco's POV

It happens the same way every time, every few days. She comes into my room between midnight and two in the morning, when she knows I should be asleep. She sits on the edge of my bed, on the side across from mine, where I lie motionless and wait. She always speaks, even though she knows I'm not asleep. First it was "I want to know you." Then "I know you're not a bad person," "You've never been your father," "You're just as human as anyone else." I always say something back to her. "I want to know you too," "You don't know who I am," "I never wanted to be like him, but I had no choice," "Sometimes I think it would be easier if I wasn't."

She slips into my bedroom, quiet as a ghost and pale as snow, wearing a bra and shorts. The moonlight pouring in through the window illuminates the knobs of her protruding bones. The bedsprings creak slightly as she sits, shifting the canopy aside, keeping her back to me. With one arm above my head and the other draped over my stomach, I wait, frozen, to hear what she has to say tonight.

"Is it bad that every time I wake up next to you, for a split second, I hope that somebody else is in your place?"

"Who?" I whisper, hiding the quick pang of hurt that flashes across my face. I thought we were making progress, even if it's been glacial.

She turns, her face blank. "It doesn't matter."

I don't know if that means she doesn't want to tell me who it is, or that she'd be happy with literally anybody else aside from me. I want to say that it matters to me, that after all the shit I subjected her to, that I just want her to find the gleaming bit of happiness she never got to have when she was too busy fighting a war.

"You always say my name," I remind her.

"I want to experience the moment for what it is. It's always after that I want somebody else."

I sit up, motioning for her to come closer. I have no idea if she's pregnant or not, but they're doing checks in a week's time and I'm worried she's too underweight and unhealthy to conceive. "Why are you so sure I'm a good person?"

She scoots over so she's sitting next to me with her knees drawn up to her chest. "You lost your venom. When you kept insulting me, after a while I could tell you were doing it because you just felt like you had an image to maintain. Your portraits pointed it out, too."

"How often do you talk to them?"

"All the time," she admits softly. "It's lonely here, you know."

"I know."

We settle into a comfortable silence. "You didn't reveal Harry," she says, after a few minutes. "Why are you so sure you're a bad person?"

"Sometimes I can still hear your screams from that night. It's like they're trapped in the walls. Just…everything, it doesn't leave…" I try, failing to find the words for what I want to say. I take a deep breath. "I could've saved you from that, but I didn't. I didn't even try."

Cautiously, she places her hand on mine. Compared to emotionless, obligatory sex, a chaste but genuine touch is so much harder to process. "It's not bad," I say.

"What?"

"It's not bad that you want someone else. I understand it."

We fall back into the silence. I can hear her slow, deep breaths. I feel her palm against the top of my hand, resting lightly. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For everything, Hermione, I'm sorry."

Her fingers interlace with mine. She looks at me with the expression of a child getting exactly what they asked on Christmas morning. "For everything?" she repeats, a faint note of glee in her voice. I can see the spark in her eyes. She must have been dreaming of this moment since the first time I insulted her.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not."

"Good." I pull her closer, my arm snaking around her bare waist. "Good," I whisper into the crook of her neck as I drag my tongue over the column of her throat.

"I've never been sorry," she tells me, her fingers hooking into the waistband of my pants.

"Good," I repeat against her skin. She is so good, so pure and perfect and so unlike me, so, so much better than me.