A/N: Thank you readers and such! Here is Chapter 12. Please Read and Review and tell me your thoughts. :)
Sometimes Draco wished he married Pansy Parkinson and courted her properly during their teenage years. He wished he had put more effort into loving her like a companion rather than a medial friend. Their parents would have esteemed the partnership and all would have been well. No Hermione and no Astoria.
If Draco had married Pansy, they would have been happy…for years. And when he meant years, he meant a few. Their love and respect for each other would have grown after the engagement and flourished after the Honeymoon. Once they had a child, they would be content. Unfortunately, Pansy did not do content. It was not good for her. She wanted happiness, and Draco reckoned that was why he kept his feelings for her relatively platonic when they were children. He knew he could never make her happy. He would give her jewels and galleons, and she would have smiled and ogled, but what she really wanted was to be tackled to the floor and impregnated several times with ginger-haired babies.
Pansy had been an only child and when her parents had passed on not long after her the birth of her first born, she inherited their galleons, estates, and business. She and her husband and their load currently lived quite comfortably in her childhood manor.
Draco was in his friend's manor at the particular moment. He was sitting in the West Tea Room where all the walls were pristinely washed windows, bestowing a spectacular view of snow covered hills littered with evergreens. In his arms was the youngest Parkinson-Weasley concoction while mischievous cackles of the older children echoed throughout the halls. He held Rose's little body upwards, and she eyed his face and hair keenly. To return the favor, he eyed her chubby cheeks, upturned button nose, and the wisps of red hair in intrigue.
"She is rather darling, I admit," Draco haughtily said, earning a pleased beam from Pansy. He stretched the baby towards her mother and was taken and smooched repetitively on the cheeks. This was another thing he would not have provided Pansy. If they had been together, he'd be satisfied with one male child and see little reason to produce more.
"She is, isn't she?" Pansy snuggled her baby closer to her bosom and gently swayed in her seat.
Taking a sip of his steaming cuppa, his insides boiled in retaliation. Casually, Draco set the cup down and said, "Pansy, I think we both know why I'm here."
His friend stared at him briefly before looking away and staring at the falling snow outside the window. "I'm in denial. I'm in denial you did something so stupid, Draco."
Her words stung, and Draco tempted himself in informing her of his cursed illness with intent of getting sympathy. Instead, he asked, "How much did Ginny tell you?"
"Everything, I think." She nibbled at her bottom lip pensively and told him, "Ron doesn't know. I feel awful not telling him, but it's not my place. It's really Granger's business. Draco, he doesn't even know you two slept together and neither does Potter." A snort erupted from Pansy. "Potter doesn't know anything about what's going on. He doesn't even know you ran into her at her shop, and Ginny is stressing herself out with the baby coming and trying to keep Hermione's delicacy under the radar. She doesn't understand why Ginny's acting secretive and sees no harm in telling her friends about the baby. About you. But Ginny persuaded her to keep quiet for now."
"Let's hope she has the power long enough to withhold Hermione's tongue. I'm not quite ready to die yet," chuckled Draco for his own benefit. Expectedly, the humor was lost on Pansy. "Talking about Hermione and everyone and everything is not the only reason why I'm here. I have come to acquire something I believe is in this house."
She shifted the baby in her arms and frowned. "What are you looking for?"
Draco swallowed and relaxed his forearms on the table. "Ten years ago Hermione gave something to Ron before she…before she drank that potion. She told him to get rid of it. If he didn't and still has it, I believe he hid it somewhere on your property. It may be a box. It's probably rather small-"
"I can't give that to you," Pansy blurted and he blinked in surprise, having been only half-serious about the box. He thought for sure Ron would have set fire to it or tossed it into the sea and then wondered why he hadn't.
"So you admit he failed to get rid of the box?" Draco questioned hopefully.
Pressing her lips forcefully together, she situated Rose so the baby's head rested on her shoulder and said, "No, Draco."
"They are my memories, too. What good are they doing to anyone hiding?" Draco argued.
"Ronald would be furious if I gave that box to you," Pansy explained.
"So tell me where it is. You wouldn't be giving it to me, just merely informing me of its whereabouts."
"It's the same thing."
Draco sighed acceptingly and unsheathed his wand from his inner coat pocket. "I didn't want to do this, Pansy. Accio Hermione's Memory Box!"
She inhaled sharply, her eyes wide and clearly upset. They both waited until a little box came zooming into the Tea Room. Both former Slytherins reached for it, but Draco being a former Seeker and not holding a baby, was able to snatch it first. He smiled in triumph as a vicious expression of contempt burst upon his friend's features. His grin faltered, though, when he gave the box a proper look. It was the box Hermione's engagement ring once dwelt in. She must have enlarged the box to properly fit everything inside before shrinking it back to normal size.
The box was a deep, rich, emerald-green of plush velvet fabric with the Malfoy Family Crest on the top. The ring had belonged to his grandmother. He may have taken back the ring, but he did not ask for the box.
"Draco, please," Pansy begged, her eyes watering.
He glanced up at her stoically and asked, "Will Ron notice its absence?"
"Eventually," she murmured, her shoulders sagging. Her baby began to whimper, sensing distress from her mother.
"Then tell him that I stole it. It's not a lie."
"You are being selfish, Draco. Why can't you see above your own conceit whenever you hurt someone?" He flinched at her wounding inquiry, unable to recall a time she had called him out on his selfishness. "You have just placed me in a hard situation. When Ron gets home this evening, should I tell him right away what you've done or should I wait for him to realize the box is gone? Either way, there will be an argument, and he's going to blame me for what happened. I slipped and told you the box was still around. I will take blame for that, but he trusted me with this, and I let him down."
Pansy was not yelling nor was she distraught and thought it would be better if she had been and watched her stand up from her chair and tell him, "I think you should leave."
While pacing in his home office with Hermione's memory box on the table, guilt could not dilute the satisfaction of acquiring it. Nevertheless, like he told Blaise, the price had been too high and he was quite literally paying with his life.
"You are wearing a hole into the carpet," Lucius pointed out from his portrait. "Tell me what is on your mind. You've been distant lately and haven't talked to me in days."
"You don't want to know, Father. Believe me."
"I see an engagement box on your desk. Have you got a witch in mind already? The divorce hasn't been completed," his father said reprovingly.
"It's not a ring, Father. It's full of memories."
"Memories?" his father's eyebrows rose comically, an amused smile forming on his lips. "How utterly poetic."
"It's not a metaphor of romantics. There are memories in there. Perhaps there are some vials of real memories, but when I say memories, I mean pictures and other trinkets."
"Pictures? Pictures of what, may I ask?"
"Of Hermione Granger and I," admitted Draco, exhausted of keeping this away from him.
Lucius' eyes narrowed and he scoffed in disgust. "Don't tell me you're considering getting back together with that Mudblood."
Eleven years ago, Draco would have defended Hermione to his then living and healthy father. He would have relished the horror-struck Lucius when announcing his love for Hermione and plans to marry her someday and have precious, little Half-blood babies sharing the Malfoy name.
But that was years ago. Instead, Draco felt annoyance at his father's name-calling and waved dismissive fingers at the portrait and chose his words carefully. "I have no immediate plans to court Miss Granger. I am still a married man, but I do admit of having…strayed. For that, I must suffer the consequences."
"Consequences?" Lucius' lips curled in distress. "Define consequences, my boy."
"She is with child," Draco solemnly said, purposefully stopping there, for his father was unprepared to hear the rest.
The painting of Lucius Malfoy sucked in an unneeded breath as his hands came up and adjusted his tie and the collar of his robes. He frostily said, "Really? How unexpected. Does your mother know?"
"Not yet."
"Ah." The man's slit eyes widened momentarily at the revelation. "Do you plan telling her?"
"Not in the near future."
"And does Miss Granger plan to go through with the pregnancy? She is of Muggle descent, and I heard of a method where their kind of Healer can make problems such as these go away. When I heard about such a ghastly procedure, I nearly hurled at the thought, but there are always exceptions of participating in the crudest of acts."
"Hermione wants to keep the baby," Draco unwillingly informed and his father sneered.
"Does she want money out of you? Perhaps you should give her some. Persuade her to terminate that thing."
"We both know Hermione was and never will be interested in my money. She has her own now, and owns a rather large chain of bookstores."
"How quaint." Lucius' voice was jagged like broken glass. "Can you at least persuade her from keeping the fetus? Can't she give it away or something? Think of your name, son. Have you no pride in your family?"
"Of course I do!" Draco incredulously barked. "I've given up so much for this family, but you know how that woman is!"
His father let out a growl and stuck up his nose. "Unacceptable! A Half-blood baby in the Malfoy family! Once my father hears about this…" Lucius lingered to compose himself once more. "You will need to send her away. Set her up in some Muggle villa with books, a House-elf, and an account for the…" his left eyelid twitched, "baby. It would be considerate to pay for all tuition fees."
"Send her away?" Draco laughed. "Did you not hear me go off about her? She turns into a mad woman when you order her to do something."
"So what are you going to do then? Hmm? Are you going to marry her when the ink on the divorce papers dries and soil the Malfoy name? Give Scorpius a sibling? Are you going to run off in the bloody sunset together and live happily ever after just like you both always wanted?"
Draco scowled at his father and contemplated yanking the man's portrait from the wall and tossing it into the fire.
"No. She is going to do whatever that she wants, and I will be here. She will move on in life with the baby. I highly expect her absence in England once the baby is born," he honestly said and half-lied through the rest. "I may even sporadically show up and see the child if Hermione allows it. I will give gifts and whatnot, and Owl cards, and presents on birthdays and Christmas, but fathering a bastard child will not change anything between me and Hermione, Mum, and especially Scorpius."
Draco waved his wand and cast a Silencing spell on his father and took the quiet opportunity in returning to his desk. He drilled his eyes into the box, wanting the contraption to fill his mind with the secrets lying within without actually opening it.
Inhaling deeply, he straightened his shoulders in determination and pointed his wand at the box, enlarged it so each side was the length of an arm. Before losing his nerve, he flipped the golden latch at the front and opened it with a loud creak. A puff of dust billowed out at him and dispersed, hazily exposing a load of jam-packed baubles tightly inside. Feeling whole-heartedly miffed at Hermione for literally getting rid of everything, he frowned into the open box and slipped his hand inside.