I took the week Draco was expected to go into labor off from work. With veela, the window of delivery was tighter, especially when the exact day and time of conception was known. The expert healer I'd hired from France at Fleur's suggestion (Draco hadn't liked Healer Balev) said that it was almost guaranteed that Draco would give birth within this one week window. Actually, the term she'd used was, "Lay ze egg," but Draco didn't like to refer to the process in such birdlike terms, so his mother and I were always careful to use the human equivalent.
All of the time I was spending with Draco meant that I was spending a great deal of time with Narcissa as well. She'd saved my life and I felt a deep debt of gratitude towards her. That translated to politeness on my part, which was returned in equal measure on hers, and we had developed a friendship. She had even asked me to call her Cissy, which was what she said everyone called her. I complied and the two of us were now joined in our commitment to get Draco through the birth unscathed.
Draco was huge now. He reached the point where he looked to be full-term weeks ago. We were all pretty worried about how big he was getting, unfamiliar with the veela birthing process as we were, but the veela healer said it was normal. Because veela offspring stay in their eggs six months longer than human babies, the egg had to be correspondingly larger. Therefore, Draco's gigantic belly that was so large he could barely walk, was normal.
I spent my first two days off, catering to Draco's every need and whim. His regular guards were still there, cleaning up after him and delivering the elf-cooked meals, but there were many things they didn't feel like it was their job to do. For example, he now needed help getting from his bed to the bathroom. Cissy helped with all of the personal stuff, like getting him dressed, but she didn't have a wand and wasn't strong enough to carry him; I wasn't strong enough to carry him either, because that egg inside him weighed a ton. Before the guards were levitating him into the bathroom for Cissy, but now that I was around, that was my job.
Draco spent most of his time in bed these days, so I didn't do a lot of levitating him around, besides the hourly bathroom trips. Mostly I stayed near the bed and tried to make him comfortable; there was something about having a giant egg inside one's body that was inherently uncomfortable. He couldn't lie on his back anymore, without the egg pushing down on his veins and arteries and interfering with blood flow. The egg was so heavy that he couldn't stay on either side for long before needing to turn.
Oddly enough, lying on his stomach was the most comfortable option, because it meant that the egg wasn't being pulled down onto his internal organs by gravity. But balancing him on his stomach was a challenge, so I spent a good deal of my time arranging his pillows. I wedged in one on either side of his stomach, two under his thighs, another two under his legs, and two under his chest. He still wanted to see what was going on, so that meant that his head was facing the foot of the bed, with his feet towards the headboard. I spent a good bit of the day kneeled at the foot of the bed, in front of his head, talking to him.
The rest of my day was spent doing things like massaging his swollen feet, rubbing his aching back and shoulders, and applying a special veela skin ointment to his belly. Without that magical ointment, his skin would've stretched beyond its limit long ago, due to the speed his waist was expanding. With the ointment, he didn't even have stretch marks. But it wasn't just the stretch marks the ointment treated, because there was also a great deal of itching, burning, and bruising sensations that went along with expanding the skin so rapidly and forcing it to take the weight of an egg sitting on top of it, and the ointment relieved all of that discomfort as well.
Then there was the volume of food to deal with, which he had to eat each day to support the growing egg. All of the nutrients the baby would need for the next year had to be stored within that egg before leaving his body. That meant that he had to consume a prodigious amount of food. But his appetite was slowing and waning already, now that the shell was forming. Once the shell is in place, the baby is walled off from his body, preventing further uptake of nutrients. That also meant that he probably wouldn't grow any bigger, thank Merlin, before the birth. But back when the egg was still growing, he was eating high calorie foods almost constantly.
The first warning sign I had that he was going to go into labor, was on the second night when Draco said, "Harry, I feel weird."
"Feel weird? Weird like how? Pain? Are you having contractions?" I asked quickly in my panic.
"No, not pain or contractions. More achy and bloated."
"Oh, so what's that mean? You want me to rub your feet?"
"No, I want to take a bath. A real bath, not you cleaning me with a spell," he said.
He hadn't had a real bath in weeks, because of the logistics of getting him into the tub and his modesty. I wasn't sure how that was going to work now. I could levitate him into the tub, but would he let me undress him? Would he want me to see his body naked? I'd seen his stomach naked—I had to in order to rub the ointment on it—but I'd never seen his bottom half without clothes. It seemed unlikely that he would get through the birth without me seeing anything, given that the egg had to come out of his most private part, but I was hoping we wouldn't get to that until he was too knocked out on pain potions to care.
When I did nothing but dither around for a minute, he said, "Get my mother."
Cissy would surely be crucial in any bathing attempt, given that she was the last one to bathe him back when he could still walk and get into the tub on his own. She was also the one who dressed him and helped him navigate the toilet, once levitated into the loo.
I nodded to Draco and then to Erickson, the guard who replaced me, who was sitting by the door. Erickson stood up to take my place by the bed, not out of some desire to ensure Draco was alright, but out of duty. It was Erickson's job to watch Draco and if there was a complication with Draco or the egg on his watch, he was responsible for apparating them to St. Mungo's. Normally prisoners would be taken to the nurse at the Ministry Holding Facility, but I'd gotten special permission from Kingsley for Draco to go to St. Mungo's. Not that Draco wanted to go to St. Mungo's, because he was insistent on a home birth, likely because of his aversion to letting anyone see him in the process of birthing an egg. But if he needed to be taken someone, it would be a real hospital and not the dinky clinic kept for prisoners.
I was back with Cissy in a minute, with her guard Backer. Backer was Ron's replacement and he took Erickson's chair when he came in. I levitated Draco into the bathtub, with Cissy carefully guiding his body so that he didn't hit the doorjamb. Then I was kicked out as she undressed him and started the bath. I was let back in fifteen minutes later when he was surrounded by a tub full of hot water and copious bubbles. He was sitting hunched over in the water, with his back bent and his giant belly resting heavily on his thighs. I didn't think the bubbles were necessary to cover his bits, because even a pair of boxer shorts would probably be covered by his belly. But maybe the bubbles were to cover his rear.
"How is he doing…?" I asked, referring to the fact that he was sitting up when he hadn't tried sitting up in days. Ever since the egg started solidifying, he found the hard mass uncomfortable to sit with.
"He's fine. If you want you could wash his back," Cissy suggested, holding out a white washcloth.
I thus went to work rubbing his back with a soapy washcloth. He wasn't dirty, because I'd just cleaned him with a spell not two hours ago, so I concentrated on massaging his tender areas and not on cleaning. While I did his back, Cissy did his front. Once we had him relaxed, she got him dressed and I levitated him back into the bed.
That night I slept on a cushioning charm on the floor by his bed, like I'd done the night before, because I was too worried that he might go into labor in the middle of the night to sleep in the comfy guest bed down the hall. I was even more worried that night and I must've woken up two dozen times to check on him. Other than his multiple trips to the toilet, he slept through the night.
I woke up in the morning to the sound of Draco's scream. I took two leaps to the foot of the bed and saw his face contorted in pain. His hands were pushing at the pillows underneath him, trying to change his position.
"What's wrong? Do you want to roll over?" I asked, slightly panicked.
"Get me a pain potion noooow!" The last word turned into another scream.
I looked at Jackson, who was the guard on duty, sitting in his chair. He nodded back and took off to get the pain potion. Knowing their usual schedules, he probably just switched position on that chair with Harper.
"Draco, what's wrong? Are you in labor?" I asked, moving to help pull away the pillows he was still pushing at.
"Yessss," he hissed, clutching a hand to his belly now that he could reach it. With several key pillows gone, his balance on his stomach was precarious and he fell over onto his side, trapping his arm underneath him. He took several deep, panting breaths, before he began to relax again. "Help me turn over."
I did as requested, repositioning the pillows to support his new position on his side. Then Jackson was back with the pain potion and I helped Draco drink it. After that he asked for his mother, so Jackson went to fetch her.
Cissy came rushing into the room followed by her guard Sheffield. "Get Madame Thibeaux, Harry," she said, going straight to Draco's side and checking him over.
Madame Thibeaux was the specialist veela healer. It made sense to get her, in fact I should've thought of that myself, but I didn't. I agreed rapidly, told Draco I'd be right back with his healer, and apparated over to her office in France. It was still early and I worried that she wouldn't be there yet. She wasn't, but her secretary was. I told the secretary, she fire-called the healer, and Madame Thibeaux agreed to meet me back at the Manor right away.
I apparated back to Malfoy Manor. While I'd been away, Cissy had been at work changing Draco. I knew he hated the sight of the birthing gown he wore, but the healer really would need to check his progress, so something that could be pulled up was absolutely necessary. It was the type of baggy nightgown they sell for expectant women, except that I'd gotten the plainest one I could find; it was white with a few ugly pleats around the collar, but thankfully no lace, ribbons, or bows; I'd gone to a lot of work to find something without lace, ribbons, bows, or cutesy patterns, but couldn't find any that were masculine.
Madame Thibeaux arrived fifteen minutes after me and went right to work checking on Draco. He was fine and hadn't had a second contraction yet. She was an efficient woman who wore her long greying brown hair back in a tight bun. She had on a white lab coat over her robes and kept her wand in a holster on her left forearm.
Next Madame Thibeaux set up the room for the delivery. She came with a black healer's bag, which obviously had a wizard-space charm on it, because she pulled everything anyone could ever need to deliver an egg, or perform major surgery, out of it. She pulled out a metal table on wheels, which she covered with a blue cloth, before covering it in potion vials, tubs of ointments, and shiny metal instruments. I recognized a scalpel among the mix and I hoped to Merlin we didn't need it. She added a large bowl of water and a stack of towels, completing the set up.
Then the waiting started. It was punctuated by contractions and plenty of misery on Draco's part, but mostly not a lot happened. Every hour or so, Madame Thibeaux checked his progress, but that was extremely slow going. The time passed by at a snail's pace, especially with the way he complained about everything. All his moaning and griping boiled down to only a few basic complaints: he was in pain, he was miserable, he was hungry, he was thirsty, he had to pee, and he didn't actually have to pee, but felt like he had to.
It was late afternoon before Madame Thibeaux announced that we were getting close. Oh it would still be hours more, but the egg was definitely coming. It was then that Draco remembered the incubator and suddenly wanted it set up right that minute. I would've set it up two months ago if he would've let me, but he'd said it was too early then. I probably should've set it up yesterday or the day before, but I hadn't thought of it then. I didn't really want to leave his side to figure out something so complex, but I did.
I went to the parlor with the incubator, so that it'd be quiet while I worked. Only I didn't get very far into it before I realized that I was missing something. On the very first page, right under the list of included parts, was a little note in tiny font that power crystals were sold separately. The incubator needed a power crystal to hold the magic that powered the machine; the crystals had to be recharged every day, but it'd keep the egg warm for at least twenty-four hours, which was better than casting a warming charm every hour or so. I wished it would've said the crystals weren't included on the box, because I would've bought one while I was at the store if I'd known. I hadn't even seen any power crystals at the store. But it was growing late and I wanted to get one before the stores close for the night, so I went into action.
I took the instruction booklet to Draco's room and asked the women for help. Madame Thibeaux seemed to think that the best place to get power crystals was Germany, where the incubators were made. Everywhere else was liable to be out of them or only carry the smaller crystals, which wouldn't last for nearly as long as the large one. She seemed to think there was an extra-large variety available at this one particular store that would power the incubator for days at a time, possibly even a week.
When Wiltshire was where I really wanted to be, I apparated back to the Burrow, since Malfoy Manor had been disconnected from the floo network. I yelled out my news to Molly as I walked to her fireplace and then I flooed over to the German equivalent of the Leaky Cauldron. From there I dashed over to the little shop that specialized almost exclusively in magical power crystals. Germany was ahead of Britain with regards to time zones, so the shop was already closed for the night. Luckily the little old sales witch lived above the store and agreed to reopen for me and then helped me find the largest power crystal she had in stock. It wasn't the largest ever made, according to her, but at an average of five days' worth of magical power for something like an incubator, it was definitely one of the larger ones. I paid, left a good sized tip for her help, and made my way back to Malfoy Manor.
The first thing I did when I arrived was to let everyone know that I was back. The guards were waiting in Draco's room, but Draco had been moved into the tub. Madame Thibeaux had him reclined in the tub, resting on some sort of water proof pillow. She was in the tub, between his legs, checking him down there. I couldn't see exactly what she was doing, because she had a towel draped over his lap. It was a white towel, but there were red blotches on it and the water had turned pink, as if from blood.
Cissy was running a washcloth over his forehead and she looked up at me when I entered.
"I got it. What's going on? What happened?" I asked concerned.
"Nothing too terrible, just a bit of a tear," Cissy said.
"Eet iz perfectly normal for first time motherz to tear az ze egg comes down. Eet iz such a very large egg. I've applied ze ointment to heal ze tear and I'm rubbing in another ointment to help ze flesh stretch. Perhapz next time I suggest something my patient will take my advice," Madame Thibeaux said. She had a thick French accent.
"Draco! You promised me you would cooperate with Madame Thibeaux!" I exclaimed. We'd had a long discussion about healers and I'd let him choose whomever he wanted, just as long as he agreed to listen to whomever he chose. He'd picked her, not so much out of admiration for her work, but out of extreme dislike for all of the other choices.
"Let's see you cooperate with her when she's suggesting sticking her hand up your bum to rub in ointment. Not just squirt it in there, but actively work it in," he replied with a scathing look.
"Eet requirez such to function properly," Thibeaux replied sweetly.
"Yeah, whatever. Go finish the incubator before this egg gets here, Harry," he said.
I had no particular desire to watch something Draco felt embarrassed by; not when it wasn't the actual birth. Thus I took the power crystal back to the parlor and started on the incubator. Putting it together was a lot of work, made all the harder by stress and my anxiety to get it finished right away. It was an extremely complex piece of magical equipment, the likes of which I haven't seen assembled since Dudley's bicycle when I was little. Of course Uncle Vernon had ended up taking that thing back to the store and paying for assembly, because it was too much for him. Consequently, I felt pretty smug when I finally finished the incubator.
I brought the incubator into Draco's room and set it up on his dresser, next to the nest. He was back on his bed, lying on his back, with the women watching over him.
"Ah, why is he on his back?" I asked, remembering he'd gone on about how horrible it was the last time I'd suggested it.
"Ze egg haz moved lower. Eet iz no longer crushing him when he iz on hiz back," Thibeaux said.
"That's good. How much longer?" I asked.
"I want my grandmother! Harry, go get her please!" Draco said in what sounded more like a demand than a request.
"I don't know where she is. Didn't you say she's out of the country?" I asked.
"No, not Grandmother Malfoy, Grandmother Black. I want Grandfather Black too," he replied.
"Alright, where do I find them?"
"My parents live at Black Gardens just outside of Torquay. You can take the floo or ask my sister Andromeda for help getting there," Cissy suggested.
Cissy hadn't been in touch with her sister in many years. I knew she wanted to change that, but she was still on house arrest. It would have to wait until after the trial.
I complied, apparating to Dromeda's house this time. Molly had apparently told Dromeda the news, because she asked about Draco and the baby before I could even get in her front door. I updated her quickly and then requested her help picking up her parents. She agreed, putting Teddy on her hip and I grabbed his nappy bag. We flooed over to Black Gardens, which was a seaside estate with a large atrium in the middle of the house. One side of the living room had windows overlooking the sea and the other side had windows into the atrium filled with roses. Beyond the flowers, I could see a fountain and then more house.
Mister and Madam Black weren't happy to see me, Dromeda, or Teddy. But once they got past their dislike of us and listened to my news that Draco was in labor and wanted to see them, they were much more agreeable. They had to change out of their night robes and house slippers, Madam Black had to grab her purse and wig, Mister Black had to put in his teeth, and then they were ready for the journey back to the Manor.
I didn't have permission for Draco's family to visit, so they waited in the drawing room on the first floor while I went upstairs to clear thing with Aurors Erickson and Backer. But when I got up there I found out that Draco had already had the egg and was passed out from exhaustion. The egg was resting comfortably in the nest inside the incubator. I thought the last egg was pretty, but this egg was gorgeous. The swirling pattern was gold and popped against the ivory of the shell. The egg itself was huge; over a foot and a half tall and a foot at its widest point. It was the type of thing that seemed absolutely incredible for it to have come out of a human body.
With Draco asleep, Erickson and Backer suggested I take the egg downstairs so that I wouldn't have to break Auror protocol. Cissy seconded that idea, so that is what I did. By the time I got the egg downstairs, Dromeda was gone and Madam Black was holding Teddy. Mister Black explained that his daughter had gone to get Minister Shacklebolt to authorize this little impromptu family reunion, which was probably a good idea, because Draco would still want to see his grandparents.
I showed off my egg, which all of the Blacks, including Teddy, cooed over. Teddy must've felt inspired by the egg, because he changed his blond hair to golden. He was getting so big these days; he wasn't crawling yet, but he had three teeth, and could sit up and pull himself up to standing as long as he had something to cling to. Madam Black seemed grandmotherly enough with Teddy; so much so that it was hard to believe that this was the same woman who'd disowned Dromeda. I'd been expecting Sirius' mum all over again and that isn't what I got. Mister Black was a sterner man who didn't seem warm or friendly towards Teddy, but maybe that was just because he couldn't get a chance to hold him with the way his wife was hogging the baby. But then Madam Black agreed to hold the egg and passed Teddy over to Mister Black and Mister Black seemed fine with that.
"Oi, no-aht my tee," Mister Black cried, pulling Teddy's hand off of his dentures. "You've got three of your own; leave your Great Grandfather's teeth alone, okay Sprout?"
"He did the same with my wig; I bet he senses the magic in them," Madam Black replied, looking up from the egg.
It wasn't long after that when Dromeda returned with Kingsley Shacklebolt in tow. Kingsley informed me that the Black family reunion was on, while Dromeda took Teddy from her father. I took my egg back from Madam Black and the group of us made our way up the stairs, with the Minister of Magic in the lead. We hung out in the parlor until Draco woke up an hour later. Draco was pretty tired, but he was hungry, in pain, and he still wanted to see his grandparents.
The Blacks greeted Draco warmly. Though he was exhausted, Draco sat up and held a conversation with his grandparents, listening intently as his mother asked his grandparents how they were doing, since the house arrest prevented visits. The Blacks had the usual complaints of the elderly, but were much more interested in the goings on around Malfoy Manor and even how Dromeda was coping with the loss of Ted and Nymphadora. They were strangely interested in Teddy and all of his developmental milestones, despite years of estrangement from their middle daughter. At one point Mister Black actually apologized for unspecified errors he'd made in the past. Then Madam Black said that they weren't getting any younger and wanted to set things right before they died.
Dromeda seemed agreeable, but I could tell she was holding back; she'd been too hardened by loss to forgive so quickly. She may have been willing to do Draco and me a favor by getting her parents and then Kingsley, but she needed more than a few hours of civility to be convinced.
It was two hours later when we finally got Draco back to sleep and the guests out the door. The egg was tucked away in its nest and I had a new hope for a reconciliation between Dromeda and her parents.
Madame Thibeaux stayed that night to keep an eye on Draco and make sure the bleeding didn't start up again. The egg didn't need any more care than the incubator could provide. Thus my presence wasn't required and I took advantage of that fact to sleep in a proper bed in the guest bedroom. It turned out to be an extremely comfortable bed and after the day I had, I slept like a rock. A rock with a brand new little baby rock in the next room.
Author's Note: So there's the birth! There will be a twist in the next chapter and the excitement will really begin…
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