Vienna

Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

AN: Well, once again, I love you all (and Anna, the most amazing beta in the world). I know you must hate me for not updating regularly, but come Monday, they will get much more frequent. That I can promise.

Chapter 11

Hermione Granger

I refused to leave my office.

And to make it worse, I kept having these small panic attacks where my heart would constrict, my breathing become shallow and labored, and my hands shake uncontrollably – brought on just by solely knowing that Draco was somewhere down the hall from me.

And it was driving me bloody insane.

Not to mention the fact that I was becoming something just short of a narcoleptic, falling asleep at my desk every few minutes. I was in desperate need of some caffeine.

Last night had not been easy emotionally for me. I had always known, from the time I was pregnant, that a day would come in which I had to have the "Daddy" talk with Emma, and even though I had spent five or so years preparing, it still felt like someone had ripped my heart out and stomped all over it.

Honestly, I would have preferred the sex talk over that.

Emma didn't deserve any of this either, she was just a little girl who only wanted her daddy.

I held back tears whilst talking to her, but once I reached my bedroom there was nothing I could do to hold them back.

Hours had passed when I was lying there. I was supposed to be strong for Emma, not the other way around. At some point she had come wandering into my room after a bad dream, when I had finally stopped crying, and we fell had fallen sleep together.

But in all the time that I had spent worrying about everything that affected Emma, I had completely neglected myself and how I was suffering.

Why couldn't I just go down the hall and face him? He was all I wanted; he was all I ever wanted. I was a good mother, I was a good witch, I was a good friend, and hell, we would have been great together. We were great together.

Just when I thought I had a handle on my life and I that I was going to be okay alone, Harry had to come home announcing that he was here and kick me back down.

I didn't deserve this!

Everything hurt, especially my heart. I loved him too bloody much, and no amount of time had changed that. When he was gone it had been easier to pretend like he had never existed, but he was always, always on my mind, and my only thought in living has been Draco.

People just weren't supposed to feel like this.

It was like an entire piece of me, piece of my soul, was missing; there is only one thing that can make a soul complete… and that thing is love.

And I loved Draco, I always will. True love lasts a lifetime.

"Somebody, please, kill me now," I said, banging my head down on my desk.

"Now don't you think that's just a tad premature, Miss Granger?" A voice above me spoke, and my head shot up to see Anna, my boss, standing above me, "I mean, I haven't even given you the case yet."

I shuffled the papers on my desk around hastily, trying to make some kind of order. "I'm sorry, Anna, I've just… got a lot on my mind. Just give me a sec, take a seat, please."

She sat down in the empty chair across from me and crossed her long legs while she folded her hands in her lap on top of a fairly large file. "Anything you care to talk about? Is everything okay at home, is Emma okay?"

Anna may have been my boss, but she was also a great friend who cared for Emma deeply, probably just as much as Luna or Ginny did. "No, no, Emma's fine. It's nothing really…"

Flipping her dark, auburn, hair over her shoulder, she quirked one perfect eyebrow at me; was I really that transparent? I bit my lip, could I trust her with this? "No, that's a lie. Not about Emma, she really is fine. I'm not. Oh, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. It's just – I thought that I had my life under control, I was somewhat happy, I had an amazing daughter whom I loved – love – more than anything else in the world, I was doing okay. But then yesterday I find out that Emma's father has suddenly decided to reappear after all this time. He doesn't even know her."

Everything just came spilling out, and I didn't mean to dump everything on her, but once I started it just became word vomit and I couldn't stop. She took her time in answering me, I could tell, mulling the words over in her head. It was easy to tell when she was doing that, she always tilted her head to the side.

"Have you talked to him yet?" She finally said after some time.

"No. I'm too afraid to." I admitted, hanging my own head.

"It can't hurt to try, what's the worst that could happen?" I didn't answer her. "See, I thought so. Now back to work. We've got a new case; here's the cliff notes version. Divorced woman living in Diagon Alley with her two sons decides to pick them up out of nowhere and move away with her new boyfriend. The thing is, she has joint custody with the father, whom she is refusing to let in. As in, no apparating, no fluing, plus wards around the house. We haven't been able to get anyone inside the house yet, but from what I've heard it's supposed to be a crap hole, and the boyfriend a real arse. I'm not getting too good a feeling about him. We'll send a few aurors next week to the house, hopefully they'll be able to breakdown the wards if she refuses to lower them. Okay then, get it, got it, good, I'll see you later." With that she rose, and smoothing out her skirt, she turned around and started to walk away.

Before she got more than a few feet, I stopped her, "Anna, wait!"

"Yes?"

"Who's my co-counselor?"

"Right, yes, almost forgot. Sorry. It's Blaise, Blaize Zabini."

Could this day get any worse?

I opened the folder on my desk and scanned my eyes over the papers inside to get all the detail. The woman, a Sarah , had graduated Hogwarts only a few years after I had started; she had no record, showed no signs of any psychological disorder. In fact, she seemed to be a perfect mother and model citizen. She was involved in the school and worked part time in one of Diagon Alley's nicer restaurants.

There was defiantly something off.

This was something I needed to talk to Blaise about, although I hated the thought. Reluctantly, I closed the folder, making my way over to his office. The large, wooden doors that separated us were intimidating, much like he was, but I knocked once, curtly, and braced myself.

"Come in," I heard, muffled through the think doors.

His office was inviting, it wasn't the first time I had been in here. My relationship with Blaise was… interesting, to say the least. We had an understanding of some sort based upon a mutually agreed upon dislike of the other, though we acted civilly.

Fighting and bickering like children isn't exactly proper work behavior.

He was leaning over his desk, a quill in hand, and writing on a piece of parchment. I cleared my throat, standing awkwardly in front of him, to get his attention. After a brief glance, he said, "You can sit down, Granger, just give me a moment to finish this." With a few more strokes, he placed his quill in its holder and looked back up at me, "So, I'm assuming that this visit is about the case."

"Well, it isn't exactly a social call." I snorted, "Have you read the file yet?"

"No hand it over." I placed it on his desk, and skimmed through the documents. "How's that kid of yours?" he asked.

Blaise, for some unknown reason, was quite fond of Emma – I think it had something to do with the part of Emma that was more like Draco – and she loved to see him whenever I bought her into work. By the end of the day, I would usually find her sprawled out across his office floor, surrounded by her coloring books. For that reason, I tolerated him.

Sometimes I wondered what house she would be in when she reached Hogwarts age, you didn't really find too many children like her because of the inter-house rivalries. Of course I hoped that she would end up in Gryffindor, but she tended to have these moments that just screamed Slytherin.

Especially that little blackmail habit of hers; she was quite the little manipulator when she wanted to be.

"She's fine, how's the wife?"

He cracked a small smile – okay so maybe he wasn't that bad, "She's fine too." I let him continue reading, and about a minute passed before he closed the file and addressed me, "Something is not right here."

"I completely agree. It just doesn't add up, she has no prior record, no history of anything like this; it doesn't fit. Not to mention that she has had the same agreement with her ex-husband for the past three years without any issues. Their divorce even went smoothly. She and her sons lived a comfortable life in a nice apartment, yet she chooses to move to barely a step up from a slum. And the fact that it was so random, so sudden, makes me think that there was some kind of outside intervention."

"You mean like a spell, or potion?" He asked, "Whom by?"

"My money's on the new boyfriend, John Kingpin. According to a few sources they've only been dating for a couple of weeks, and he does have a record." Blaise opened up the file, and handed over to me the piece of parchment that was his record, "I'm surprised he hasn't been locked up for more than just a few years between embezzlement, petty thefts, breaking and entering… God, there's even statutory rape and large number of FWIs. How did he avoid doing so much time?"

"The hell if I know," Blaise said, taking a look at the parchment for himself. "She's definitely under some kind of spell, and my first guess would be the Imperious Curse, though he could just as well be using a love potion of some sort. But why Sarah? You'd think he would chose someone younger, with no kids– oh no."

"You don't think…"

"I'm not sure what to think at this point." Blaise put his head in his hands and started to massage his temples. "But I don't trust this man, and something's telling me that he's a little more interested in the kids, then in Sarah. Why else would he pick her?"

I had a feeling that Blaise was right, but I hoped to God that it wasn't true. "What we need to do is get inside this guy's mind because I think you're right. Whatever is going on here, this man is the root of the problem. The first thing we need to do is get some aurors in, we're no profilers. Do you know who's been assigned to the case?"

"No, I'll have to go pay Janssen a visit–" There was a sharp knock on the door, and startled, we both jumped and turned toward it. I guess we were a little more wrapped up in this than we thought. "Uh… come in," Blaise said as a nervous looking Ron stuck his head in the door.

"Ronald, what are you doing here?"

"Well, um, Luna wanted me to find out what you and Emma would like for dinner tonight. I'm sorry to interrupt."

Ron was standing anxiously in the doorway, his body half in and half out; too apprehensive to completely come into the room. Though people like Blaise and Draco were innocent, Harry and Ron had never completely forgiven them. "You can tell Luna that I'll eat anything, but I'll have to bring for Emma. The only thing she eats these days are chicken fingers."

"Chicken fingers?" Both Blaise and Ron said in unison.

"Do chickens even have fingers?" Blaise asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

I let a small laugh escape from between my lips, "Chicken fingers are a type of muggle food. You're not actually eating fingers. Ron, just tell Luna that I'll bring it."

"Okay, well… er… see you later." He smiled weakly in my direction, "Blaise" he said with a nod in his direction.

Just as he went to close the door, Harry burst in to room, fuming and looking like he was ready to murder someone. For the love of Merlin, this was not the time, "Hermione!" He yelled.

"Harry, please, try to calm down. What's wrong?" I don't think in all the years that I had known him, I had ever seen him this mad, and it was scaring me.

"You know bloody well 'what'. For fuck's sake, Hermione, why'd you do it? Why him?"

Blaise and Ron, who had absolutely no idea what was happening, were watching us like they would a tennis game, their heads whipping back and forth between Harry and me. "Let's not do this here, Harry. I promise I'll tell you everything, but not here."

"NO! I deserve the truth, and I want it right now! I'm your best friend, or at least I thought I was!"

"Will somebody please just tell us what's going on…" Ron started to say before Harry and I cut him off with a rather loud 'shut up'.

"You want to know why I didn't tell you the truth, do you? Because of this, because I knew you would act this way! You wouldn't understand, it wasn't like I had planned on getting pregnant or even getting close to him, IT JUST HAPPENED!"

"Then why did you do it!" At this point, we were both yelling, standing on complete opposite sides of the room. Blaise and Ron were standing by the doorway like they didn't know whether they should make a run for it, or continue to watch our very heated argument. Neither of them had any idea what we were talking about.

A couple of tears had fallen out of the sides of my eyes and slipped down my cheek. The last thing I needed now was to start balling. "BECAUSE I LOVE HIM!"

An eerie silence from everybody followed for a moment, and Harry's body was shaking with anger, but I kept my eyes on his wand – partially because I was afraid he might hex me, and because I was too mortified to look him in the eyes.

"That's just fucking unbelievable, Hermione! You're… you're… you're fraternizing with the enemy!"

"The enemy? The enemy! You very well know that he is not the enemy anymore! Why can't you just accept that, Harry? We're not eleven anymore, we're not in school, though right now you're acting like you're sixteen again!"

A new voice spoke from the doorway, and all four of us spun around to face it, "Harry. James. Potter." Ginny said, her voice toneless and flat and her lips were pursed in a thin line. "Leave. Hermione. Alone."

Harry's anger morphed to terror, and instead of shaking, his face had now palled and little breads sweat started to condense of his forehead. It was he like he was visibly shrinking under the scrutiny of Ginny's intense glare.

"But– " He started to stutter, but Ginny cut him off.

"NOW" she yelled, pointing towards the door. Defeated, he walked off, head hung in shame as Ron followed him out.

Ginny was now focused on me, standing with on hand on her hip, the other on her pregnant belly. "So here I am, coming to see if my best friend is okay and take her out to lunch, and what do I find, said best friend and my husband at each other's throats." I opened my mouth to explain, but she put her finger up, successfully silencing me, "Save it, let's go."

Guiltily, I looked from Blaise to Ginny, there was no use arguing with her, "Blaise, I'm sorry, can you tell Anna I'm taking the rest of the day off? There's not much we can do anyway until we get someone inside that house."

"Uh… yea sure. See you tomorrow."

Neither Ginny nor I said a word as I collected my things and walked through the ministry to the apparition point. We didn't talk as we walked through Diagon Alley, we didn't even dare stand next to each other, instead, I trudged along behind Ginny, looking much like Harry had when he left the room.

"So," she said after we finally sat down in a small café.

"So…" I repeated. "Where's James

"He's with my mother. Come on, Hermione, I'm pregnant, not stupid. I'm surprised Ron hasn't figured it out by now. First you decide not to tell anybody because we all hated him, then you faint upon hearing Draco Malfoy's name, and to top it all off, she looks just like him! I have no idea why I didn't think of it in the first place, Emma's the spitting image of him."

"Hated?"

"Yes, Hermione, hated. Like you said, we're not in school anymore, I haven't seen the man in six years, and I'm assuming that if you could fall in love with him, then he must not be as terrible of a person as I thought him to be. What I don't understand is why you didn't tell me, I'm your best friend, 'Mione, you can tell me anything. I can't help you when you don't let me."

I was such a terrible person, hurting my friend. I should have trusted her, that's what friends are for. Instead I acted like selfish idiot, she was only ever trying to help me. Her pain was written all over her face and in her eyes, a small, sad smile graced her lips. If I hung my head any lower, my forehead would be touching the floor. "God, I feel like this is the twentieth time I've said this today." I raised my head to look her in the eyes, even though it was causing me to tear up again. I really need to stop crying, I was turning into such a cry baby. "I was scared, Ginny. Hell, I'm still scared. What do I do now that he's back? It was so much easier with him gone, I never had to worry about telling him because he wasn't here, but now I don't know what to do. It's not like there are any rules for this kind of thing. Do I confront him, or do I just wait for him to find out?"

Just like last night, Ginny was holding my hand and speaking softly like she would with a little girl who had just lost her doll, "I think you have to tell him, sweetie. He deserves to know."

I let a small snort escape, "He doesn't deserve anything, he left me, remember? Ginny, I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm in a dark tunnel and don't know where that 'light at the end of tunnel' is located."

"Do you remember that talk that Dumbledore give at the start of your third year and my second?"

"Not exactly, no. Why do you ask?" I tried to think back to those years, but they were so long ago that I could barely remember getting off the train, much less what Dumbledore had said.

"Well… I think what he said might be the answer to some of your problems, you can't keep wallowing in your own self pity, it won't get you anywhere."

"And what was it that Dumbledore said? Come on, woman, spit it out."

She let out a little laugh before continuing, "He said, 'You know happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light' It really was this statement that kept me and others in the DA going while you, Harry, and Ron were out there hunting Voldemort. That was our darkest time at school, it was the darkest time for everybody, but even we were able to find some moments of happiness. Like when someone had a birthday; Doby and Winky would make sure that there was cake and food so we could have some type of celebration. Granted, it wasn't much, but it did give us a small chance to celebrate something and to get our minds off of the horrors that were taking place. There are worse things in life, Hermione, but you need to do what makes you happy."

I didn't say anything after that.

I couldn't say anything after that.

But I knew one thing for sure; Ginny was right – I had to tell him…tomorrow.

………..

"James, James please come down from there, and give Mummy and Daddy back their wand," Harry pleaded with James, who had suspended himself in a tree there in the park by the Ministry.

"Harry, let me handle James, this requires a mother's touch... James Sirius Potter! You stop this nonsense right now!" James merely laughed and pointed their wands at a nearby leaf that started changing colors and then abruptly started smoking and erupting in a tiny display of fireworks. Proud of his little display of magic, James clapped his hands and smiled, repeating the process on yet another leaf.

"You call that handling it? What in the bloody hell are we supposed to do now?"

"Language! You know he's been picking up everything we're saying lately! And don't look at me, Mr. Chosen One; you're the one who let him play with your wand."

"Well, you're the one who put their wand down on the ground so he could grab it! But we shouldn't be fighting about this now, Ginny, all this fighting isn't good for the baby." Harry's voice quieted down, in attempt to sooth Ginny, as she was close to hysterics.

"Harry," she held up her fingers in indication, "the baby is three inches long. All this arguing is upsetting the mummy."

I laughed at their little display. "Twenty eight minutes and thirty three seconds," I said to them after looking at my watch.

"What?" Ginny asked me, clearly confused.

"I said, twenty eight minutes and thirty three seconds. It's how long James has been stuck up there. And it's how long your pointless arguing resulted in quite a few leaves disappearing from the tree. See?" I pointed up at the tree where James was now contently shooting at the leaves; he obviously stopped listening to his parents quite some time ago. "James, honey, I'll give you a cookie if you come down from there."

Once James heard the word 'cookie', he stopped everything and dropped the wands. Harry went to catch them as I levitated James back down to the floor. He took the cookie greedily from my hands and swallowed it whole. Ginny came over and grabbed him when he was done, and dragged him away so she could yell at him.

Which left Harry and me.

Alone.

We still hadn't talked about what had transpired this morning, opting for a nod of recognition when we first saw each other after my lunch with Ginny.

Harry was the first to speak, "Hermione… Hermione, I'm sorry. I was way out of line; I can see why you chose not to tell me."

"Oh, Harry," I said, pulling him into a hug, "It's okay, I should have been honest with you in the first place. You probably took it better then Ron will, I wonder how long it'll take before I have to tell him."

Harry returned the hug, "Well, whenever you do decide to tell him I'll be right there with you. You and Emma are family, I love you guys."

"Thank you."

"Anytime, 'Mione. So, where is Emma, she's been so quite."

I let go of Harry and turned around and pointed to the spot where I had put Emma and a few of her toys, but when my eyes finally landed on it, she wasn't there. "Oh God…" I said, already panicking.

When Harry noticed he immediately ran over to Ginny, and I could see him pointing frantically towards me while saying something to her, but I couldn't make out what it was. They boy came running back over, James on Ginny's hip.

"Hermione," Ginny asked me, laying a hand on my arm, "when was the last time you saw Emma?"

I racked my brains trying to remember, I had been so caught up in what James was doing that I had forgotten my own daughter. I really was a failure as a mother, "Um… ten minutes ago?" It sounded more like a question then an answer.

Auror instinct kicking in, Harry started, "Okay, we need to split up. Ginny, you and James should stay here, just in case she comes back. Hermione, you take the wizarding size of the park closest to the ministry, I'll take the muggle side. If you find her, shoot red sparks up into the air."

We went our separate ways, running around as we called out to Emma. I hoped to God that she had only wandered off and wasn't taken. Please just let her be okay.

Only about five minutes passed until I heard her angelic voice calling out to me. Blocking out everything else around me, I focused on my baby and bolted over to her, enrapturing her in a hug afraid I was never going to let go.

"Never scare me like that again, do you hear me?" I asked sternly. Who was I kidding, I couldn't be stern at a time like this. I checked over her body and noticed a fair amount of blood on her leg, yet the cut seemed to be all healed, "Baby girl, what happened?"

"Oh, I fell and got a boo-boo. But it's all better now, Mr. Draco fixed it."

Mr. Draco?

Shit.

"Mr. Draco?" I wanted to make sure I had heard her correctly, that my ears weren't just playing tricks on me. I was so screwed.

"Yea, this is Mr. Draco, he helped me find you too, Mummy." She raised one tiny finger and pointed it up towards the man I hadn't noticed standing above me.

It was Draco.

And then, like nothing had changed, my heart started to beat faster, I was pretty sure he could hear it palpitating against my chest.

I couldn't breathe, either.

The look in his eyes told me he knew, how could he not?

He was going to hate me, I should have told him, I should have found a way to track him down and tell him.

How could I have been so incredibly stupid?

I think I wanted him to hate me, because I couldn't hate him, and oh God, how I wanted to.

Shit.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

"Shit." I finally said out loud. "Come on, Emma baby, let's go home."

I took her by the hand and started to pull her along behind me, though she was struggling a little bit. "Wait, mummy, I want to say good bye to Mr. Draco, please? You should thank him too."

How could I refuse her, "Thank you" I said without turning around or looking him in the eye. Before I knew it, Emma had wiggled her way out of my grasp, and I turned around finally to see what she was doing. She had launched herself at Draco, catching him by surprise. I heard her say a 'thank you too' before detaching herself and skipping on over to me.

"Mummy, I don't want to leave Mr. Draco."

"Neither do I, baby," I said, "Neither do I."

AN: Review, review, review! I know you were expecting a little more of a reaction, but I wanted you to see Draco's before you saw Hermione's. So the next chapter I am leaving up to you guys. Your choices are a) Draco Malfoy or b) Six Years Ago… with a LEMON. Leave your vote in a review or send me a PM and I'll send you your sneak peak, but you must review ;)

Until next time, my lovelies…