"Daddy!" Lacey hit Draco's stomach, causing him to grunt in discomfort. She did not seem to notice, however, as she nestled into him with a happy grin. "I won't get sick, Mum? Are you better now?"
"What is this?" he sneered, staring down at her with cold eyes, disgust coating his features.
"Daddy, are you better? Mum says we going to get treats for Hallo-ween. Are we getting treats? Do you want pumpkin juice or you want cider? I want a caramel apple with the little bits of licorice."
Lacey prattled on about plans Draco did not know he had previously made as he continued to gawk at the blonde creature that was virtually sitting on his lap.
"That is your daughter," Hermione said calmly, wishing with all of her might that he would look at their child and suddenly remember everything. There was no need for them to go through this hardship if he would simply remember.
"I do not have a daughter."
Hermione's heart sank in her chest, diminishing what little hope she had left.
"Yes, you do," she pressed. "And this is her. Draco, please believe me." She sat down on the edge of his bed and rested her hand on his knee.
"Don't touch me you filthy mudblood! You think you can come in here and tell me some bullshit story about—"
"Draco, please! You don't have to remember everything now, but do not talk like that in front of her! She's a child!"
Lacey was now staring between her bickering parents in confusion. "No fighting," she urged, reaching out a small hand to touch the side of her mother's face.
Hermione leaned into the warmth of her daughter's fingers, allowing them to calm her agitated nerves.
Draco stared at the transaction between Granger and the child with squinted eyes. The little thing did look an awful lot like him—blonde hair, gray eyes, pale skin—but it did not mean that it belonged to him. They could easily have found a child that fit the criteria and stolen it to help get him on their side. Adopted it was more likely knowing how chivalrous Potter and his friends were. All morals and no true grasp of power or cunning.
"Malfoy families do not have daughters before they have sons," he stated matter-of-factly.
"Well then, your child was a first, wasn't she?"
Granger was not shaken, although Draco had not expected her to be. Their plan was brilliant, but they had forgotten one tiny detail, and that was him. He would not be tricked by Potter yet again, even if the trap was so well laid. He was far too intelligent to have the robes pulled over his eyes by a small blonde girl and an aging potion.
"What's the kid's name?" There were only certain names that he would ever consider naming a child, and if it was anything but one of those, he would know that she was lying through her teeth.
"You tell me," Hermione said dully, searching for the answer to her question in his eyes. He had been the one to name their daughter and perhaps something about the name was still hovering on the surface of his brain.
"Lacetonia. We'll call her Lacey," he'd said proudly the day she was born. "It means beautifully twisted together. And that's what our lives have become."
"Oh yes, of course, let's try to trick poor Draco into abandoning his mission and his family so that we can win the war and then we can chuck him out into the cold after he gives up all the secrets to getting the rest of his family killed! Let's make him feel warm and fuzzy and make him think that he gave up his backbone to fall arse over elbow with a mudblood who has a bush instead of a head. No thank you, Granger, but I am not going to fall for that. I might not be brilliant, buck-toothed Hermione Granger, but I've still got a brain. You must be barmy if you think I'm going to fall for your little plot. Whatever name I toss out is the name you'll go with and I'm not an idiot."
"Draco, we're not trying to trick you. The war is over. It happened over eight years ago. We are your family now. Do you think it would be easy for me to sit here and admit all of this given the Hermione that you remember? Do you think she would sit here and pretend to be married to the boy she despised most in the world? No. I would not have. Please believe me when I say that this was all your choice, but ten years is a long time to forget. Things change. People change. Lives change."
"Not like this. I would not have been so foolish."
"Daddy come home now?" Lacey urged Hermione with a confused expression, tugging gently on the sleeve of her mother's robes.
"Not yet, darling," Hermione whispered, pushing some of her daughter's curls behind her ears as she leaned over to kiss the top of her head.
"Not ever, darling," Draco mimicked, causing the child to stare at him, her face painted over with hurt and confusion.
"Not ever? Daddy's not coming home?" Her bottom lip started to quiver, and just as Draco covered his ears, the crying started. He grimaced and tried to shake her off of his bed as Hermione scooped her up, balancing her on one hip as she stood and started to bounce, humming something vaguely familiar, but he was not sure where from.
"Shhh… He did not mean that. He is tired and—"
"Don't patronize me, Granger. I know what I said."
"I know you have been through a lot today, Draco, but you need to understand that you are this child's world, and every time you say something like what you just said, it hurts her."
"Like I care what—"
"But you should!" Hermione realized that she had shouted, and took a deep breath, allowing her shoulders to relax a bit, brushing another kiss against the top of her daughter's head. "You should care, because this morning you would have cared. Last week you would have cared. Eventually you will care again, and you will not want the guilt from this plaguing you once you do."
"How could you possibly know what I will want?"
"Because believe it or not, Draco, I know you better than anyone else. We are married. Look." She held out her left hand to display the wedding band that was on her hand that had once belonged to his grandmother.
It had a triangle shaped diamond surrounded by three connected circles almost as though there were three snakes tied in a knot around the center. It was clearly expensive, and when he first gave it to her, she had tried to turn him down, saying that it was too much for her to wear every day. But he had somehow convinced her that the ring was very special to him, so she had accepted it. However, it was a one-of-a-kind piece, and there was no mistaking it.
"You've kidnapped me, wiped my mind, and stolen from me?" Draco was growling at her as he stared at the ring. "That was my grandmothers and you have taken it. Where did you find it? How?"
"Draco, please calm down. You gave it to me almost five years ago when you asked me to marry you."
"I would never allow a mudblood to wear a Malfoy family heirloom. That ring has been in my family for centuries. Take it off this instant! I will not have you stealing from me!"
"I did not steal it, Draco. I don't even know where you kept it while you were in school. Presumably it was at your home considering you never thought you were going to marry anyone, let alone me."
"How would you know that?"
"You told me. You said I changed your mind. You said that when it came time your parents would likely have to arrange a marriage for you to some pureblood girl who had as much personality as a dung beetle. So you said you would rather suffer through life alone than end up with Sally Piss-for-Brains, if I remember correctly. But then you said you got to know me and it changed things."
"That's ridiculous."
"No, what's ridiculous is that you won't listen to anyone simply because we are saying things you find difficult to hear."
Draco paused, looking her over. She definitely wasn't the same Granger he'd known in school. She seemed a bit taller and her hair was shorter. She wore it around her shoulders now. There were crinkles forming by the sides of her eyes that would likely one day soon turn into laugh lines. She was a bit wider around the hips and her chest was fuller than he remembered, although he never really paid much attention. Her robes were navy blue and bore the Ministry of Magic crest on them, although the top was undone and he could see a simple yellow sweater underneath. All-in-all, she didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary, and she certainly had her story very well rehearsed.
The one thing that he couldn't shake, however (besides his bloody awful headache) was the fact that she was wearing his grandmother's ring. She said that he'd given it to her, but his father would have skinned him alive if he'd given away any sort of family treasure to a blood traitor, let alone a muggle born. There was only one solid explanation.
"So you must have had an imitation made then?"
"That's not what I—no. I didn't."
"How else could you have a ring that looks so much like my family heirloom when there is no way you possessed that actual piece of history?"
"Did you hear nothing I just said? This is the actual—"
"You are pathetic if you think I'm going to buy that."
"You are pathetic if you think I would steal from you."
They glared at each other, Hermione feeling very much like she had stepped into her school self for the amount of loathing she seemed to be producing.
"Please don't make me feel this way, Draco. Please make an effort or—"
"You are wasting my time here, Granger. I have apparently been through quite an ordeal and have been recommended rest. You're ruining it."
"I'm not going anywhere. Not until you see to reason that—"
"No fight," Lacey urged again, not understanding the conversation, but understanding the emotions. "Daddy come home."
"Not tonight," Hermione repeated more harshly than she'd intended, her stern gaze simply begging Draco to mock her again, but he remained silent, simply staring at the two people standing next to his bed.
Suddenly, the quiet that had spread between them was broken as Draco noticed Harry and Ron lurking by the doors of the ward, conversing with the Healers.
"Are you lot claiming to be my only friends now?! What is this, an ambush!? Take me back to the castle right now! Where is Snape? Where is my father?" The panic set in as he fell into a panic attack, his screams cutting through Hermione like swords. "HELP! HELP ME! I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED! I'VE BEEN STOLEN BY BLOOD TRAITORS AND MUDBLOODS! FATHER! CRABBE! GOYLE! HELP! CALL THE LAW ENFORCEMENT! "
As the three elderly Healers rushed over to administer a calming drought to put him to sleep, Hermione looked him straight in the eyes, her own narrowed to say, "I am the law enforcement. Sweet dreams, Draco."
It only took a few seconds for his eyes to flutter closed. As soon as he was sound asleep, Hermione collapsed on the foot of his bed, Lacey still in her arms. "Mum? Why did Daddy yell?"
"Shhh, love. It's going to be okay…" Hermione reassured her child and herself as she sobbed into the top of her daughter's head, stroking her curls. Harry and Ron looked on from the doorway with pained expressions.
The hallway was so dark that she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face. And that's exactly where it was. Both of her hands were outstretched awkwardly as she tried to feel her way across the meeting room, hoping that Draco would walk in and wave the lights on.
"Draco? Are you there? Bugger it all-" Her hand hit a wall, forcing her to change her course. Draco wasn't answering her, but he must be close by because he'd just sent her an office memo to meet him here. In her haste to meet him, she hadn't even retrieved her wand from her desk drawer, so she was in their usual meeting place with no wand and no idea if he was actually on his way or not.
She turned to leave, following the wall back toward the door she'd entered so as not to lose her footing when a wand lit up across the room.
"Draco?"
He was sitting on a table, cross-legged and staring at the light at the end of his wand. He looked very much like a small child enchanted by the flicking flames of fire for the first time.
"What are you doing?"
"How did you just feel while you were wandering about in the dark?" he asked her quietly, setting his wand down, but with the tip lit up so they could still faintly see each other.
She took a few steps to be closer to him, reaching out to put a hand on his knee to ease her discomfort of the dark. "I felt lost," she admitted. "I didn't know if you were in here and I didn't know why it was so dark. I still don't know, to be frank seeing as you have your wand."
He nodded. "You felt lost. You felt like no matter how far outstretched you kept your hand it would never be far enough to protect you from the dark."
"What are you going on about? Why are the lights off?"
"Hermione, before I got to know you, I was always lost. I was always in the dark. And I thought that if I kept my hand in front of me and my wand in my pocket just in case, that I'd always be able to see just enough to get by. But then I got to know you and suddenly..." He picked up his wand and flicked it with a flourish and suddenly thousands of blinking fireflies came into view. They were covering the walls and the ceiling, blinking beautifully and casting a romantic glow over the two of them.
Hermione gasped, taken aback by the sudden appearance of so many twinkling lights.
"I got to know you, and suddenly all the lights came on. And then I could see. I see you. The real you. I don't see your blood or your family, but I see you." He bit his lip and took a deep breath. Her hand on his knee gave a little squeeze which gave him the courage to continue.
"I am so genuinely sorry for every ounce of heartache I have ever caused you. If I could have known back in my first year what knowing you would do for me, I would have let you turn the lights on a long time ago. I can't imagine ever going back to how it used to be in the darkness. I will never desert you or leave you without any light."
"I know," she whispered, blinking back tears as she smiled at him.
"I'm not one for long, sappy speeches," he laughed. "It took me a week to coordinate all these fireflies and I didn't have a lot of time to really think about what I wanted to say. So just know that I never thought I'd be here, loving you the way I do. But I am. And I do."
He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a little velvet box. He cracked it open and inside there sat a beautiful diamond ring. It had so many diamonds on it that it sparkled more than any firefly in the room. It was the most unique ring Hermione had ever seen and was likely very old and very expensive.
"Draco, I-" she stammered, staring at the ring.
He slid down off of the desk and lowered himself onto one knee. "I know I'm nothing you ever dreamed about having in your life, but I'm yours if you'll have me. Hermione, will you marry me?"
Hermione closed her eyes extremely tightly and stood there, not uttering a word.
After a few seconds passed, Draco awkwardly cleared his throat a little. "Erm, Hermione? What are you doing?"
Hermione relaxed her face and opened her eyes. "I was just making sure I was awake because this is exactly what I dream about every night."
She grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet, bringing their lips together. After one long, deep kiss, she pulled back and whispered, "Yes. I'll marry you."
His smile was the biggest she'd ever seen light up his face. It looked almost unnatural that the boy she'd gone to school with and hated so much should be so happy from something she'd said. He lifted the ring from the box and went to slide it onto her finger.
"Draco," she whispered urgently, pulling her hand back. "I'll marry you, but I can't take that ring. It's too much. I- It's just too..."
He fiddled with the ring for a moment, shifting it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. "This ring belonged to my grandmother. She died when I was six and it was all she left to me. I know she probably intended for me to give it to some frilly little pureblood with nothing on her mind but fashion, parties, and producing more purebloods, but all she said when she gave it to me as she lay dying was to give it to the one I could trust with my heart."
He reached for her hand and slid it into place on her left hand ring finger. "I'm trusting you with my heart, Hermione. Keep it safe? Keep me from the dark?"
Hermione smiled down at the all-too-expensive family heirloom on her finger and nodded. "Forever."
Draco felt himself sliding from a dream, one which he could not remember, which was a far cry from his usual haunting nightmares. He stretched his limbs, feeling them tighten in a soothing way, releasing all the tension he had gone to sleep feeling.
He opened his eyes, cringing against the fluorescent glow that somehow had infiltrated the room. He opened them completely and realized he was in the hospital. Then he remembered.
"Did you sleep well?"
His head snapped to the left where he saw Hermione Granger sitting in a chair by his bed, a scarf and two knitting needles lying across her lap, her eyes fixated on him with an uncomfortable intensity.
"I-wh-what're you-"
"I'll take that as a yes."
She picked up her knitting began looping yarn over needles nonchalantly as though it was ordinary for her to be visiting him in the hospital—almost as if she had done it every day for some time.
"How long was I asleep?"
Hermione glanced at the clock that was on the wall at the end of the ward and declared, "Oh, about thirteen hours. Usually you are only able to manage five or six at the most, so I would say that this was an improvement."
"How are you—what have you—what has happ—where is my father?" He stuttered around, not sure which of his hundreds of questions was the right one to ask, but finally family won out. His father knew everything that happened with the Ministry, so if they were involved in this at all, surely he would have been here by now, in a rage and ready to see heads rolling. Yet he was alone, and the ward was quiet.
"Draco, there has been an—"
"I know, I know. There's been 'an accident' and blah blah blah. Tell me something I don't already know, Granger!"
Hermione sighed and set down the lumpy pile of yarn in her hands that Draco could not distinguish between a hat, a scarf, or a quaffle-warmer. "I had hoped you might have made some progress while you were asleep, but I suppose those hopes were too high."
"Get out. I did not ask for this! I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE! LET ME GO! LET ME—"
Suddenly, Draco's mouth was still moving, but no sound was coming out. He glanced down and grabbed at his throat with a horrified expression. Hermione passively stared at him, giving her wand a menacing wave. "Silencing charm," she chirped sweetly, earning a look that shot daggers from her agitated husband.
"Listen, Draco. I know this is hard for you to believe, but you are my husband, and I agreed to be in this for better or for worse. Clearly this is the worse side of things, but I am still here. I will not quit on you, and if you were in your right mind, you would not be quitting on me. Your 'mission' that you seem so set to complete failed almost ten years ago. You did not kill Dumbledore."
Draco's eyes widened at her words, but he could not retaliate.
"Yes, I know all about your mission to kill Dumbledore as well as your several failed attempts throughout the year. One of them almost killed Katie Bell, and another almost killed Ron. Your final attempt, albeit the closest to success, still failed."
He tightened his knuckles until the skin was pulled taught, wanting to badly to scream at her for all she was saying, but not being able to produce any sound. His mission could not have failed or his entire family would be in danger. If he didn't warn them, it would be his fault if they all died, and here she was just calmly chatting about it. If what she said was true, he needed to get out of the bed he was in.
"I see the fear in your eyes. No, you did not succeed, but Dumbledore did die. Snape killed him for you. In the Astronomy tower. Congratulations on fixing the vanishing cabinet, however. Judging from what you have told me, it took quite a fair bit of magic on your end."
Draco's chest was heaving, his hands back to clutching his silent throat. The veins in his forehead were bulging from the stress of not being able to shout and curse her for her words.
"Sirius Black, Harry's godfather, once said that the ones who love us never really leave us, so I know you are in there, Draco. Once you decide that I might be right, you can come home. You don't have to stay here in this hospital. You can come home and eat some real food and sleep in your own bed. But I will not let you return like this. I will not keep you under a silencing charm and I will not treat you like a child. You will come home when you're ready, and I am hoping that you see reason and that happens sooner rather than later, if not for my sake, then for our daughter's.
"I love you, Draco Malfoy, but not like this. I can tell by the look of disgust you are giving me that you don't want me to say that, but I will not hide the truth from you. Harry loves you, Ron loves you, I love you, so please try. This is not a trick. This is not a test. This is simply your family attempting to help you, so please let us. Please at least entertain the possibility that we may be right."
She lifted the silencing charm from him and thrust three pieces of paper in his hands before grabbing her bag and her knitting and exiting the ward, not leaving him any time to retaliate as he gawked awkwardly after her.
Granger had always had a way with words, but they had never before left him speechless.
Healer Malone rushed right over, filling the space Hermione had been occupying almost before she had left it. "Oh, good! You're awake! What did your wife leave you? Anything exiting?" She busied herself in straightening his blankets and adjusting the lighting.
He glanced down into his hands at the papers she had left him. They were flipped upside down, so all he could see were their white undersides. "I'm not sure," he mumbled, forgetting to be rude or nasty to the woman who was far too close for comfort.
"Flip them over! Let's see!"
She was far too eager, and Draco longed to tell her to buzz off and mind her own business, but his own curiosity was far too great.
He turned over the largest piece of paper first. He stared at it for a few moments, his eyes mirrored and vacant.
As if to echo his worst nightmare, Healer Malone annoyingly read it out loud over his shoulder:
"Marriage solemnized at The Burrow, near the village of Ottery St. Catchpole in Devon, England. Date of marriage December 2nd, 2000. Draco Lucius Malfoy, Auror, age 20 to Hermione Jean Granger of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, age 21. Married by Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt—oh how lovely, the Minister himself—under the accordance of—"
"ENOUGH!" Draco shouted, ripping the paper from her grasp and shoving it childishly under his pillow. "So she faked a marriage certificate. That's easy enough, isn't it?"
Healer Malone seemed slightly flustered, but still urged him to flip over the other two papers lying across his lap. He turned them simultaneously to find that they were both photographs.
The first was of himself and Granger standing in an archway of yellow flowers. Granger was wearing a long white dress, clearly a wedding gown, and he was wearing a tuxedo with a little yellow rose pinned to the lapel. In the picture, he was dipping her backward so that he could kiss her lips with an enthusiasm that was bringing laughter to them both. He cast the photograph aside in disgust.
The second picture was of him holding a small bundle of blankets in his arms with a grin on his face. Granger was in the background looking fatigued and with no makeup, but she too was smiling, watching him fold back the blankets to gaze at their sleeping child. That photograph joined the first on the floor as Draco turned onto his side, his back to Healer Malone who was cooing about how precious the child was.
"I'm hungry. Bring me my breakfast," Draco demanded loudly, causing the elderly woman to jump. She did, however, turn to go find him food, leaving him alone to his thoughts, not that they were any more pleasant than her company had been.
He could not deny photographic evidence, although everything in his brain was telling him to do just that. Then again, Granger was the cleverest in their year, so if anyone could bewitch or charm something into a fake photograph, it would be her.
He flipped back over onto his other side and reached down to the floor to retrieve the fallen rectangles of paper. He glanced at both one more time, searching for signs of an enchantment. Seeing none, he glanced around his bed for the one thing that could ease his restless thoughts.
"If you're looking for your wand, Mr. Malfoy, it was taken when you came in until we can prove you are in your right mind," a Healer across the way told him as she handed a stack of letters to the former Professor Lockhart, who eagerly snatched them from her. Lockhart had gone grey since Draco had last seen him, but that could easily be explained by the stress of memory loss rather than passing time. After all, Draco now knew first-hand how stressful the whole ordeal actually was. "You shouldn't be needing it anyway. We'll get you anything you might need," the Healer assured him, causing his jaw to tighten.
Damn them all. They had confined him to this bed, they had taken his memories, and now they had also taken his only source of independence. Not only that, but the fact that they still had his wand meant that they thought he was crazy.
No matter. There was no magic required for what he needed to do. With an angry snarl, Draco tore the pictures right down the middle, and then again. He repeated this until he had nothing more than a little pile of confetti on his blanket. With one big gust of air, he blew the pieces so that they scattered all around him creating a very satisfying mess of the photographs that were now beyond repair.
A/N: Yep. Two updates in one day. I should win a cookie or something.
But in all seriousness, I'm going to need some motivation to get the next chapter typed because I LOVE the story I have planned out, but it takes a lot of time to transfer things from my head to my computer. I really hope that everyone's liking it so far and I'll try really hard to not wait another 10 months before updating because I know how annoying it is to get into a story and then have it taken from you for long periods of time. So I'm really going to try. That being said, please feel free to review!
xo Ashley