A/N: Not the last chapter! I'll stop making promises now. Thank you to everyone whose read and reviewed and waited patiently for me to stop sucking at updating my fics. I don't think I'm there yet, but I'm a work in progress.
Chapter Nine
"Come again?" Underneath his patchy ginger lip scruff, Ron's mouth was agape at her in disbelief. "Godmother? You? To Dean and Pansy's unholy fetus?" She could make out the perfect rings of white around his startlingly blue eyes. "You mean that's allowed?"
Harry snorted beside him.
"You'd be surprised at what's allowed in our postmodern world, Ron," Hermione stated dryly, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She leaned up against the counter, catching Harry's look of amusement behind his mug.
It was a sunny Saturday morning and she had made her best friends breakfast. Pancakes from a box - as she was nowhere near a culinary genius (she had always wondered why her skills in potion-making never transferred over into the kitchen) - but it was something. There was something inside her that crooned that this was improvement.
Ron slid his coffee away from him. "The whole world's gone straight to hell," he muttered. He picked out the sleep still in his eyes despite it being almost eleven o'clock.
"What a beautiful time to be alive," Harry said wistfully. He drowned his pancakes in syrup. "To be free of all the bondages of hate and prejudice."
"Oh sod off, mate. This is no time for you to be ironic." He paused, eyebrows drawing down in thought. "Why do you reckon Dean didn't ask either of us to be Godfathers, Harry?"
"Because Godfathers die too young," he said grimly. "And I expect to be around long enough to annoy the child, thank you."
Ron scratched his chin. "Good point."
"Nobody's dying young," Hermione sighed. "At least – it's too early to tell. The child's not even born yet." From Dean's owl, Pansy had just a few more months to go. He had even asked for advice for some names from her, on the sly. If Pansy had any clue about what he'd done, she'd have a stroke - kill Hermione first, and then have the stroke.
"Blimey, I can't even believe it. Can you, Hermione? That our mates are getting married and having babies. Soon it'll be us, won't it?"
She snorted. "Don't look so terrified, Ron."
"It's hard for me to control my facial expressions in the clutches of genuine fear, Hermione. You know that."
Hermione couldn't help but think about the concept of adulthood and how it now applied to her. Them. She and her friends and their friends were getting married, settling down, conceiving little hybrid humans, and now using the term "family" a lot more liberally and casually than she was used to. She did not know how she felt about this. Was it fear, like Ron? Fear that eventually, perhaps in five years' time, it would be her turn? Hermione didn't often bend to societal pressures, but that didn't mean she didn't feel them. She began thinking about how many baby shower invites she had gotten just in the past month alone – both Muggle and magical.
"What do you think, Hermione?" He was noisily stirring more sugar into his coffee, clinking the spoon against the glass. "What do you say to us making a little creature if we don't find anyone by the time we're –"
"Ron, I am asking you to think very seriously about completing that sentence," she deadpanned, above the sounds of Harry's choking.
Ron shrugged, stabbing his pancake with his fork before folding a heaping piece into his mouth. "I'm just saying, just in case," he said, his words muffled. "We're all right, you and me. I think we could make an adorable kid."
There was a softness in his voice that hinted to her that perhaps he had thought about it, once upon a time, and it shocked her. Not because he had thought about her in that way, but because Ron was no stranger to the attentions of attractive witches. In fact, his dating life was steadily active, which was more than she could say for herself.
"I bet there are dozens of witches out there who would love to supply half their genes and rent out their womb for nine months to make a baby with you, Ron," she assured him. "Perfectly lovely witches."
"Yeah, but," muttered Ron, "none of them are nearly half as smart as you. Or, you know, you," he gestured to her. "They're not you."
Harry was only nodding, unfolding a newspaper. "He's right. There is only one you, Hermione."
ooo
Three and a half years ago
The truth was that Hermione Granger was not the only female Draco Malfoy could have fucked during the war. There was Lisa Turnpin, a girl from Ravenclaw who had joined the mass of Hogwarts students to fight with Harry. There was also Lisa's friend Mandy Brocklehurst, also from Ravenclaw House – at least, before she died in an ambush, three months before the war officially ended. Although they weren't in the inner circle like Hermione and Draco were, they were attractive, smart and very capable fighters.
The only reason she had found out they had a hard-on for Malfoy was because she had caught their hungry, lingering stares on Malfoy several times, and had found herself occasionally wondering afterwards if anything had ever happened between either of them and Malfoy. Hell, maybe both. Back at school, there had been mutterings about Malfoy's insatiable sex drive. Then again, back at school, there had been mutterings about all of the boys' sex drives.
It had been one of the few times they'd actually had a bed to sleep in, a building to hide out in. The silencing charm they had cast on the room reverbed all around her when she opened her mouth and screamed when she came, his thrusts deliciously quick and deep. She didn't know if all sex was like this. Her first time had been claimed by Malfoy – and, in the deliriousness and desperation of war, she had let him. She didn't know if she would live long enough to have make love to someone she genuinely cared about. She didn't even know if she would make it through the next few hours. It was the perverse survivalist in Hermione that kicked in. She was going to make the best of what she had, even if it was with someone she hated.
She had initiated it this time. The truth of it all was that she initiated their shags more than she was proud to admit, but she had seen how Mandy had been eyeing him during the briefing. It had been so shameless she wondered how everyone else in the room hadn't seen Mandy fucking him with her eyes.
It was another minute before he orgasmed, pumping inside of her. She bit her lip to keep from moaning, his fingers digging deep into the bruised skin on her hips. When he rolled off of her, she could feel the wetness of the sheets underneath her, a mixture of both sweat and sex.
They lay there, catching their breath, staring at the dark ceiling. She could practically taste the salt in the air when she breathed.
"You know Lisa and Mandy want to fuck you," she said, to no one in particular.
There was a beat of confused silence. "Who?" he said.
"Lisa Turnpin and Mandy Brocklehurst," Hermione said. "Ravenclaws."
She could feel his eyes on her. Even in a crowded room, she could feel his stare, burning wherever it landed. It was worse when they were alone. It was as if the silence magnified the annoyingly disconcerting effects of his stupid, steely gaze.
"Oh, right," he said, finally. "They might have mentioned that once."
"Well, if you're going to start sexual relations with either or both of them, I'd prefer if you'd let me know," she said, sitting up in bed and swinging her legs over, gathering up her clothes.
Malfoy began to laugh. "Right. We're in a middle of a blasted war and that's what you think I lose sleep over – which cunt in this house to fuck."
She pulled on her underwear, before turning around to glare at him, hands on her hips. She tried not to be too affected by the sight of him laid out on this strange bed, in this strange house, naked and smirking at her in a way that she might have called "affectionately" – had she not known any better. To think that she hated herself for consciously putting herself in this position, but that Lisa and Mandy were absolutely itching to be standing right here, where she was, right now. What would they have done for this view, she wondered. This view of a naked Draco Malfoy that she stubbornly refused to be impressed by, despite the symptoms that her body displayed otherwise.
"If I wanted to fuck either of those groupie bints," he went on, "trust me, I would have done it a long time ago."
The swell of pride she felt at his statement coincided with a gut-punch of shame. "Well, you don't have to be cruel about it," she snapped at him. "They're people too, you know."
He laughed at her some more. "You're a fucking loon."
"At least I'm not an arsehole." It was an automatic response, although one that hardly fazed him. Draco Malfoy took pride in being called foul things; he wore it like a badge of honor. She really had to start looking for other insults that couldn't be misconstrued as a compliment.
She began to pull on her shirt.
His tone was bored. "What the hell are you doing, Granger."
She pulled her hair out from underneath the collar. "I'm leaving. There's a war to fight, remember?"
"There'll always be a bloody war to fight," he said, darkly.
She turned around slowly, wondering what he was asking her to do – if anything at all. Was he asking her to stay? And why? She asked it even though she knew the answer. These days, these fights were easier to take than the real fight happening outside. Out there, only death waited for them.
He got up from the bed and crossed the small, cramped room to where she was. Without looking away, he grabbed the edges of her t-shirt and pulled them back over her head, letting it fall to the floor. She hoped he wouldn't notice the goosebumps that involuntarily crept up her skin, and how her body suddenly thrummed with anticipation when he hooked the waistband of her panties with his thumb and slid them down her thighs. She didn't move her legs.
"Kick them off, Granger," he said to her, his voice a low tremor.
They'd been doing this for months now, but she still could never understand how Draco Malfoy could make her feel like this: pure, unfiltered ecstasy.
"Kick them off, Granger," he said to her, again. "Do it so I can fuck you properly."
When she finally did, he took her against the wall. They never fucked slowly. It was always furious, on the edge of abandon, as if they were racing time itself. In a way, they were. Fuck so they could get to the fight. Fight so they could get to the fuck. It was a routine that was so self-sustaining in an unprecedentedly easy way that it terrified her.
Minutes later, her body was shuddering from pleasure, the silence charm yet again reverbing all around her.
When she came down from her high, listening to the quiet rustles of their clothes as they redressed for the real world, she watched him. Why not Mandy or Lisa? Why not any other witch fighting on their side? Why had he chosen her? She could think of at least several others with bodies more seemingly equipped for these kinds of encounters. To her knowledge, she had never been much of a sex symbol. God forbid Harry or Ron ever discover that she actually had a vagina, let alone a sex drive.
She was being too quiet, so Malfoy caught on.
"You think too hard, you'll give yourself an aneurysm," he said. His eyes were dark and unreadable from where she sat, but the chiseled plains of his face weren't as stony as she remembered. "Look. Don't ruin it with questions."
She felt a pang but shoved it to the back of her mind. She ignored the sudden fuzziness that plagued her mouth. "Ruin what?" she snorted.
He smirked at her. He finished doing the buttons on his shirt and then slipped out, back out to the war where they lived.
ooo
She knows that a wealthy, handsome bachelor in any day in age isn't liable to be single for long, so she secretly skims the Witch Weekly headlines and the gossip columns. She expects to see him on the cover with some beautiful, icy woman. On her most daring days she even expects some kind of wedding announcement, as Hermione – if anything – has grown accustomed to nasty surprises. But weeks pass, then months, and she sees and hears nothing. Only short articles on how the Malfoy Empire was steadily growing, thanks to Draco's business acumen – companies acquired here and there, both failing and successful. He reminded her of the tornados her Aunt Margaret told her about, when she and her family moved to the Southern part of the United States – the ones that just dropped down, tore people's property apart, swallowed up a few unfortunate family pets, and then disappeared. He was good at disappearing, when he wanted to be. Magnificent at extracting himself from a scene, and making his absence so glaring that every now and then she still stared at where his office used to be – as if by the simple act of concentration she could summon him back here again.
So it was tempting not to ask about him around the one person that really ever saw him.
"I'm confused." Hermione lowered her voice when, weaving through the tables of expensive baby knick knacks, the elderly shopkeeper shot her a warning look. "Don't you have anyone else to do this with you?"
Hermione was inside The Silver Crib with Pansy Parkinson – a very high-end wizarding baby store – and was feeling very uncomfortable about it.
"Friends, maybe? Your mum?"
"I'm not speaking to my mum," Pansy said, picking up – literally – a silver spoon. "And my friends are busy."
"How convenient," Hermione muttered.
"Keep it up, Granger, and I'll make you change the first diaper," Pansy glared.
Hermione wrinkled her nose at her but promptly shut up. Her outings with Pansy never lasted too long – sometimes if she blinked twice in a row she was convinced she'd even miss it – but they became more and more frequent as she inched closer to her due date. Hermione surmised this was because Dean was away on a business trip in Wizarding India and Pansy actually craved human contact like an actual, warm-blooded person. They were right – pregnancy did change a woman.
The truth was that Hermione just couldn't refuse when Dean dropped her office specifically to ask her to watch over Pansy while he was away on business. "I know you two never particularly got on," he said, awkwardly, after sliding a box of expensive Parisian chocolates across the piles of paperwork on her desk, "but Pansy's still in a tiff with her parents and I'm not sure who to ask."
"Well, what about Draco?" she said.
"That was my first thought, too," he explained, "but I haven't seen him around lately. Plus I think some female companionship would do her some good. This whole baby thing's got her on edge." And then he smiled, and it was a tight smile full of desperation, which she pitied and found hard to refuse. Dean had always been one of the good ones. It wasn't his fault he'd fallen in love with a total monster. Having a child with her, on the other hand… in the magical world, that had to be on purpose.
"Sure, of course," she relented. "I'll watch over her. We'll go out baby-shopping or something." He was so elated and relieved that any intonation of half-heartedness went completely unheard.
And that was how Hermione Granger found herself in this ridiculous couture baby shop, surrounded by things like self-cleaning velvet diapers and 40-karat pacifiers. She picked one up, bronze and speckled with diamonds. "Did you have one of these?" she asked.
Pansy looked up from the collection of vintage baby shoes, probably woven from William Shakespeare's facial hair. "Sure. Mine had sapphires," she said nonchalantly, before returning to the shoes.
Hermione set the pacifier back down. "Sapphires. Of course."
They spent a few minutes surveying the back of the store. Hermione eventually found Pansy in the corner with a portable mobile galaxy – if you pressed a button, it lit up the ceiling with the very realistic illusion of the constellations. It was the only baby gadget she didn't find completely ridiculous, aside from the price tag.
"What sorts of toys did you have when you were a child?" Pansy asked. "I imagine your Muggle toys must have been very quaint. Sticks and balls and the like."
"Yes, and an abacus for the very exciting days," Hermione said dryly, rolling her eyes. "I had a very fulfilling Muggle childhood, thanks very much – even without velvet diapers and ruby-encrusted bonnets."
"I'm glad to hear you managed to find profound meaning despite your disadvantaged upbringing."
"I don't have to guess about your childhood," Hermione said. "Same as Draco's, I bet."
"And pray tell - how would you know about Draco's childhood?" Her head whipped up, eyes calculating and too eerily focused on her. Then she smiled, which disturbed Hermione even more. "Well? Did you savor it? Did that make you feel better?"
Hermione sent her a questioning look.
"Saying his name. I know you were itching to mention him. Every time we meet, I swear I can almost hear you trying to swallow it down. It's not a pleasant sound – you have quite a large throat, you know."
"Oh, fuck off, Pansy."
"Just admit it. You're a deplorable liar – so is Dean, actually. It must be a Gryffindor trait," Pansy smirked. "It kills you that he's gone away. It tortures you that he's not chasing after you anymore."
Hermione nearly turned away. It was sickening that Pansy could know all of the internal workings of her turmoil, that she could capture all of the things she'd kept hidden from everyone else while barely looking up from a stupidly expensive linen bib. What was worse was that Pansy found every opportunity to taunt her about it. It was annoying and inconvenient and she almost felt guilty for wanting to punch a pregnant woman in the face – almost.
"Are you like this to him?" she finally said. "Incessantly rubbing inconvenient truths in people's faces?"
Pansy barely batted an eyelash. She was almost smug about it. "Worse."
"What do you say to him?"
"That he's an idiot. That you're both idiots," she said, finally looking up. "Stomping around, acting like you don't know how to get who you want. It sickens me, you know. If Dean and I ever acted like the two of you, we'd have properly killed each other by now."
And then they just stared at each other. It was strange moment, what had just transpired between them, and neither of them knew what to categorize it under. Were they friends? Only friends said these kinds of things to each other – blunt things that rattled around in your brain for hours afterwards, introspective things that hinted at how terrifyingly well a person could really know you. Not Pansy Parkinson-Thomas things.
Pansy put down the things she was holding, suddenly flushing. "I need air," she breathed, and swiftly walked out of the store, the shop's obnoxious silver bells ringing behind her.
After a few moments, Hermione found Pansy sitting with her legs apart on a bench in front of an ice cream shop. Her posture was very much one of a pregnant lady, but her thin frame and flat belly weren't. It was a very confusing image.
"Are you all right?" Hermione asked, standing above her. Pansy had her eyes closed and her face faintly glistened with sweat. Her breathing was a little labored, and Hermione worried for a second that today was going to be the day that she was going to be forced into the birthing room with a woman she didn't even like.
"I'm fine," she snapped. "Just give me a bloody moment. I'm pregnant, all right? Not dying." She sighed. "Yeah, don't look so disappointed."
"How far along are you, anyway? Seven and a half months? And you still insist on wearing that illusion charm? What good does that do? Don't you want the entire wizarding world to know you are with child – thanks to a very benevolent and nice-looking man?" She was, of course, referring to Dean. "I mean, what kind of person hides a pregnant belly for cosmetic reasons?"
"I hardly think you're anyone to be criticizing life decisions here, Granger," Pansy said dryly. "With your track record, how laughable."
Hermione squinted at her. A couple passed by them, giving them strange looks. Hermione crossed her arms uncomfortably and lowered her voice. "Hold on a minute. You don't actually want me to be with Draco, do you?"
Pansy sighed again, as if they had belabored this topic of conversation. "What I want," she said, "is for him to stop acting like a petulant child over somebody as obviously brain-dead as you. Here is my brilliant theory, Granger: you two children suck up your massive egos, start fucking regularly again and play your twisted little game of House, and you'll get it out of your system. Draco'll fulfill his little boyhood fantasy and realize it's not sustainable. Then it'll end, and both of you will be better off." Pansy smirked at her. "And by both of you, what I really mean is Draco will be better off."
"Right, because I didn't catch that the first time," she muttered. She sat down next to Pansy, hearing her labored breathing eventually even out.
"Do your parents even know?" Hermione asked, watching her. Pansy had started to unconsciously rub her stomach in circles, trying to comfort this seemingly nonexistent swell in her abdomen.
Her mouth was a straight line, eyes pointed straight ahead. "I sent them a courtesy owl," she said. "Haven't heard a word back though. Like it matters. I don't want this child anywhere near them. This baby will be all mine and Dean's. Ours."
Through the thick layer of satisfaction, Hermione could hear it. Hermione had been trained to hear it through her own experiences with denial. It was there, pulsing like a tiny but powerful vein: sadness.
"I'm sure," Hermione said hesitantly, "that when the child's born they'll come around. They always do. Everyone loves babies."
Pansy softly snorted. "You're lucky his parents are dead," she only said, quietly. Her eyes were far away and she just kept gently rubbing her stomach. "His mother wasn't so bad, but Lucius… Lucius had his whole life planned out for him. He was all about righting his wrongs through Draco. It was a lot of pressure." Then Pansy blinked, as if snapped out a trance. Her lips pulled back down into a scowl. "Not that the sodding world cared, or anything."
And that was when it struck Hermione – this whole protective relationship Pansy had built around Draco. It had come up before, sure, but it had been annoying and inconvenient more than anything else. Here, it was actually a little bit… endearing.
"Ugh," Pansy suddenly scoffed, glancing at Hermione. "Please, for the love of Merlin, don't look at me like that, Granger. Like we're becoming friends or something. How grotesque."
ooo
Harry Potter pulled out a cake from behind the bar. There were long, slender candles on it that fizzed and popped and took up entirely too much of her vision for her to properly appreciate. Which was their fault, really. For insisting on birthday shots. And also hers. For not being adamant enough about curbing her alcoholic intake.
"Happy birthday to you…"
A chorus of voices surrounded her and she smiled into her hands. It was a small group, sure. But Wendelin and a good amount of her coworkers had managed to make it out, along with Seamus and Ginny and Luna and the rest of her friends from Hogwarts. When she'd come to the bar under the assumption that she was just meeting up to have dinner with Harry and Ron, a surprise party had been far from her mind. She couldn't imagine people wanting to get cooped up in a room to wait for her to arrive just so they could surprise her. After all, Hermione Granger was not a surprise birthday party kind of girl.
But tonight she was. And she kind of liked it.
After she blew out her candles, the cake was quickly cut and distributed.
"A cake too? I'm beyond impressed," Hermione said to Harry and Ron.
Ron already had some frosting on his cheek. He feigned a look of hurt. "Blimey, Hermione. Are your expectations really that low of us? You can't have a surprise birthday party without cake. Everyone knows that."
Hermione laughed and reached out to wipe the frosting off Ron's cheek. "You can't make the birthday girl feel guilty about being a shitty friend. It's impolite."
Ron beamed at her, and then shuffled off into the crowd. Harry slid a glass over to her.
Hermione eyed it suspiciously. "What's this? Straight vodka?"
"It's water. Thought you could use some."
Hermione happily took it and gulped it down. When she finished, Harry refilled her glass with more water.
"By the way, don't tell Ron I told you this," Harry said, leaning over the bar to her, "but you were right. Ginny brought the cake. He and I totally forgot."
Hermione wasn't surprised but beamed at him anyway. "Still. Thank you, really. For doing this."
"Of course," Harry said, smiling. "You helped save the world. You deserve a birthday party. You deserve many things, but a birthday party, at least."
Hermione couldn't remember the last time she'd even had a birthday party with this many people. Her birthdays at home were always just her with her mom and dad – and her grandparents, too, every so often. Up until tonight, she would have been hard-pressed to name the people she'd think would even want to attend a birthday party for her.
She mingled and made sure to say hello to everyone and to thank them for coming. With the free-flowing booze, everybody seemed to be in good spirits. Ginny had brought her new boyfriend, whom Ron seemed to be appraising from afar.
"He seems all right, yeah?" Ron said, his brows furrowed, when Hermione moved in next to him. "When you met him, at least?"
"He was polite and respectful. If he can manage to be that after tequila shots and beer, then I'd say that's a good start," Hermione said.
"He's not Malfoy, either."
"That too."
"But he could be worse." The thought of this concerned Ron even more. His eyebrows buried themselves deeper into his forehead. "What if he's worse?"
They observed Ginny and her new boyfriend, Riley, for a few more seconds. They seemed harmless enough. They were both talking and laughing. Chemistry exuded off of them in insufferable waves.
"Like, deep down inside," Ron continued. "What if he's worse really deep down inside?"
Hermione laid her head on Ron's shoulder. She was trying to fend off the wooziness from her birthday shots. "You're a good brother, Ron."
She felt his warm breath in her hair. "I'd do the same for you, too, Hermione. Look out for you, and all that. You deserve to be happy."
For some reason, she almost felt teary-eyed at this. She didn't have many moments like these with Ron. Unlike Harry, Ron didn't even have a clue about Malfoy. She knew what Ron would say. She knew how disappointed he'd be in her. But you're the smart one, he would say. Always, anywhere. You were always the smart one.
What did smart entail, anyway? Books and cleverness. An obsessive attention to detail. Freakish, encyclopedic memory and great recall. Any or all of the above, plus more. But where was the part that said she could only like what made sense? That she could talk herself out of liking the things that didn't?
Malfoy didn't make sense. She fought tooth and nail to keep away. Malfoy happened anyway.
Just then, an owl swept through the room. It flew so low that people ducked their heads down to prevent getting its claws snarled in their hair. It dropped a letter right in front of Harry, right on the bar.
Harry looked at it skeptically.
"Hermione! It's for you!" he hollered. Hermione was able to hear him because people had slightly quieted down by now, curious about the letter. It was almost midnight. Owls usually never arrived this late here.
Hermione walked over to the bar, with Ron following suit. She groaned when she realized what it was. There it was, an unholy red envelope. A Howler.
Had Hermione had two less birthday shots than she'd consumed, she might have been thinking straight and thought to take the Howler outside before opening it. But the thought occurred to her too little, too late, when she reached for it and broken the seal. The Howler unfolded in front of her and the rest of her guests and let out a guttural, piercing scream that petrified the whole room.
Then suddenly, words. In a voice that she recognized, though not in this manner. It was still in a half-scream of pain.
"Baby! Coming. NOW!"
Then the Howler burst into flames. Everyone was still frozen, eyes wide, in complete silence. Possibly, probably traumatized.
Hermione knew that was her cue to get to Pansy as soon as magically possible.