Author's Note: I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter!
Draco waited as long as he could before telling Harry about the pregnancy, hiding his bump under baggy clothes. He was five months along when he decided he had to tell Harry before it hit the papers. More and more friends and family members were figuring it out every day and it was only a matter of time before word got out.
Harry was in the habit of having Sunday dinner with the Malfoys as his way of dropping Eiona off. It worked out well for him schedule-wise and meant he had a chance to spend a bit of time with Draco. Draco had already been lying down in bed by the time Harry got home from work every day that week. Thus he was really beginning to miss his husband and grateful for the chance to see the wizard. He wondered if Draco was ill, because Cissy's excuses of Draco getting up in the night with a fussy Eiona just didn't hold water. Eiona was fine when Harry had her and he had her for two to three hours every night.
When Harry arrived with Eiona, no one was yet in the dining room. It wasn't the large dining room that had been used for the family dinner, but the small one on the other side of the house. It was a bit unusual for no one to be there, because Cissy and Draco were usually here with whoever had been invited that Sunday. Ideally it would be Dromeda and Teddy, but Draco's friends and family had also been there as well.
Vile Thing and Dotty apparated into the room, suddenly appearing right in front of Harry and Eiona. The older elf bowed her nose down to the floor, and the younger one copied. Then Vile Thing prodded her daughter, "Dotty must give Auror Potter the message now."
"Mistress Narcissa is saying for…I'm sorry sir," Dotty muttered the last part, before letting out a loud wail that upset Eiona.
"Dotty is going back to the kitchens now. Vile Thing will give the message," Vile Thing said.
Dotty disappeared with a very loud pop, further upsetting Eiona. Vile Thing waited for Harry to calm his daughter before announcing, "Mistress Narcissa and Master Draco will be down in a few minutes. Auror Potter and Mistress Ipheion may wait in the sitting room."
"Thank you," Harry replied.
"Please do not thank elves in this house Auror Potter. You is a bad owner and we is not wanting to corrupt Dotty and Dobson," the elf chastised, before walking away, so as not to disturb the child again.
Harry found a seat in the sitting room and let Eiona down. He was only sitting there a minute when Draco appeared, wearing unusually tight fitting robes. He hadn't seen Draco in robes that tight in months and he hadn't seen Draco with a belly that big since Draco was pregnant with Eiona. Now that the baggy clothes were gone, the belly was obviously a pregnancy belly and not a bit of weight gain from the new diet. In fact, the rest of Draco was still slender.
"What the bloo-" Harry cut himself off, stopping himself from cursing in front of his daughter.
"Harry, I have something I need to tell you," Draco said, taking a seat in the armchair opposite Harry's. He rested his hands on his growing stomach, relieved that he no longer had to hide the action from Harry. "I'm pregnant."
"I see that. How?"
"Smith said the contraceptive charm must've failed. He says it happens sometimes."
"How far along are you?"
"Five months."
"Whose is it?" Harry asked. Maybe it wasn't the smartest question to ask, but he'd just had a bit of a shock and he wasn't thinking clearly.
"And you wonder why I don't want to give it another go with you, you infernal git. If that's how you're going to be, you can just leave. I don't need y-" However that sentence was going to end, it didn't, cut off by a sob as Draco couldn't hold back his tears. "I," sob, "just…wanted…you…to…know…first." Draco stood up to go, tears streaking down his face.
Harry jumped up and started talking as he followed behind Draco, Draco taking off in the direction of his rooms. "No, wait Draco. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Will you wait please?"
Draco turned around in the hall next to a stone statue of one of his ancestors that turned its head to look curiously at them. He took a large raspy breath holding back his tears and said, "Stop following me. You don't need to feel you have any responsibility towards us, besides child support. We're better off wi-." The last word turned into a sob and the crying came back suddenly.
"Buck up boy; that's not proper form for a Malfoy," the nearby statue chastised.
"Shove off," Harry said turning his head in the direction of the statue, before quickly turning back to Draco. "Draco, look, I'm so sorry I said that. It's my baby, isn't it?" Draco nodded. "Come here." Harry enveloped Draco in a hug "Of course I want to be there for you and our baby. I was just in shock and not thinking. I knew the answer almost as soon as it was out of my mouth and that it was a stupid thing to ask."
Suddenly Draco's emotional behavior made sense. He'd been hyper sensitive and cried all of the time when he was pregnant with Eiona too. At first Harry thought that that last time they'd had sex before he'd asked for a divorce was what must've done it. Then Harry did the math and realized Draco must've gotten pregnant long before that, because they had only been broken up for two months.
"You were pregnant when you started acting weird, weren't you?" Harry asked, connecting the dots, and Draco nodded. "How long have you known?"
Draco tried to answer, but he was crying too hard for it to be understandable.
"Did you just find out?" Harry asked and Draco shook his head. "Have you known all along then?" Again Draco shook his head. Harry was about to give up on finding out the answer right now when the answer occurred to him. "Since that first appointment with Smith? When you found out about the hypoglycemia?" That time Draco nodded. It occurred to Harry then that all of Draco's strange and dangerous behavior could have harmed their unborn child. If he'd just insisted on taking Draco in to see Smith when it had started, then they would've known about the pregnancy and the hypoglycemia all along. If they'd known, they might even have been able to prevent some of it. And with his self-deprecating tendencies, he blamed himself for not ensuring Draco received proper medical treatment from the beginning.
After several minutes of silent thought, Harry decided that it was no use dwelling on it in front of Draco and that he could beat himself up over it later. He regrouped and asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"
Draco tried to say something starting with what Harry thought was a D sound, but it was incomprehensible with the way Draco was sobbing.
"Because of the divorce?" Harry asked and Draco nodded. "I would've called it off if I'd known. As soon as I leave here, I'm going to go home and write my attorney to call it off. I never would've asked for it in the first place if I'd known you were pregnant. Draco, this is so wonderful. Do you have any idea how happy this makes me?" Draco nodded. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet?"
Harry was hoping the answer was no, so that he could go with Draco, but then Draco nodded and tried to say something that almost resembled the word, "Boy."
"It's a boy!?" Harry asked excitedly and Draco nodded. Harry's heart swelled with joy. "Draco, this is the best news I think I've ever received. Wait, second best. Finding out that you were pregnant with Eiona and coming to live with me was the best, but I didn't know it at the time. Just thinking about another little Potter coming into the world…"
Draco screamed wordlessly and pushed Harry away then. Harry was taken by surprise and Draco was able to break free, taking off at a waddle for his rooms. He wasn't fast by any measure and almost tripped on a footrest, blinded as he was by his tears. Thus Harry kept up and followed Draco through the sitting room and into a bedroom he'd never been in before. It was clearly Draco's bedroom, with his things scattered about.
"Why did you run off? What did I say?" Harry asked.
"Just go," Draco said thickly, surprisingly getting out something intelligible amongst his tears.
"No Draco. You tell me that you're five months pregnant with my baby and then you want me to 'just go'?" I don't think so. You can lie down or do whatever you need to calm down, but when you do, I'm going to still be here waiting for a chance to talk with you about this. This is our baby and I expect to be a part of his life."
"I'm tired," Draco said with a yawn and a sob, lying down on his bed, still in his robes.
Harry was about to protest, but then he noticed Draco's eyes closing and the sobbing begin to cease. In a matter of moments, Draco was sound asleep. Harry thought that that was probably his cue to leave, but he refused to obey. Instead he went out to Draco's sitting room, where he found a scroll of parchment and a pen. First he wrote a letter to his attorney, ordering him to cancel the divorce at all cost as soon as possible, giving the fact that Draco was pregnant as his excuse. Then he wrote quick notes to Molly and Hermione, figuring that they could tell the others. He wrote another one to Dromeda, asking if she'd known.
Finally, Harry put away the writing supplies and took his notes down to the dining room, where he found Cissy eating supper with Eiona.
"Oh Harry, are you ready to join us? Where's Draco? Isn't he with you?"
"He fell asleep."
"Without dinner?"
"He kept crying and said he was tired. He lay down and was out within seconds."
"That's not good for his hypoglycemia. In the future, would you mind waiting until after dinner to say something so egregiously rude?"
"Yes, er, sorry. I didn't mean to say it in the first place. I tried apologizing to him and telling him I'd be there for him and the baby." Harry let out an exasperated sigh. "But he just kept crying."
"Shall I call Vile Thing to bring you a plate Harry?"
"Yes please, but might I also use your owls? I sort of have, er, four notes I need to send off right away."
"Certainly, but we only have two owls," Cissy replied.
"That will do."
Cissy called Vile Thing to fetch Harry a plate and Dobson to fetch the owls. Dinner was there first, so Harry sat down and had a bite, but then jumped up when Dobson appeared with the two large eagle owls. He recognized both of the owls. Cissy sent Draco enough things, both packages and letters, that he knew the Malfoy owl Viper by sight. Draco's owl, Talon, he knew even better, the animal going along with Draco wherever Draco lived.
Harry handed the letter for the lawyer to Dobson first to tie onto the owl. He waited until Viper was off, through the dining room window, before handing the two for Hermione and Molly to the elf.
"These should be going to the same place. Talon should be able to do it; he's managed it plenty of times before," Harry said. Now that Hermione had finished her NEWTS, she mostly lived with the Weasleys. Sometimes she went home and stayed with the Grangers, but for the most part she could be found at the Burrow.
"Very good Auror Potter, sir," Dobson replied, before tying both letters onto the owls legs.
Then that owl too was off and Harry stuffed the letter for Dromeda into his pocket. He'd send it when one of the owls returned.
With the owls off, Harry sat down again to eat. Eiona finished first and started to fuss, wanting to be put down. Cissy let the child down and sent her off with Vile Thing to the playroom.
After Harry finished eating, he set his fork down and said, "I've ordered my lawyer to call off the divorce."
"Draco won't be pleased. He's quite insistent on going through with it, despite the pregnancy. You really should have called it off prior to finding out about the baby. I did warn you of that," Cissy replied. "He'll fight you harder now."
"That's what you were trying to tell me? You've known he's pregnant this whole time?"
"No, he didn't tell me until the next day."
"You've known this whole time, minus one day?"
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"No. My son expressly forbade it and you were certainly enough of a horrible buffoon to warrant it. I did try to give you hints."
"Hints, what hints? There was no way I was ever going to figure it out from your warning."
"If you recall, I did say that this entire thing was solely the fault of yourself. I told you my Draco was blameless in this matter. Surely you don't still blame him after finding out that his illness is a direct result of your overactive libido and inability to cast a proper contraceptive charm."
Cissy had Harry there, so he shook his head in defeat. "No, I don't blame him. I tried to tell him that, but I don't know how much of it he processed. He was crying…a lot."
"That is what one gets when one reacts to a pregnancy by asking for a divorce. Personally, I think it is the stupidest thing you have ever done. I certainly hope so, for my grandchildren's sakes, or they may just turn out with the intelligence of a Goyle."
"No, you're right. It is the stupidest thing I've ever done. Can I sleep here tonight? Like on the floor, right in front of his doorway so that I'll know when he gets up?"
"You are aware of the fact that it is Sunday night and he doesn't usually wake until ten?"
"He seriously sleeps from the time I pick Eiona up at five until ten the next morning?
"Most nights he wakes to eat something sometime in the middle, but the elves tend to him then. My proper elves have managed to put some meat on his bones, unlike old Kreacher, who had him malnourished."
"Come now, Draco wasn't malnourished. If anything, he was getting fatter."
"Because of the pregnancy. He didn't tell you, but he was also diagnosed as malnourished. He told me that on a typical day, you'd make him two slices of toast for breakfast. He'd make himself a large pudding and then whether he had dinner or not depended on whether you stayed and made one or whether you ran off with the baby, leaving him there alone to fend for himself."
"He could've made himself whatever he wanted for dinner."
"He can't cook! He still burns the bloody toast, for Salazar's sake. He can make tea and pudding on a good day. That's it. There is only so much pudding one can eat before one cannot stand pudding any longer."
Well that made Harry feel like a right arse. Here Draco was hypoglycemic and pregnant with his baby and what did Harry do? He ran off to the Weasleys night after night with Eiona to eat, leaving his pregnant husband behind to starve. "Why didn't he just come here to eat?"
"Most of the time, I don't think he was capable of processing his situation enough to consider it. When it did occur to him, he was too embarrassed to act on it."
"Embarrassed?"
"By you and your behavior," Cissy clarified.
"Right. Er, sorry."
"It's my son and grandchildren you need to spend the rest of your lifetime apologizing to. You may sleep on the sofa in his sitting room, but I warn you, he may wake up confused after not eating dinner. If you behave inappropriately towards him—and I know all about how you had sex with him while he was out of it—I will personally call the Aurors in to deal with you and remove you from the premises." And with that, Cissy stood from the table. "Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to retrieve my granddaughter from the elves."
Harry went back to Draco's sitting room to think. Meanwhile Cissy tended to Eiona and ordered Dobson to keep an eye on Harry and report to her immediately if Harry did anything inappropriate.
Author's Note: So now Harry knows and is determined to get Draco back. The next chapter will continue where this one left off, when Draco wakes up. Please Review!