Author's Note: Thank you for your reviews for the last chapter. I'm happy that so many of you were, against your will, feeling sympathetic towards Lucius. I must admit I have enjoyed writing this characterisation of him. I usually steer clear of him because it's so hard to try and work anything redemptive into his make-up. He was so thoroughly unpleasant in the books (and films).

Anyway, enough rambling, here's the next chapter and the meeting between Hermione and Draco that many of you have been asking for (I know interaction between them is slow at the moment – there's so much to tie up!).

My thanks, as always, to my fantastic beta, pagan.

Games

Draco, unaware of the momentous changes happening back at Malfoy Manor, was sitting in the Puceys' front room waiting for both Pansy and Adrian to get their acts together.

"Honey, have you seen my shin guards?" Adrian called out from somewhere upstairs.

"They're where you left them after your last game," Pans called back.

"And where is that?"

"I don't know! You left them there. Have you tried the cupboard by Alex's bedroom?"

"Pans, please help! I can't find them anywhere and we were meant to be there ten minutes ago."

"For the love of Salazar!" she yelled and Draco could hear her stomping back upstairs.

He waited thirty seconds before the next inevitable conversation.

"How come it took me less than a minute to find them? Why didn't you bother to look properly? Or use Accio?"

"Really? Where were they?"

"Exactly where I told you to look: in the cupboard where you keep all your Quidditch gear."

"But I'm sure I looked there."

"You couldn't have looked very hard."

Draco grinned. It was always the same thing between the couple every time he saw them. They would bicker incessantly but the love they had for each other was unbreakable. His smile faded as he thought about his situation at home. He wished he had such a relationship, but unfortunately, the chasm between him and his wife was too wide. Sadly, he'd come to terms with the fact that Astoria was totally self-absorbed and was only interested as long as it was of benefit to her.

"Draco! You're here!" Pansy exclaimed as she walked into the room. "When did you arrive?"

"Not long ago, and don't worry; Sippy welcomed me but I told her not to bother you," he said, knowing how stressed Pansy got if she thought someone wasn't welcomed appropriately to her home.

Pansy nodded at him. "I'm pleased you came. I wasn't sure if you would."

"I wouldn't dare after your threats the other day."

"I did not threaten you," she said, whacking him on the arm.

Draco saw Adrian coming into room behind Pansy. "Hey, Adrian, control your wife. She's beating me."

"If it gets to you to actually emerge from the Manor and stop being anti-social, then I'm all for it."

The blond rolled his eyes. "And you're too scared of your wife to say anything."

Adrian pretended not to hear this. "Anyway, we were meant to meet Potter ten minutes ago, so we'd better get going."

"Hang on a minute, no one said we were playing against Potter," Draco objected.

His friends just ignored him and strong-armed him over to the Floo Network. "You're kidding me, right? I'm not playing against him."

"Tough, Draco, I need a Seeker and you're here now."

He groaned. He hadn't played Quidditch for years and he was now going up against the one player whom he could never beat. Things didn't get worse than this.

Of course, Draco was wrong and he realised it the minute he stepped into the main bar of the Wonky Cauldron and spotted Granger. He should've realised she'd be there. She always did appear at every match Potter played despite having a dislike of the sport.

"I'm going to kill you," he hissed in the direction of Pansy, who at least had the grace to look guilty.

"I didn't realise she'd be here!"

"It's Potter. Can he survive for a single second without his coterie of gingers and Granger?"

Pansy shrugged. "I guess it'll give you an opportunity to speak to her. You know, put your father's plan into action."

"Yeah, because being surrounded by Weasleys is conducive to such a thing happening."

"Stop being so negative."

He gave her a scornful look but appeared to take her advice as he walked towards Granger.

"What was that all about?" Adrian asked his wife.

"Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about."

"Why is it whenever you say things like that, it always means it is something to worry about."

She patted his cheek. "Silly!"

"Ouch!" Hermione said as Ginny poked her in the ribs and pulled her away from Dean and Katie, who she'd been talking to. Hermione turned to face her annoying redheaded friend. "What was that for?"

"I don't want to worry you, but Malfoy's here."

"What? Where?" she asked, panicking and slewing her head around.

"Right here, Granger."

She spun around and sure enough, there was Malfoy, his broom slung over his shoulder, looking relaxed and happy. Why did he have to be there? She'd never seen him at any of the previous Quidditch matches that her friends had played against the former Slytherins.

"What are you doing here?" she asked accusingly.

He waved his broomstick in her direction. "Playing. What do you think I'm doing?"

"I've never seen you at any of these matches before."

"Yes, well, I was talked into it and what a happy coincidence, as I get to see the lovely mother of my child."

She narrowed her eyes at his sarcasm before folding her arms defensively against her chest and looking around to check if anyone had heard. "Say that any louder and I'll make sure my child has no biological father."

"At least you're admitting I have a role."

"A tiny, miniscule one that is thankfully over. Now run along and bug someone else."

He shot her glare but before he could reply with something she was sure would be cutting, Ginny intervened. "Is this all the either of you are going to do every time you see each other?"

"What?" Hermione asked her friend, surprised.

"Well, I mean, it's not very productive. You can argue over the fact that you're both in this mess until you're blue in the face but it's not going to change the fact that you are."

"Whose side are you on?"

"Yours, Hermione, you know that, but you have to admit that you need to sit down with Malfoy and discuss this like mature adults."

She looked from Ginny to the smugly smirking Malfoy. If this was anyone else, she was sure that she would've been able to be less defensive and try to work out a compromise but it was Malfoy, and suspicions were hard to get rid of. She still wasn't sure what his endgame was and she didn't trust him as far as she could throw him.

"Weaselette's right. We do need to discuss this properly."

"Well, I'm not doing that here. This is completely the wrong venue for it."

"But you admit that we do need to have a talk?" the blond pressed.

She sighed. She supposed she could do that. She couldn't continually bury her head in the sand about it and whilst she might have more rights under the new legal system being rolled out through the wizarding community, prejudices and attitudes were slow to change. Malfoy would get more sympathy than her if this came to light. There was also the fact that he could offer the baby a stable family life, which would play well with the courts. It was at times like this when she wished she were a Muggle.

"Alright, I'll talk to you. Let's make it next weekend."

"That's too far away."

She rolled her eyes. Of course he'd quibble over the smallest thing. It probably went against a personal code for him to accept anything she suggested without arguing. "When, then?" she asked.

"In the coming week. After work. I can do Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday."

Well, she certainly wasn't doing Monday. It was only two days away and she wanted more time to prepare. "Wednesday," she said.

"Where?"

"Somewhere Muggle. I'm not having this discussion where anyone can overhear us."

He nodded curtly. "Okay, but then you need to suggest somewhere. And, Granger, make it easy to find."

She wracked her brain trying to think of a location Malfoy would be able to find. There was no point suggesting anywhere he would have to get public transport to, which narrowed her list to places around the Leaky Cauldron and Charing Cross Road. She then remembered that she'd bumped into him after her appointment with Bulstrode. She was still suspicious about that but it meant she could use somewhere around St. Mungo's, which was less busy than the Leaky Cauldron, thus even less likely that any wizard would spot them.

"How about that café I saw you in the other day?"

Out the corner of her eye, Hermione saw Ginny whip her face towards her but she was more focused on Malfoy's reaction. There was a tightening in his jaw that would have been imperceptible had she not been looking for a reaction.

"Er… remind me of where it was again?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You followed me there, didn't you?"

"No! Of course I didn't."

"If that's the case, then how come you can't remember where it is?"

"I stumbled across it and realised I was thirsty."

"It's Oxford Street, there are plenty of places to get a drink and I don't believe you for a second."

He scowled. "Okay, so I followed you."

Hermione looked at Ginny, who raised her eyebrows, before turning her attention back to Malfoy. "We'll talk about that later, and the role of Bulstrode, but for now, I'll give you directions to meet me there."

She scrabbled about in her handbag until she found a scrap of parchment, where she wrote directions easy enough for a child to follow and handed them to the blond. His scowl deepened as he read the simplistic but detailed language she'd used.

"I'm not the Weasel, Granger."

"After your behaviour, you don't get to criticise anyone else."

Malfoy looked as if he wanted to say something obnoxious but he apparently thought better of it. If he did start with the insults, there was no way she would meet him. Instead, he nodded and stuck out his hand for her shake, almost as if he thought she wouldn't stand him up if she'd shaken on it. It was the first time she'd voluntarily touched him and it felt strange. She half-expected him to wipe his hand on his Quidditch robes and complain about Mudblood germs but he settled with turning away and going to talk to Bulstrode.

"See, that wasn't too bad," Ginny remarked.

She glared at her meddlesome friend. "No thanks to you."

The redhead sighed. "Come on, Hermione, you have to stop thinking about yourself. You share a child with Malfoy and no amount of burying your head in the sand is going to change that fact. And unless you want this dragged out through the courts and the media, I suggest you try and compromise with him."

"But I really don't want him to share custody with him."

Ginny wrapped her arm around her. "I get that, I really do. But you might not have a choice. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better."

Hermione's heart sank. Ginny was talking sense and she couldn't deny it. As much as she wanted to keep Malfoy out of this, there was every chance that a court would grant him access to their child. Merlin, that stuck in the throat. Their child. The baby was no longer just hers. It was obvious Malfoy wasn't going away and she had to deal with that.

Draco hadn't felt as positive about things for a long while and it showed in the way he played. Of course, he hadn't beaten Potter to the Snitch but there were some things he'd just had to come to accept the older he got, and the fact that he would never out-fly Potter was one of those things.

But the conversation with Granger had given him some hope. Okay, so she was still hostile to him and obviously angry now she'd rumbled him—but she had agreed to meet him. Maybe, they would be able to come to an arrangement. And if he was really lucky, he might just be able to persuade her to give him custody of this child whilst he paid for her to have more treatment. That way, they could all go their separate ways and not be tied to each other for life.

He snorted as he realised he was getting ahead of himself once more. The last time he'd done that, he'd ended up married to Astoria. And that wasn't a mistake he wanted to repeat any time soon. Besides, he really couldn't see Granger not being attached to this particular child. She was the sentimental type. And then, there was the fact that Potter and his friends had always managed to confound him. They were annoying like that.

He sighed as he climbed the secondary staircase that led to his private rooms. He could do with a long, hot shower. Playing today made him realise just how long it had been since he'd had a really good physical workout.

He'd spent the last few years taking over the reins of the Malfoy business interests from his father. He still wasn't quite sure why Lucius had been in such a rush to start training him. Usually, the Malfoy heirs were allowed to have a career in something that interested them before having to taking over the family portfolio. His father had specialised in cursed objects. Then again, Lucius had always been far too into the Dark Arts. Draco himself preferred Arithmancy and problem solving. Perhaps his father was making sure Draco wasn't put in the same position he had been when his father had suddenly died. Lucius had been left trying to understand the myriad of businesses' the Malfoys invested in and it had taken him a long time to fully grasp it all.

Draco slung his broomstick and Quidditch equipment into the cupboard he kept them in and started to strip, anticipating his shower. He strolled into his bedroom before stopping in shock at the scene that confronted him.

There, draped across his bed, scantily clad in expensive lingerie, was his wife.

His eyes roamed over her and he raised an eyebrow. She hadn't taken this amount of trouble since they'd first started dating. Then, she'd gone all out to present herself as the perfect woman and he'd been taken in. Now, his self-preservation kicked in. To be decked out in such a way meant that she was after something and he didn't trust her one little bit.

"Had a good game, Draco? Fancy a nice massage to relax those muscles?" she asked in a sexy voice and patted the bed suggestively.

"What do you want, Astoria?" he asked in a clipped tone.

He saw the anger flash through her eyes but she did an admirable job at suppressing the snappy reply he knew she was dying to make. "Do I have to want anything? You are my husband."

"When it suits you," he muttered. "We haven't had sex for longer than I can remember. What's brought this on?"

She got to her feet and padded across the room to him until she stood right in front of him and placed a hand on his chest. "Maybe I missed you," she said coyly, looking at him from under her eyelashes.

He batted her hand off his chest, moving away until he was leaning against his chest of drawers, crossing his arms over his chest. "I doubt that. In order to miss me, you'd have to care about me in the first place."

"That's not fair, Draco. You know I care about you."

He ran a weary hand over his face. "No, you care about what you married into. The name, the Manor, the wealth, and the position it gives you in society. Let's not try and pretend otherwise."

Her façade dropped then. She hunted down her dressing gown, tying it around her and putting her hands on her hips. "You know, why can't you make this easy? If you had just accepted my advances, we could have reconciled and continued to be happy."

"Astoria, we're completely incompatible and haven't been happy for years. I doubt some sex would paper over the huge cracks in our marriage."

"What do you mean, not happy? Of course, we've been happy."

Draco sighed. "Really, Astoria? Are you that deluded? We barely see each other."

"That's because you're busy at work and I'm busy being a good wife and socialising with your friends."

He snorted. "A good wife? That's laughable. And I choose to be busy at work rather than come home to this… this farce of a marriage."

She huffed. "You're impossible, that's what you are. You're never happy."

"No, it's not that I'm impossible and I could be happy—easily. But you haven't got what it takes to make me happy."

"No one can make you happy. You're depressive and you suck the happiness and good out of everything," she sniped bitterly.

Draco turned away from his wife, irritated. "You're so self-absorbed that you can't see past what you want."

"I'm self-absorbed? That's rich coming from you. At least I don't sit in the corner and brood. I'm trying to get on with my life."

"How about the fact that I went through things when I was a kid that no one should have to experience?"

"Oh, here we go again. You're such a bore! What happened to the old Draco? The one who'd known his worth and let everyone else know it too."

"I grew up, Astoria. Something you wouldn't know anything about. I learnt some hard lessons and I had to change, otherwise we wouldn't be in the position we're in now."

"Salazar's rod, you're so miserable. If you lightened up, Draco, we would be fine. But instead, it's all doom and gloom with you. You think you'd be over your self-pitying attitude by now, but apparently not."

"I am over it but you can't see that things are different now. The world has changed. It's not like it was before. You can't cling on to the old ways; it's no longer accepted or tolerated. Too much was lost in the last war."

"You could if you were smart about it."

He scoffed. "You're so naïve. We're under scrutiny. That fact might have passed you by, but the Ministry watches us intently."

"Pfft. You could have the Ministry eating out of your hand. Your father did."

"And this is precisely why we can never be happy. We don't see eye-to-eye on anything. You fail to understand anything that isn't about power, status, or money."

"You're a Malfoy—you're meant to think along those lines. What the hell is wrong with you?" She sneered.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. No matter how many times they went over this, Astoria seemed incapable of understanding why they couldn't live like previous generations of Malfoys had. She failed to grasp the fact that the Malfoy family had always been good at changing their politics to stay in power. He and Lucius had made a conscious effort not to maintain their old ways. If they wanted to remain influential, then they had to graciously accept the changing situation. It hadn't been a hard decision for them to make after everything that had happened. His mother had happily gone along with the change, making sure she was seen to support the right causes, but Astoria, brought up on the same ideals as Draco, had found it impossible. She seemed to think that if they brazened it out then they could still continue along the same lines.

"You don't get it, as usual, Astoria. You never will and that's the main problem between us."

"You're just weak. You didn't have what it took to be a Death Eater and you don't have what it takes now to make your wife happy. You couldn't even keep Parkinson, when she would have done anything for you. She recognised you for the sad little person you are and dumped your pathetic arse."

He felt the rage bubbling up inside him but it was tinged with sadness as he realised Astoria had a point. He turned back towards her with a snarl. "Get out! I don't want to see you anymore. In fact, you can get out of the Manor and my life for good!"

She looked disdainfully at him. "You and your father both think you're too good for me now that Mudblood Granger is pregnant with your kid." She laughed bitterly. "Good luck going up against her, Draco. If I remember correctly, you don't have too good a record against Potter or Granger."

And with that she swept out of his room.

Draco sat down wearily on his bed. A fight with Astoria was just what he needed to turn his previously decent day bad. The one thing she did understand about him was what buttons to press to cause maximum hurt. And she'd done it again with the digs about his personality and Pansy.

Despite appearances, he really wasn't too confident in himself. Oh, he hid it well but that's what he'd been taught to do. Malfoys didn't show uncertainty or hesitation. When he'd been younger, it had been easy to believe in his inherent superiority. After all, he'd always got what he wanted and had a fawning circle of friends and a father to run to if things didn't turn out as he had expected.

But those two years living as a Death Eater had taught him that life had a funny way of being unpredictable. His easy existence had flown out the window and he'd been left knowing that ultimately a name and wealth didn't mean that much. It was handy, that was for sure, but when push came to shove, it couldn't make up for character defects or a lack of conviction.

Since his world had been turned upside down, he'd grown less sure of himself and his role. It didn't help that his father, too, had come out of the war diminished. His dad had been the one person he could count on to show him what the Malfoy name meant and that had disappeared that night in the Department of Mysteries. Lucius had gone from being a supremely confident Death Eater to a failed lackey. And Voldemort had made sure he'd punished them both.

Thinking of his father brought home the fact that Astoria somehow knew about Granger and the baby. This was not good news, especially as he'd just told her to get out of his life.

So much for his good day.

To say Astoria was angry was an understatement. No one turned her down—no one. To have put herself out there for Draco and be so thoroughly rejected was humiliating and not only that—he'd kicked her out! He hadn't even spoken to his father yet, but he'd come to the same conclusion Lucius had. Well, Astoria wasn't having that. She refused to be thrown aside and discarded when it suited the arrogant Malfoy men.

She paced her across her private living room, trying to think of what she could do to punish them. She knew it had to revolve around Granger and the child. The all-important Malfoy heir.

Her first thought was to hunt Granger down and hex her, which would have the added bonus of endangering the baby. But, she soon discarded that idea as it was risky. Besides, everyone knew that Granger was quick with her wand and there was the real possibility that Astoria could come out worse off. Anyway, it wasn't Granger who was the real problem—it was Draco. She needed something that would hit him where it hurt the most—his pride in his family name. She walked up and down as she wracked her brain for something.

She came to a halt and stared out the window before something on her desk caught her eye. She looked down at it for a moment before a slow smile made its way onto her lips. Oh yes! If she played her cards right, she could drag his name through the mud, wreck his reputation, and come out spotless. This would surely be a win-win situation.

AN: See, there was no need to worry. Draco is not so stupid that he'd fall into the arms of his not-so-loving wife just because she's wearing some skimpy lingerie and offering him sex. And ugh that fight scene was hard to write. So, any guesses as to what Astoria's up to?