Chapter Three
For somebody that I thought was my savior
You sure make me do a whole lot of labor
The callous skin on my hands is cracking
If our love ends would that be a bad thing?
And the silence haunts our bed chamber
After a nightmare about the war, Hermione laid awake. Ron never came home from the pub where he told her he was going with the guys after work. She was having to cover more of the bills again this month as Ron claimed that his hours were cut, but he was still gone all the time. She was grateful that she had some extra money tucked away from the sale of her parent's house, but spending it due to bad budgeting just seemed like a waste to her. She had been trying to save that for buying her own home at some point, a real house not just a flat, something with a back garden, a tree where she could hang a swing, somewhere that there could be children. She just wasn't certain any more that she wanted those children to be gingers, the children of her imagination had brown curls now or blonde. She tried to ignore the image that her mind was conjuring and the guilt that made her mouth dry and her throat tighten.
She rolled over again and sighed. At two in the morning, she just couldn't get comfortable. She'd gotten a few hours of sleep, so it wasn't as though she had stayed up the entire night.
Finally getting up from the empty bed, she decided to read over notes from a work project with Theo that he wrote entirely in a kind of encrypted Ancient Runes. The next hour slipped away as she worked through her annotations of Theo's notes. She owled them to him before turning in.
She checked the time, it was nearly five in the morning. Ron still hadn't returned to their flat.
You make me do too much labor
Apologies from my tongue
And never yours
Busy lapping from flowing cup
And stabbing with your fork
I know you're a smart man
(I know you're a smart man)
And weaponize the false incompetence
It's dominance under a guise
Hermione was exceptionally close to unleashing an Unforgivable. Ron had pretended that he couldn't manage the laundry spells, intentionally bungled the cooking and had forgotten to pick up her contraceptive potion on his way home from the joke shop.
"Ron you've managed it before, I don't know what the problem is now." Hermione's patience had run so thin that she was fantasising different ways to murder him and hide his body. That could not possibly be a sign of a healthy relationship.
"Hermione, you are always the one doing the laundry so why am I expected to be doing it at all and then the same for cooking and running your errands?" Ron crossed his arms petulantly. Hermione wanted to throw something breakable. The ugly vase that his mother had given them as a house-warming gift looked like an excellent choice.
"Well what else are you supposed to do when your hours have been cut? A helping hand around the flat would be much appreciated considering I still work all day."
"I have things to do too besides work 'Mione, I'm just supposed to give that up too?"
"Fine, Ronald, you can go off and do whatever the hell it is you do, don't worry about me or the home you live in. But just letting you know that we absolutely won't be having sex until I get my potions and am back on them for a week so that we don't end up with a baby!"
"What's the problem? We're going to have kids anyways, what's the point of putting it off?"
She stared at him as though he had absolutely lost his mind.
"Ron, we're not ready, we can hardly manage ourselves! How are we going to bring a baby into our lives now?"
"We'll figure it out, we always do."
"What you mean is that I'll figure it out! Like I always do! Well, I'm not doing it." Hermione shook her head furiously, imagining how impossible it would be to manage her work, taking care of the house, Ron and a baby.
She looked at him and decided that she wasn't hungry, slamming the door behind her, she warded him out of their bedroom. Ron didn't even bother to attempt to knock.
The next morning when she got up to get ready for work, Ron was already gone. She uncharitably wondered if he had gone out last night after their fight and stayed over with George or Harry.
She tried not to carry that anger with her to the office, but it was so hard when Draco was the polar opposite of everything that made Ron, well, Ron.
"Good morning, Theo," Hermione greeted, noticing immediately that Theo was in a bad mood. "Is everything alright?"
"I just forgot my lunch which Draco made. He even said he put a special surprise in there for me," Theo replied, sullenly. "I was thinking about our presentation and I forgot it on the counter, like I didn't even care about his efforts." Hermione couldn't help but laugh at Theo. She couldn't imagine Ron saying anything like that about her, in fact he'd disliked the lunches she packed for him (nothing like his mum's cooking) and had intentionally forgotten them until she just stopped making them. What was the point after all?
She and Theo organised their notes from the conference so that they could put together the presentation that they'd have to give at next week's department meeting. Hermione's multi-coloured post-it notes on their glass wall even failed to cheer Theo up. They were one of the Muggle things that always put a smile on his face.
She couldn't believe that he was so out of sorts about forgetting his lunch.
He was like this for all of an hour until Draco turned up with the lunch bag in hand. Hermione still wasn't entirely clear how he was allowed to just walk into the Department of Mysteries as though he owned the place.
"I noticed you forgot something," Draco offered a sly smile to Theo.
"Oh!" Theo flew into Draco's arms, kissing him soundly. "You are absolutely the best partner in all the world and I am the worst."
"Theodore, you are ridiculous." Draco grinned at him, capturing his lip for a second before stepping back.
"You love me anyway," Theo declared, already rustling through the bag trying to find what his surprise was.
"I love you because you are ridiculous not in spite of it, silly man." Draco laughed. "Good to see you two are hard at work." Draco's eyes wandered over their colour coded notes.
"As opposed to you," Hermione quipped.
"I know that you didn't imply that being a homemaker isn't a real job." Draco raised an eyebrow in her direction, as Theo popped a bright green macaron into his mouth with a happy moan.
Hermione began to apologise, not wanting Draco and Theo to be upset with her, despite the fact that Theo was now devouring a pink cookie with more happy noises. She didn't mean to undermine what Draco did in his day-to-day, she absolutely understood all the effort and work he put into something like preparing and packing a lunch. Though she didn't express it, it made her feel bitter that Draco did that for Theo.
Draco laughed at her discomfort. "I like being a house husband, Granger. It's fulfilling. Lucius was technically a house husband too, I'm just following the time honoured Malfoy tradition of taking care of my spouse," Draco smiled, watching Theo inhale the cookies he'd made for him.
"Theo, I'll swing by the cleaners and get your suits on the way home. I'm making Quiche Lorraine for dinner, okay, so let me know if you are going to be late, you know the stasis spells can affect the texture and I can just put it in the oven later if you are." Theo nodded and Draco kissed him lightly before heading out of their office.
Theo offered Hermione one of the pink macarons which she discovered tasted of strawberries and cream.
"Malfoy cooks?" Hermione asked in shock, the taste of his baking still on her tongue.
"Almost everyday unless we do a date night or he spent the day with his mum. Narcissa wears him out," Theo admitted.
Hermione looked at him in confusion.
"She's not well, but won't admit it." Theo grimaced. "And there's a lot of pressure about grandchildren whenever he visits."
Hermione shook her head struggling to make sense of Theo and Draco's relationship. "Was he serious about Lucius being a house husband?"
"Oh, utterly." Theo nodded, popping another macaron into his mouth and humming contentedly. "Lucius liked to socialise and pretend to be important, so that's why he was on so many boards. Lucius only spent a few hours a year actually managing their funds and otherwise the investments basically ran themselves. Draco has taken over that these days, but once he removed all the investments he saw as unethical and changed a number of business protocols he doesn't have much to do in the day to day."
"Changing protocols like?" Hermione knew that none of this was any of her business, but she still wanted to know.
Theo began listing things out on his fingers. "Like not requiring employment applications to include someone's status on the Werewolf Registry and offering lunar leave with no questions asked. Extending maternity leave, offering paternity leave. Medical treatment and potion reimbursements for employees and their families. They have to go to a Malfoy Apothecary or Pharmacy, of course, but there's one almost everywhere in Western Europe these days. Hogwarts uniform and supplies reimbursements. Mastery and Muggle university scholarships for long-term employees' children. There's more, but those are all that I can remember off the top of my head."
"Oh," Hermione said, shocked. "That's all very kind of him."
Theo shrugged, rummaging through his lunch bag to see what else was in there. "It's good business to treat witches and wizards and the squibs, of course, in his employ well."
"Malfoy Industries hires squibs?" Hermione couldn't keep the shock out of her voice.
"Absolutely. They run the entire Muggle side of the company in the upper management positions. Otherwise the Statute of Secrecy wouldn't allow for Draco to meet with them all at once, and he would not be keen on doubling his meetings. Once every month is more than enough for him."
The adult version of Draco Malfoy was shaping up to be nothing like Hermione had thought. He did all that and took care of all their domestic chores? Ron couldn't even be bothered to pack his own bag or put his shoes up. Draco hadn't even wanted to be away from Theo for the week in Geneva, Ron hadn't cared when she had come home early.
Hermione felt the strain of the disproportionate amount of work that she was expected to do in her relationship compared to the expectations of Theo in his relationship with Malfoy. Ron would never pick up the cleaning for her unless she begged and then he certainly wouldn't do it with a smile.
Having happily eaten a couple more pieces of chocolate fudge and admired the fancy salad and tea thermos, Theo was finally ready to return to work with a much better attitude. Hermione's mood was the worse for learning what she had. How was she supposed to be happy with Ron when she was forced to witness what a real partnership could be like?
