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Consequences and Complexities	By : ckllsdam Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 16345 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and canon situations belong to the Harry Potter fandom and JKRowling. Plot and OCs are mine. I make no money from this work.

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Chapter 3 – Confrontations

Malfoy Manor – On the day of Draco’s return

Previously –

Hermione stepped toward Narcissa, reaching out her arms to relieve the older witch of her burden and enfold her daughter in a comforting hug. She whispered something into Louisa’s ear and turned toward Draco. “This is Louisa. Louisa Granger Malfoy. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, she is your daughter. I’d hoped to tell you more gently than this, but that can’t be changed now. I’m sorry.”

Draco nodded his head sharply, acknowledging Hermione’s words. He never took his eyes off the little girl who seemed to be staring at him as intently as he was at her. He listened as Hermione spoke again.

“Louisa, do you remember the pictures I showed you, the ones of the man I told you was away for a long time?” When the little girl nodded shyly, Hermione continued, “This is the man in the pictures. He is your Papa.”

Draco’s hand reached out of its own volition toward the little girl’s cheek and a long, thin finger trailed along its pudgy contour. “Louisa,” he whispered.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Draco straightened his spine and shook himself from the stupor that had overtaken him upon learning the stunning news that he’d fathered this angelic child. There were so many layers to deal with; he had no clue where to begin. He had a hundred questions for the three other adults in the room. Drawing upon the lessons he’d learned with Dr. Roy, he resolved to take things one step at a time. Gain some control of yourself and the situation,he thought.

He made eye contact with Granger first. She seemed to be the logical place to begin. “Mother, Father, would you please take Louisa and give Miss Granger and me a few moments alone?” It was phrased as a question, but there was no doubt that it was a demand.

Narcissa seemed reluctant to leave the two young people alone. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her son, not at all. She had become very fond and protective of Hermione in the last three years, though, and thought of her as one of her own. She would do anything to save either of these children from pain, and it was clear that heartache would be felt today. A nudge from Lucius as he reached for the child in her mother’s arms helped her to acquiesce to Draco’s request. She nodded and left the room with her husband and grandchild. It took all of her will not to glance back at the room’s remaining occupants as she departed.

Hermione started, “Draco, I…”

“Don’t! Please, don’t say a word,” Draco pleaded with her, hands upraised as if to physically restrain her from uttering another sound. He needed a moment to formulate questions for this woman. There was so much that he wanted – no, needed - to know. Before his brain could fully engage, his mouth formed a single word. “Why?”

“That’s a very broad question, Draco. Why, what? Why did I have her? Why did I keep her? Why am I living here at the Manor? Why did we hide her from you? Truth be told, those are the same questions I’ve asked myself a thousand times. So what do you want to know first?”

He pivoted on his heel, turning away from her, wiping a hand over his face to try to contain the shock and anger and frustration he felt within him, if just for a moment. “All of it. I need to know everything.” His voice sounded low and contained, under careful control.

“Please, Draco, you have to know that nothing we did was meant to hurt you. We did it to protect you, so that you cou…”

“No! Don’t you understand? This… she… the only thing I’ve ever…kept from me…” His voice trailed off as he was unable to complete his thought.

“Draco, you’re making no sense. I don’t understand.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he spat back at her. “I’ve spent the last three years alone and isolated, except for the little bit of contact with my mother and father. If it weren’t for Dr. Roy, I’d have had no one. But you were all here playing house, having a grand old time, with my daughter!”

“It wasn’t like that, Draco.”

“No? What was it like then, Granger? Tell me, what were the last three years for you?” Draco demanded.

“Can we please take a breath, Draco? I’ll tell you everything, from the beginning. I promise. I know you’re furious and upset, and you have every right to be, but we’re getting nowhere if we just keep shouting at each other.”

Unable to refute her logic, Draco forced himself to drop the tension in his shoulders and to breathe deeply. “Fine. Explain away,” he invited, with no small hint of sarcasm. He dropped into a chair and watched as Hermione took up pacing.

“It all began just a couple of weeks after your trial. I’d been feeling poorly and attributed it to the stress of my injuries and thought maybe I’d caught the flu while we were at the cottage. I went to the Healer, and she told me that I was about one month pregnant. I hadn’t, uh, been with anyone else in quite a long time, so I knew that the pregnancy had to have been from what happened, uh, in the dungeons.”

Draco dropped his head into his hands. “Oh Merlin, I remember being afraid of that when I was tending to your injuries. With everything else that was going on, I completely forgot to discuss it with you.”

“Draco, we were fighting for survival. At least you had the presence of mind to think of it at all; I surely didn’t. Regardless, it happened.”

“But why?” he interrupted. “Why didn’t you just terminate the pregnancy? It’s a relatively simple thing to do in the Wizarding world.”

Hermione had known for years that this, of all the things she had to explain to him, would be the most difficult. “I couldn’t, Draco. I was raised to believe in the sanctity of all life, and that life begins at the moment of conception. In my faith, it would have been murder, and with all the death that I’ve seen, I couldn’t contribute to another.”

“I don’t understand; you’ve killed people in battle. This pregnancy was the result of an act of war.”

“No,” she asserted, shaking her head. “Anyone I killed in the war was a specific act of self-defense. It’s one of the reasons I spent so much time doing research. I had no stomach for going into battle and purposely killing anyone, regardless of how evil they may have been. I was thankful every minute that I had been blessed with enough of a brain that I was more useful where I was than on the battlefield.”

“So you decided not to abort the pregnancy because of the religious beliefs with which you were raised,” Draco summarized, trying to get his head around what she’d told him.

“That was the major factor, but there were other things that drove my decision,” Hermione admitted.

“Like what?” he wondered.

“My entire family was murdered in the war. I had no one left, except an elderly third cousin whom I’ve never met. The thought of a new life didn’t seem as horrible as being totally alone.”

“What about your friends? Potter and Weasley?”

“As much as we all love each other, they are my friends, not my family. Harry took many months to recover, and he’s started to build a new life of his own. Ron and I, after everything that happened between us after he recovered from his injuries a couple of years ago, were never the same. I’ll always treasure the friendship we had when we were kids, but we’ll never be that close again.”

“But the child was a product of me raping you, Granger. How could you possibly want that as a reminder of what happened?”

“I struggled with that a bit at first, but I chose to look at it another way. By the time that you and I parted company, I’d come to see that you were not the person we all assumed you to be. There was a better than even chance that you were a decent man under all that influence. When I saw what your parents had done to get you free of the potions, and how they had contributed at great personal peril to the war effort, I knew that there was capacity for good things to come from Malfoys.”

“Okay, so I get that you didn’t want to abort the pregnancy and that you thought the child wouldn’t automatically become demon spawn. Why didn’t you give it up for adoption?”

“Because your parents convinced me to keep the baby as my own.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They told me, and I believed them, that they wanted me and the child to become de facto members of the family. It felt like everything that had been taken away from me in the war was being restored, in some small way. They were so kind to me and so welcoming, that I grew very fond of them, and I think them of me.”

“This is all so hard to comprehend,” Draco whispered, mostly to himself. “I’ve fathered a daughter.”

“How do you feel about that, Draco?”

“Well, Healer Granger, I’m too shocked to know for sure. I can tell you that I’m not angry about the fact that she exists; that’s not it at all. I would have assumed that you would be angry that it had happened. I’m humiliated and horrified that I put you in the position to have to make those decisions. I’m confused and wary. What I amangry about is that this was kept from me for three years. You still have a lot of explaining to do about that, as do my parents, Granger.”

“How did you know I’ve become a Healer?” Hermione wondered, forestalling the discussion of her deception for a few moments.

His eyes went wide. “I didn’t. I was being sarcastic. You sounded so much like my therapist.”

“There’s a good reason for that. I’ve studied to become a Mind Healer, partly because of everything that happened to you and the trauma you suffered as a result.”

“Well, like everything else you take on, I’m sure you’ll be wildly successful,” Draco offered. “But that still doesn’t answer my other question. Why did you keep this from me?”

Hermione sighed. She’d been second-guessing that decision quite a lot lately, especially in the last six months as Draco’s release date approached. “That was entirely my doing. You can’t blame your parents at all. I forced them to make an Unbreakable Vow not to reveal anything to you about Louisa until I was ready. They tried to convince me on a daily basis to reconsider, so any blame you wish to dole out can rest squarely at my feet.”

“Fine. I’ll blame you. Now, why did you do it?” he insisted.

“I had several reasons. First, I didn’t want you to feel any worse than you already did about what you had done to me. Me getting pregnant was a result of what you did, but it wasn’t done intentionally, or as part of the attempt to hurt me. You were so fragile back then, that I just couldn’t imagine or support putting any more pressure on you than you were already shouldering.”

“Well, I can appreciate the sentiment, Granger, but who the hell said it was your decision to make?”

“That’s a fair question, Draco. Your parents argued against it pretty vociferously, but the fact is that I sort of twisted their arms to get them to agree to it.”

“And what leverage did you have?”

“I told them that I wouldn’t let them see the baby, or be involved in its life if they told you before I was ready for you to know,” she recounted, her furious blush a clear indication of her embarrassment when she heard herself say it aloud.

“Emotional blackmail, then,” Draco summarized.

“I guess you could put it that way,” she reluctantly agreed.

He surprised her with a hearty laugh. “You might have made a passable Slytherin after all, Granger.”

She managed a hint of a grin in response. “I’m sure you mean that as a compliment.”

“Well, let’s just say that I can appreciate what the thought process was, if not its result. I get that you wouldn’t have wanted me to know early on, but what about later, after she was born? Why not tell me then?” he asked, annoyance creeping back into his tone.

“The truth is that the longer I went without telling you, the harder it was to figure out how to do it. It then got easier to stick my head in the sand and push it off until there was no choice. As I said before, your parents tried constantly to get me to tell you, and I always refused. In the last few months, I confess that I’d begun to question my decision, but by that point I was stuck in the lie.”

“Why did you begin to regret it?” he wondered.

“She’s grown so quickly. I started to realize how much of her life you were missing, and I felt guilty about keeping it back from you. But every time I felt that, I told myself that you probably wouldn’t want anything to do with her. After all, I was her mother and she’s not a pureblood child. You didn’t conceive her with me on purpose.”

“You really think that I’d reject my own child because of her blood status?” he asked, incredulous.

Hermione shrugged. “It used to be all-important to you. While your parents had had a change of heart, your views were unknown. You’d been so indoctrinated by what the Lestranges did to you that I had no idea what you’d really think. I remembered something that you said while we were at the cottage about not understanding the violence based on blood, but that didn’t mean that you would want to actually produce a child that wasn’t a pureblood.”

“Don’t you think that it might have been logical to ask?”

“Again, I knew you were struggling with your own recovery. I didn’t want to place additional burdens on you. We were doing as well as we could, and your parents have been wonderful with Louisa. She’s not wanted for anything, including love and affection from her grandparents. Plus, there were the terms of your sentence to consider.”

“That’s a cop-out, Granger. The terms were that I couldn’t initiate contact with anyone in Great Britain except my parents and my solicitor. That didn’t mean that someone couldn’t initiate contact with me, and you certainly knew how to reach me,” he pointed out angrily.

“I know, and the two or three times that you asked after my well-being through your father complicated matters for me. If I had contacted you, it would have been nearly impossible to keep the promises I made to myself about not creating additional burden for you. I know you’d have seen right through any façade I’d have erected. So instead, I asked him to relay vague and impersonal responses just indicating that I was doing well.”

“Sorry, Granger, but you blew it,” Draco stated.

“I know I’ve made mistakes, Draco, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

He sighed and scrubbed both hands against his face. “I think you were probably right not to tell me in the first few months. I was pretty fragile then, and I’m not sure I could have coped with the guilt of doing that to you. But later on, I was stronger. I was looking for things around which I could start to build my life. Knowing that she was there - a part of me that wasn’t a horror - that might have given me something more to cling to. It might have helped me to get stronger, faster,” he postulated. “I told my therapist that the one thing that I wanted that I thought I would never have is a family of my own.”

Hermione swallowed thickly. She was deeply torn about how to answer him. If his expectation was that the three of them would ride off into the sunset together, he was sadly mistaken. She wouldn’t deny him a relationship with Louisa; she’d committed to that in her heart as well as to his parents. She was also not going to allow him to steamroll her. Louisa’s home would always be with her mother, regardless of how guilty she felt about denying Draco access to her in her infancy.

“Draco, I don’t know what your expectations are about having a family, but Louisa and I will not be separated.”

He glared at her. “Do you honestly think that I would do that to her, or to you? I don’t care how angry and frustrated I am, Granger, I’m not that cruel. What I want, and looking at things now, she willbe the only family I’m ever likely to have, is to get to know her. I want her to know that I’m her father, and that I’ll look after her to the best of my ability. She is legally the Malfoy heir by virtue of my father consenting to her carrying our family name, and someday she’ll inherit the entire family holdings. There is enormous responsibility in that, in case Father hasn’t told you. You and I will always have a very complicated relationship, Granger, and I hope that we can be civil with each other. The fact is that we’re not going to have much choice but to be connected through her for the rest of our lives,” Draco concluded.

“Merlin, I never thought of it that way,” she breathed.

“Thought of what?”

“Her being the Malfoy heir. Your father didn’t consentto her carrying the family name; he insisted on it. I allowed him to set up a trust fund for her, but I had no idea of the broader implications of that.”

“Knowing my father, he meant it to be that way. He may have switched sides in the war, Granger, but he’s a Slytherin through and through. It wouldn’t surprise me that there are a few other legal arrangements about which you know little or nothing.”

“What kind of legal arrangements?”

“Inheritances, mostly. Property transfers, stipulations upon his death, my death, or yours about her custody. I’d be relatively certain that he’s got a trust fund for you somewhere too.”

“Wouldn’t I have had to sign something to allow those kinds of things to happen?” A slight note of panic could be heard in Hermione’s voice.

“No. Not if she’s designated as my heir, which he has the right to do as the current Lord Malfoy.”

“I had no idea…”

“I can’t say that I’m surprised to hear that. I’m sure that he wouldn’t have done any of it maliciously; he would look at it as protecting the family legacy.”

“You said something about custody and my death. What would that mean?”

“I’m sure that he would have arranged for guardianship if something were to happen to you.”

“Even if I’d already designated someone to take care of her?”

“Have you?”

“Well, no, but it never occurred to me that she would be cared for by anyone other than your parents if something were to happen to me before she reached the age of majority. Who else would he have designated?”

“Me.”

“Why would that even be necessary, if you are named on her birth certificate as her father?”

“Because you and I are not married. If a child is born out of wedlock in the Wizarding world, it is assumed that the father rejects paternity unless he specifically claims it. Wizarding law is a little different than Muggle law, I’d wager.”

“Oh gods, that’s why…” she whispered, gasping at the realization that had struck her like a ton of bricks.

“Why, what?”

“That’s why your father, in particular, was so resistant to keeping this from you. He wanted you to claim paternity of Louisa. I wish he’d explained this to me; I had no idea.”

“Nailed it in one, Granger,” Draco drawled.

She’d been hanging around Malfoys for a while, and had learned the look. Her raised eyebrow almost surprised him. “You’ve been in America for too long.”

“So where do we go from here?” Draco wondered aloud.

“I don’t know, Draco, but it seems clear that we’re going to have to learn how to cooperate if we hope to raise Louisa without killing each other.”

“My murdering instincts have been completely obliterated, Granger. I’m no danger to you, or to anyone else,” he said, sounding affronted.

“I don’t mean literally, you prat. We’ve got a lot of history, very little of it positive. It won’t be easy for us to put that aside, particularly if we disagree on something about how Louisa is raised.”

“You’ve been living here at the Manor?” he surmised.

“Yes, since the beginning of my pregnancy, actually.”

“Well, you should stay.”

“No, I can’t do that. It would be too awkward living here with you.”

“Who says I’m going to live here?”

“Well, I just assumed…”

“You know what they say about people who assume, Granger. I’ve been living on my own for three years. I’ve developed a sense of independence that would be greatly compromised if I moved back into my parents’ home. I plan to live somewhere other than Malfoy Manor.”

“Do you parents know that?”

“Well, I haven’t been blunt about it, but I’ve hinted often enough that they should have figured it out. They aren’t fools.”

“Maybe that’s why your mother has been so insistent that I don’t move out,” Hermione observed.

“What did I tell you? They’re Slytherins, always manipulating, even if they have your best interests at heart,” he noted.

“So, have we reached an understanding?” Hermione probed.

Draco was the one to sigh now. “I’m still angry with you, but I can’t say that I don’t understand what you did and why you did it. I wish you’d made different choices, but I’ve made some pretty horrible ones myself, so I can’t condemn you for that. If I hang on to the anger, it will only hurt me in the long run, and it won’t help Louisa. You’ve told me that you forgave me for what I did to you three years ago. What you did wasn’t violent or life-threatening, but I am hurt by it. How could I not forgive you, though, after everything you did to spare my life when you could have just as easily condemned me to a Kiss?”

“I can’t ask for more than that. What do we do now?”

“We have many decisions to make, Granger.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In Louisa’s playroom, surrounded by enough stuffed animals, puzzles, and books to supply an entire nursery school, her grandparents watched the child play while trying to mask their anxiety over what was happening in the study two floors below them.

They spoke rapidly in French in an effort to shield Louisa from their concern. “Well, did he say anything to you before we arrived?” Narcissa demanded to know.

“There wasn’t time for him to say much, save to ask if I was party to the deception,” Lucius observed.

“And how could he think otherwise? When have you and I truly hid anything from each other, apart from when we were briefly estranged at the beginning of the war? He couldn’t have believed that Hermione and I had kept this from you,” she asserted.

“No, I’m quite certain he didn’t believe that. I think he just wanted to confirm who would hold which place on his hit list,” Lucius stated, using a bit of black humor to defuse some of the tension.

“Well, you must know that Hermione would not throw us to the wolves. You know her as well as I do, and she will attempt to shoulder all of the blame for this debacle.”

“Which is only right, considering the circumstances,” he challenged.

“Lucius, that’s not fair and you know it,” Narcissa argued. “We didn’t have to agree to her terms, but we did, and we understood what she was asking us to do. We should share in the blame.”

“What do you think they’re talking about?” he wondered, trying to change the subject from the burden of guilt.

“I’d wager that they have numerous things to discuss. She bore his child. If I know my son as well as I think I do, that will mean something to him. You saw the way he looked at Louisa; he’s already connecting to her.”

“I know. I saw the way he touched her, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. He’ll be angry, of that there is no doubt,” Lucius said.

Narcissa glanced at her granddaughter as the child set a doll to ride atop one of her many toy unicorns. “And hurt. You know how he’s talked about wanting a family someday. Louisa is the embodiment of all his dreams, come true.”

“I still think it was a mistake to withhold all of that from Hermione. If she’d understood what he was thinking and feeling, we might have been able to convince her to tell him about the girl.”

She shook her head. “First, it was not our story to tell, and second, she probably wouldn’t have believed us. She’d have thought we were trying to place more pressure on her to release us from the Vow. Every other attempt that we made turned out rather poorly, didn’t it?”

“True enough, but I still think it would have made her think twice before holding this news until his return.”

“Lucius, this is not worth discussing. What’s done is done. We’re all going to need to cope with the fallout, and I’ve no doubt that it will be substantial.”

“You don’t think he’d refuse to acknowledge Louisa, do you?” the doting grandfather wondered.

“I can’t imagine that he would. What purpose would it serve? You’ve already ensured that she’s legally named as his heir.”

“There are ways around that, as he will no doubt discover,” Lucius warned.

“While I hate to say it, I think the conditions required for that to happen are unlikely to occur. He’s not wrong in his assumptions that not everyone in Wizarding Great Britain will welcome him back with open arms. The old families look at him as damaged, tainted goods, and the new guard doesn’t entirely trust that, even if he was under compulsions, he isn’t a Dark side sympathizer. He’ll have a long road to travel before people trust him and his motives, I fear.”

“I recognize that the likelihood of Draco making a traditional Wizarding match is rather remote, and that the birth of a legitimate male heir is an even more unlikely probability. But those conditions could be met.”

“And you want to ensure that they don’t, I assume?” Narcissa confirmed.

“Yes. There are a couple of…” Lucius trailed off as the nursery’s double doors swung open to reveal his son and his granddaughter’s mother, standing side by side.

“Mother, Father,” Draco acknowledged his parents; “Miss Granger and I have reached some decisions about how we’re to proceed, given the circumstances. There are a few things you need to know.”
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Consequences and Complexities

Chapter 3 – Confrontations