Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Balaur	By : T-W-O Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 25216 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I own nothing of HP nor do I profit in any way from these missives. I almost own the laptop I'm writing this fanfic on, tho'.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Four weeks and Molly Weasley, tumbling from the floo into her home with Charlie and Vlad in Babadag, shepherded in the next crisis.

“I promised I wouldn’t bother you but I think you’ll want to know. They’ve taken Draco to St.Mungo’s with alcohol poisoning — I know better; he’s tried to kill himself and failed,” Molly matter-of-factly announced as she shook clinging ash and glowing cinders from her well-worn traveling cloak.
“Is this my fault?” the not-completely-heartless Gryffindor asked to check her own motives in this mess Voldemort forced on them all.
“No and don’t you go blaming yourself — it’s not good for Bali. I’m headed to hospital. Do you want to come with?” she offered, still beating at pinhole burns discharging streamers of smokey wisps into the room.

Grown used to acting when frightened to her core, Hermione’s answer arrived with a grab of her own maternity jumper and a rolling quickstep of her softened curves to the fireplace to prevent herself from coming to her senses and running for cover. Money got Draco admitted to the VIP patient wing in a suite named for his father. The floo disgorged the two women into a sitting room filled with the anger and terror of Lucius Malfoy.

“I understand congratulations are in order; I’m to be a grandfather.”

Confrontation substituted for greetings and pleasantries with these two.

“LUC—”
“It’s alright, Mrs. Weasley. Lucius only lashes out when he’s afraid and not in control. I saw enough of him at the Manor to know. Yes, Lucius. Balaur is Draco’s son.”
“And when, pray tell, were you going to TELL me that you’re carrying MY SON’S HEIR!?”

Shoulders relaxing, Hermione slipped easily into her comfortable role of “Mudblood" to his “Death Eater”.

“Why would I ever do that? Draco’s unmarried; his WIFE will carry his heir, not me. Your son may have created this child but Draco won’t be my son’s father and he won’t have him as his heir. I’ve seen to that. You’re safe from us and we from you.”

The intimation behind her statements — that a Malfoy would be raised a bastard and a Granger — outraged her opponent.

“Until your ‘blessed event’ concludes there are exactly TWO Malfoys in this miserable world and ONE Black that matters. I hope your rumored genius can see that I would PREFER the Malfoy line not go EXTINCT while I’m WATCHING! Draco apparently doesn’t give a damn about either legacy given his recent choices of amusement.”
“Was Draco Imperious’d when he swallowed that potion? I’ve heard Malfoys succumb to that curse rather readily,” — Lucius blanched at the accusation he’d faked being “controlled” a second time.

Bellatrix enforced the commitment Lucius denied making the first time around; she’d forced him to complete his pledge of loyalty by offering up his heir to the half-blood maniac “savior” — not by an Imperious, but by threatening lethal harm to her weak-willed nephew. The Malfoy family head found no escape this time that didn’t sacrifice his son and his mate. Weakness and strength emanated from Lucius’ love for Narcissa and Draco.

“You impertinent little b—”

A dangerously vexed Narcissa Malfoy strode into the sitting room from Draco’s bedside to head-off a life-changing familial estrangement — fully intent on confronting the arse she’d married and still adored. The distraction gave Hermione the opportunity to slip into Draco’s room while all attention focused on the hissing, growling and tut-tutting exchanged between members of the extended pure-blood family.

In a corner, Peepers curled himself up, unprepared for the situation and unsure of what to do other than stay with the probationed convict.

Light shadowed the despondent man-child like a proscenium, casting him as the solo character on this surreal stage. Deathly pale and thin, his wheezing chest made the only movement of his emaciated body until the wheezing stopped and he evidenced small but real convulsions. Something blocked his breathing.

Unsure that his body could handle the Anapneo spell that would’ve been quicker in alleviating the problem (and kept their distance from one another), the ambivalent Gryffindor found herself forced to help when no healers responded to his crisis. Then again, she wasn’t a healer; her compassionate “help” might kill him all the same (unintentionally or intentionally). Angered at the predicaments that seemed to throw them together — and place her rapist repeatedly in her life path — she opted to do the least she could until someone trained in healing arrived. Her athletic baby stilled (for no reason she could fathom) with each step towards Draco, the baby’s magic pulsing outward in an ever-widening bubble that encapsulated first her then his father.

The shouted “Get a healer, please!” startled the timid house elf into apparating away from his charge.

“How do I rid myself of you permanently, Malfoy…” bounced unkindly against the sterile walls; she regretted the phrasing almost immediately. She meant him no harm and never would — not even through benign neglect while he choked to death in front of her.

The vomit bucket flanked his bed, half filled with rancid bile and stomach juices colored by whatever poison he’d ingested. Working around five months of baby belly meant yanking Draco’s twitching, flailing arm until he rolled to the bed’s edge and cleared his airway on his own into the bucket. The sight, sound and vile odor of his sickness emptied her pregnant stomach into the same receptacle before healers finally burst through the door to see to him — followed by the nervous Peepers.

From her position at the front of the pack, Molly saw to an ashen Hermione who gratefully took a chair away from the medical intervention.

“Your beside manner stinks, Granger; you know that?”

The effort-laden whoosh of words stunned everyone to silence but Hermione and Bali. At the sarcastic ribbing, Draco’s son resumed his usual playground behaviours whilst his mother made an acerbic reply to the critique of her life-saving skills.

“No more than your hospitality at the Manor. We’re even, Malfoy. Eat something nutritious and get your lazy arse out of that bed so someone who’s really ill can use it.”

A dry chuckle and a coughing fit from the patient put paid to the debt. In less than a year each had saved the other.

“Time to get you two home. You and Bali need a good supper,” Molly chided.

Smothered by the relieved kisses of his mother and the tearful distance his father kept between them, Draco heard but did not see the quiet departure of Molly and the woman he now believed did not hate him…

..with the dragon child whose compassionate magic saved his father’s soul.

Another few weeks cleared more fog from the brains of the principal players in the aftermath of the Dark Lord. Quidditch laid a healing salve on Ginny and Ron — now a Chudley Cannons reserve — in equal measure. The pursuit of Voldemort’s remnant by floo, broom or apparation postponed any resolution to Harry’s deep, raw wounds acquired from insults inflicted long before the official start of the Second Wizarding War (as the newspapers were already calling it). Thanks to Peter Pettigrew’s treachery and the Dursleys’ abusive guardianship, he’d been a prisoner of the First Wizarding War since infancy. George expanded a business destined to make the Weasleys wealthy. The abandoned twin worked twice as hard, at the shop that sold happiness to others, to honor his perpetual loss and bury his perpetual grief.

In Babadag, Hermione adjusted to the next phase in her unplanned side ramp of a life. A few months from her due date she reduced her work to her regular customers and referred those who pleaded for her talents to other qualified potioneers. At the rate she was learning, she could have sat her Master’s exam in two months but for her impending arrival. So she extended her old schedule and filled her new schedule with preparations for her upcoming baby and her upcoming licensing tests.

Preparation for Bali’s arrival included addressing those open wounds she carried; the time had come to come clean with her war family. She’d yet to retrieve her own parents from Australia and would not attempt to lift those memory spells while gravid. There was also the matter of Draco Malfoy going forward. Having accepted Draco as family, Bali forced together two fragile victims of a conflict with too many consequences.

Beginning shortly after his discharge from St. Mungo’s, Hermione’d accepted calls in her small suite (consisting of her bedroom with a small sitting area near her fireplace and the attached nursery) to normalize relations with the mercurial junior Lord of the Manor.

…....

“Shit, Granger, if you get any bigger they’ll have to levitate you to St. Mungo’s — you won’t fit in a floo.”

Distrustful of Draco’s undisciplined choices, she’d given him her warded floo “address”. Any attempt to come through to her would result in a gruesome death. She initiated no calls his way.

“Your mother sympathized when she informed me of your birth weight and scared me senseless — and I’m not going to St. Mungo’s; I'm having the baby here.”

Because the coals burned a bright red, Draco’s facial coloring change went unnoticed; his shouting did not.

“Are you MENTAL?!?!? You or the baby could DIE, Granger!”
“I didn’t say I’m having him at home, Malfoy. I’m not returning to England.”
“You will NOT deliver my son in some backwater hovel where the healers still wear masks and shake sticks to ‘cure’ their patients!”
“No —” she shouted back, ignoring the nausea her willful child inflicted on her for fighting with his sire, “if I want him to watch incompetent arses parading around in ‘masks’ whilst shaking their ‘sticks’, I’ll invite you and your father to a Death Eater party! I have no intention of having my personal life — or this ‘situation’ between you and me — bandied about as gossip in every paper in magical Britain!”

Unmarked by the silence, she waited him out.

“My son could die! You both —” and he stopped.
“And the same could happen in England. There’re no guarantees; we know that. I’ve done my research —”
“Swot…”
“— I’ll ignore that. I’ve done my research and I’ve made my choice.”
“Will you allow my family healer to attend?”
“On a non-interference basis, I will consider it.”

Grateful that she hadn’t hexed him back to Hogwarts, he left unasked the question of who else might attend the birth of the next Malfoy heir.

…....

“Granger? You don’t sound good.”
“I’m not. Bali’s been pummeling my stomach with his feet causing me to be sick all day which means I can’t eat which means he’s hungry and irritated that I’m not solving the problem.”
“You’re the genius of that incompetent trio, do something about it.”
“Don’t you think I’m trying, you arse?!? I’m small-built and he’s troll-sized —”
“Dragon-sized. No son of mine will ever resemble a troll. Malfoy men are too handsome to be mistaken for trolls.”

— and she laughed. Not falling-over, rib-shaking laughter; just a tinkle of spontaneous giggles he’d never heard from her before.

“Well, he’s calming now so I need to go and get something before he starts up again. I don’t think I can get any larger and he’s still weeks from coming.”
“I’ll ask Armstrong if there’s anything you can do.”
“Armstrong???”
“Family healer. Go eat; we’ll talk later.”

In Draco’s bedroom where communications had just ended cordially after the call, Healer Armstrong reassured Draco that he’d been able to cast the appropriate spells through the floo to confirm the well-being of the next Malfoy heir and to offer his expert opinion that Hermione would not make her due date.

…....
“Malfoy, I never meant for you to be this involved. I know that this baby keeps you from falling in on yourself emotionally, but… You’ll marry someday and I’m sure your wife won’t appreciate your involvement with your bastard son and his mother. Have you considered that?”

Rehearsing the words over and over didn’t diminish the damage Hermione caused.

“Can I meet you somewhere?”
“I beg your pardon?” she gaped at the non sequitur.
“I won’t discuss this over a fireplace. Where can we go, someplace you’ll feel safe?”

An hour later Hermione fidgeted in a small cafe in Paris. She’d visited the intimate, out of the way but public place on holiday with her parents the summer she’d started Hogwarts. At a table with a vantage point selected to block exit from the front and rear, a hulk of a ruggedly handsome man sporting a Disillusion’d face made himself nondescript as he watched over the witch who’d become family.

Not too long after their arrival at the establishment, a very anxious pure-blood stepped haltingly across the threshold of his postwar life — trailing a very nervous (and Disillusion’d) house elf (with a surly disposition) who took a seat in the rear of the establishment and stared away any attempt to serve him.

“Merlin, Hermione! You’re carrying a two-year-old!”
“It’s nice to see you too — not heaving into a bucket, Draco.”
“It’s just… The floo doesn’t show the ‘scale’ of your expansion. Definitely a beater, not a seeker.”

Again the music of laughter lifted him. Bali’s magic hugged his paternal progenitor.

“That’s what Charlie said when I was nowhere near this large!”
“Where’s your ginger knight errant? Can’t see you coming alone to be with me.”
“Charlie’s still ‘adjusting’ to your presence in my life; not the best escort in a public place. My safety’s being handled — as is yours.”
“Probation knows no borders. They’ve been decent about it.”

Unobtrusively, the waiter glided past with a place service for the nervous blonde and a platter of crudités for the perpetually hungry mother-to-be. Draco gave his desires in French before returning his attention to his “guest”.

“Sorry,” she offered as she stuffed her mouth, “can’t wait for you. My baby’s hungry.”
“Our baby, Hermione…”

Twice now the intimacy of first names passed between the two expectant parents.

“Draco, we’re not lovers; we’re not friends; we’re not even true enemies anymore thanks to Voldemort. I… We don’t have a relationship and I don’t see a basis for one.”
“So you’d keep my son from me?”

Reacting to his accusation, Hermione spoke around a mouth full of roughage.

“If he wants to know — and you want him to know — about his real father, I’ll tell him. But it has to be his choice — not yours and not mine.”

In that unobtrusive way that experienced waitstaff have, their server placed a scrumptious plate before her of simple roast chicken, heady with the aroma of rosemary and basil. Circling quickly, the server’s towel-covered hand lowered a porterhouse steak — every bit of 3-inches thick and so rare that its juices changed the delft china’s windmill decoration from blue to a deep magenta — to the empty space in front of Draco.

“Excuse me, I didn’t order —” Hermione protested to the back of the retreating waiter.
“I ordered it — takes meat to breed a Quiddith player.”

His liberties, taken in her behalf, rocked Hermione back in the library-style upholstered leather chair.

“Why does this matter so much to you!? It’s not as if we’d planned to have a child together. I’d’ve thought you’d feel relief at my distance.”

His knife cubed sections of the tender beef several times before he formulated an answer.

“I could ask you why you don’t hate me.”

Hermione’s fork landed back on the thick china with a deep *clank*; Vlad stared, looking for signs she’d reached her limit — it’d been almost two hours.

“What!?”
“I don’t stutter. Why don’t you hate me? Why haven’t you hexed me into the Veil?”
“I can’t see what this has to do with —”
“Everything —” he retorted, as if that single word would retire all of her confusion, “— if you’re allowed to forgive me and what I did to you, why am I NOT allowed to care about my son?”
“That’s different. You were protecting your parents.”
“And you, Hermione. After Bellatrix tortured you… I couldn’t let Fenrir… You did nothing to deserve either...”
“I’m grateful — no, really!” she reiterated when he scoffed aloud, “Fenrir attacked Bill Weasley; he doesn’t turn but Fleur has her hands full on the full moon. You saved me from a horrible half life. That doesn’t mean you and I have a relationship. My son is the result of rape no matter how well intended; I’m not sure I’m willing to have you in our lives.”

A sip of wine lazily passed his lips. A graceful swipe of his soft lips with his napkin then a lean forward to wipe a bit of salad dressing from under her nose preceded his quiet bombshell.

“You’ll never get me to say I regret our son or that you’re his mother, Hermione.”

At the other table having to do with dragons of all types, a compassionate giant witnessed Draco’s declaration.

…....

“You are the most stubborn, defiant, difficult —”

Outside the closed oaken door to the study, three nosy adults eavesdropped using three of the newest versions of George and Fred Weasley’s extendable ears, whispering to each other during breaks in the battle on the other side of the door. Inside the closed oaken door at Malfoy Manor, Draco’s nerves set Hermione’s temper on edge.

“Me!? You DEMAND I meet you here — where I was TORTURED and RAPED — then you spring this-this… PHYSICAL EXAMINATION on me! I won’t do it!”
“Do you think she’ll agree, Molly?”
“Once he explains, she’ll see reason.”
“He’s upsetting her.”
“If memory serves, my love, you were equally irritating at this point in my confinement with Draco. It’s obvious he cares about them both.”
“Cissa, are you and Molly certain this is the best course? They don’t seem to enjoy each other’s company.”
“Your grandson made the choice, Lucius, not his grandmothers. They’ll work it out for Bali’s sake.”
“And why that ridiculous name, for Merlin’s sake? What spell did you miscast to…”
“Ahem…”

The innocent bystander interrupted the volleys.

“Should I leave?” Healer Armstrong inquired hopefully.
“YES!” “NO — if you want to see another knut from this family!”
“Malfoy, why is this necessary?”
“Because you tell me nothing about your welfare other than the completely inadequate description ‘We’re fine’ —”
“We ARE!” she screamed back, tears of frustration lining her cheeks.

Her obvious emotional distress lowered the volume and heat in his next verbal blast not one bit.

“You won’t tell me where you live! You only speak with me if I chase you down — you go DAYS without a word! You’re enormous — you look as if you could deliver in the next 10 minutes! That child’s magic knocks objects off the walls in my presence and I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK’S GOING ON!”
“If I give in — just this once — will it be the end of your meddling in our lives?”
“Not as long as I’m his father.”
“You’re NOT his father!”
“My son begs to differ.”
“It’s MY decision who his father is!”
“Afraid not, Princess. He’s a Malfoy — his magic’s stronger in my presence and you know it. You need a thorough examination by someone familiar with the Malfoy Bequest. If you’ll stop fighting me on this, I’ll pay Armstrong to answer all your questions until his ears bleed. Is it a deal?”
“He answers my questions and you come to the Burrow with me on Sunday to explain my condition.”
“Why do those cretins need to know about the Malfoy Bequest?”
“They don’t know I’m pregnant. Only Molly and Ginny know. And Charlie, of course. Your role in my ‘condition’ also remains secret, to protect you. They’re the only family I have; it’s time I told them the truth.”

The burden she shouldered from the Hobson’s choice laid on him by Voldemort — to violate her himself or to watch her violated twice by England’s most vicious werewolf as Fenrir raped and turned her in a single assault — matured Draco quicker and more effectively every day in her presence.

“Did you send them letters like mine?”

A nod; then she dropped her chin to her chest in shame at having run away from those she loved.

“Done. Now relax on the divan so Armstrong can earn his money.”

An hour saw the very thorough exam finished. Armstrong pronounced all as it should be and predicted she’d deliver in seven — not ten — weeks.

“Do you have any questions, Miss Granger?”
“How big will he be?”
“Between 11 and 13 pounds.”

She winced.

“Will I be able to deliver him… you know… that way?”
“Yes, with help from Draco.”
“DRACO?!?”
“You see, Miss Granger, Draco’s quite right. For reasons I’m unsure of at this time, all of the magical protections on pure-blood conceptions — the ‘Bequest’ — are playing out in your pregnancy. Your son knows Draco’s his father; the child’s magical abilities expand when you’re together. Because of that, he’ll require both of you to coax him from his comfortable home —”
“I’m glad ONE of us is comfortable…”
“Yes… As I was saying; it will take both of you to coax him out of his present home.”
“I could have a caesarian.”
“What’s that?” Draco snuck in during her lecture on ‘alternatives’ to magical medicine.

Too many options led away from the one he wanted for the three of them.

“A muggle medical procedure where they make an incision here —” and Hermione drew an extended finger like a knife blade across her lower abdomen.

Draco blew a brain fuse.

“They WHAT!?!? NO! ABsoLUTE-LY NOT! I will not risk EITHER of you to that BARBARIC procedure!”
“Seeing as it’s not your choice, you don’t have to worry about that, do you?”
“That child will apparate into your chest to get away from any butcher who tries that on you! You need me there, Hermione, and ‘there’ is where I intend to be.”
“I’ll invite them and Harry to the Burrow for early tea before supper. It would be good if you were there too.”
“Would we be welcome? Enough to assist Hermione and Draco?”
“If Lucius behaves himself. I’ll see to Arthur.”
“If Arthur’s insipid comments —”
“LUCIUS! You will NOT ruin this for Draco or Hermione or I will ensure you sleep in the Guest House for a year. Do you understand? I will be part of my grandson’s life with or without you!”
“You have Lucius well in hand. Until Sunday, then…”
- 3
- 4
- 5
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Balaur