“What does it say?”
“It doesn’t say anything yet Granger, it’s only been 42 seconds.”
Hermione huffs an incredulous laugh, the only indication in these last 42 seconds that she even noticed Draco was there and if she kept pacing for any longer she was likely to wear a hole through the musty tile of the bathroom floor.
This is where Draco currently found himself. He figured at least one of them should remain grounded and if it clearly wasn’t going to be Granger then it had to be him. He was actually making quite an incredible show of being calm and collected. This stage is called shock, he thinks.
“How long has it been now?”
“53 seconds Granger, would you like to sit?”
She shakes her head furiously, an army of wayward curls whipping this way and that obscuring her face from view and muffling her barely there whispers, “No, no…” like a mantra she was repeating to herself.
“Really, because I think it’d do us both some good and I also don’t think you’re winning any favor with the innkeeper downstairs seeing as you’re working away at what’s left of some perfectly good tiling—”
“Nuh…nuhh.”
She actually fucking grunts at him in response and at this point, he’s wondering if this is even Granger at all or if he’s picked up some feral street creature on the short trip here from the muggle shops just meters away.
“Granger,”
“No-”
“Hermione.”
As if awoken from a trance, she grinds to a halt.
Slowly, she reveals to him a blotchy, tear-stained face emerging steadily from behind a curtain of copious hair. Hair he’d once run his fingers through, hair he’d once grabbed in fistfuls, hair that mere hours ago had been smothering him in his sleep.
With her face now in full view Draco could see how…not there she looked. He didn’t know any other way to describe it. Wide brown eyes framed by thick charcoal-colored lashes and furrowed brows looked through him, not at him. Soft full lips red from her worry quivered in their downturned expression making her look small and meek.
It was fucking terrifying.
“Hermione, please,” he murmured low in his now crouched position as if approaching a skittish cat.
He managed to grab hold of her arms and maneuver her somewhat into a proper sitting position before she slumped against the bathroom’s stark white clawfoot tub.
He would have been happy like that. Just sitting there next to her as the clock ticked away. They had the time, considering they'd been sent on this mission by the order expected to be gone for several weeks. But the box had said 5-8 minutes. He figured they’d give it the full eight, just to be sure.
He'd grown quite comfortable in the silence, reciting potions ingredients and muggle song lyrics he'd been forced to learn by Granger's continuous abuse of their shared order-approved radio until she finally spoke.
“I was a horrible child.”
“Hm," he muttered, soft and confused but urging her to continue.
“To my parents, I mean. I was just- awful. I remember I would hole myself up in my room for hours and hours and just pray to whoever was listening that my “real” parents, the ones who were like me would come steal me away in the night and tell me that everything was going to be okay. That they could make things move without touching them and, when they were upset things tended to catch fire at random as well but now it was okay because now we have each other.” She buried her face briefly in her hands and continued. “and gods I was so- so selfish and afraid and they were so patient with me and so understanding and I just- it was never enough for me. I guess — she continued in a derisive tone — I’m afraid of the karma.”
In the moment the only thing Draco felt like he could do properly was hold her tighter. “I don’t think I ever really knew my parents as people.”
he paused, unsure if he should continue but the slightest inclination of her head so she could view the slide of his face properly spurred him to continue. “I think —he faltered— I know they loved me and I loved them but only the way anyone else could’ve. There seemed to be this wall up between them and me, I’d always just felt like something that belonged to them, not one of them. I don’t know,” he winced, almost shaking the thought from his head. “Does that sound completely daft?”
He looked down to find her staring up at him with an entirely lucid and deathly serious look on her face. “No, I understand.”
Seeing her herself again Draco couldn’t help but curve his lips downward into a rueful grin. Gently he intertwined their fingers and hummed softly.
“You’re being suspiciously calm about all of this,” she spoke sardonically.
He sighed, “Yes Granger, you've unveiled my years in the making master plot to infiltrate the order, befriend, romance, then impregnate you, all in the name of leaving you incapacitated to jeopardize the greater war effort.”
She pouted mockingly, “Sounds like something you would do.” In a small, bitter voice.
“I’m glad you think so highly of me, unfortunately, even I am not so cruel as to construct a plot as deviant as this.“
“Draco,” she started in a sobering tone. “I can’t be pregnant. We’re so close I can feel it, this war— this war could be over by fall. I have to be at one hundred percent, Ron, and Harry, they need me.”
“I am aware.” He retorts bitterly.
She sniffs, “I can’t be pregnant I can’t, I can’t be anyone’s mother not now not ever not…”
she whispers the last part. So quiet he’d miss it if he hadn’t been listening so intently.
“Not ever?” It’s his turn to sound small.
“What?” She looks up, narrowing her watery eyes.
“You don’t want children ever?”
“What? No. I mean, I don’t know I don’t want to think about forever right now I don’t even know what I want for breakfast tomorrow let alone what I want to do with the rest of my life. A child is forever, you know it’s not something you can decide on a whim, it’s a person you have to commit yourself to care for as long as you live-
“I know how parenting works, Granger.”
“Having a baby with- with me would mean being connected to me forever.”
“Hm.”
“Hm,” She mocks scathingly, “is that all you have to say? Does that not worry you?”
“I suppose worse things have happened.”
She scoffs and turns away, “You are ridiculous.”
“Granger,” he conceded, “look at me, please.”
She made no protest as he brushed a few rogue curls away from her face sliding down firmly to her eye level and placing his chin in her lap.
“One day I want to have so many babies with you it’d make Molly Weasley sick.”
“Gross,” she erupted in a burst of meteoric laughter.
He continued, stifling his overly salacious grin, “I’m serious, but I know you. And I know you wouldn’t want to raise a child in this. And I know that whatever that strange pink little muggle stick says I will be here with you no matter what happens. Do you understand?”
She nods, pulling their joint hands up to her cheek to wipe away a streak of stale tears and catch an oncoming current of fresh ones.
For a moment I looked like she might say something until an ear-splitting buzzing from Draco’s wand cut their comfortable silence in half.
The eight minutes were up.