Hermione Granger was sixteen years old the first time she kissed Draco Malfoy on the lips. It was awkward and insecure, a clashing of lips, tongue, teeth. Still, when they parted she giggled like the schoolgirl she was, and leaned her forehead against his.
“That was good, right?” She whispered against his still parted lips.
“Mmhmm.” He sighed back. “It was good.”
They’d kept their relationship a secret from even their closest friends, only taking moments when they knew they wouldn’t be caught.
Hermione would borrow the Map, just in case. If Harry ever found out, she’d tell him she was going to the library. He always believed her. It wasn’t hard when every time she’d said it for the last five years, she’d been telling the truth.
The war came and went, taking the last of their innocence with them.
Hermione told Draco he could go to hell days after the Final Battle, in a moment of fury and pure rage, the day where she was tortured fresh in her mind, her arm still bleeding from the cursed wound.
He showed up to her flat less than twenty four hours later and she fell into his arms, sobbing.
“I love you, I love you, I’m so sorry, I love you, I love you.” Hermione cries into his embrace.
“I know, love, I know. I’m never letting you go. Hate me all you wish, but hate me from right here. In my arms, where you belong.” Draco murmurs against the top of her head.
It takes a year for them to get to a place where they’re not waking up every single night convinced something’s going to happen. Another for their friends to be remotely okay with their relationship, and one more until The Prophet stops being outraged at Draco being pardoned of all crimes. He didn’t torture, maim, or kill anyone, Hermione had argued at his Trial. And he was underage. In the end, they couldn’t find anything to pin on him, especially after his Mother gave the memory of him being forced to take the Dark Mark.
On their five year anniversary, he takes her to Hogsmeade. Madam Rosemerta gives him a small smile, a testament to how far he’s come in the years since they were in Hogwarts. He’d made his apologies, made them sincerely and with so much obvious regret the Wizarding World couldn’t help but accept them.
After all, how could they not if the Muggleborn War Hero, their Golden Girl, had accepted them long before they were offered?
This is where he gets down on one knee, his mother’s wedding ring in hand, and proposes.
“Hermione Jean Granger, I love you. I have loved you since I was a child who didn’t know what love was. I have loved you through a war, through the aftermath of the war, through hell from the public eye, and you have loved me far more fiercely than I ever dared hope. I want you to be my forever. Will you give me that honor, and marry me?” Draco is whispering by the end of his speech, terrified Hermione is going to say no.
He should’ve known better, of course, because before he ever finishes the question, she’s sticking her hand out and screaming a very enthusiastic yes.
They find out Hermione is most likely infertile a month later. Hermione is devastated, and although he doesn’t tell her, Draco is too. He had always been terrified to have children, but he wanted them with Hermione. They hadn’t been trying for a child, but they hadn’t been not trying so it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise when they were told after five years that she most likely won’t be able to keep a pregnancy. A side effect of the torture Bellatrix had inflicted on her.
Draco thinks it’s a cruel form of punishment.
Hermione just thinks he’s full of shit.
They get married on a hot day in July two years later, the humidity causing Hermione’s hair to puff up, and sweat to drip from Draco’s forehead. Everyone is shifting in their seats, and Ginny makes a comment about her tits feeling like the swamp Fred and George made in her fourth year. It’s quiet after that, everyone reminiscing on the people they’d lost. The people who should be there when Hermione is standing in the biggest, puffiest, white gown her mother could find.
“You only get married once, my dear.” Her mum fretted when they went wedding dress shopping, “We must make it count.” She didn’t mention Hermione’s father, who had suffered brain damage when they tried to reverse the memory spell and died in St. Mungo’s days later. They didn’t mention a lot of things from the years after the war.
They find out Hermione is pregnant two months after the wedding.
“Hermione, my love, where are you?” Draco yells as he steps through the Floo two minutes after his shift at the Ministry ends. It took him three years to even be considered for a position within the Ministry, but now he’s an established Auror, working beneath only Harry, who is the head of the department.
“In here.” Hermione yells from their bedroom. The smile on her face can be heard even through the walls of their flat.
Draco steps through the doorway to their bedroom and chokes out a sob as he reads the words printed on a set of Quidditch jersey’s.
“Malfoy 01, Malfoy 02, Baby Malfoy 03.”
One is large. One is small. One is only large enough to fit a newborn baby.
“Please, let this be real.” He whispers, tears welling in his eyes. “Please, Hermione, don’t be fucking with me right now.”
“Do the charm, Draco.” Hermione encourages, her brown eyes matching his grey ones as a single happy tear slips past her defenses. “Do it.”
He does, and finally falls apart as he throws himself to his knees in front of her, pressing kisses to her still-flat stomach. “Hi, little Malfoy.” He babbles. “It’s daddy. I love you already. I’m not going to be anything like your Grandfather, I promise. I’ll be better. So much better.”
Hermione doesn’t even try to stop the flow of tears falling onto his hair.
In the early hours of May first, Hermione’s water breaks. This sends the couple into a tailspin, as it’s too early. Six weeks too early.
They rush to St. Mungo’s, only to wait over eighteen hours before Hermione can begin pushing. She pushes for hours, exhausting herself more by the minute.
Minutes after midnight, on May second, the world welcomes Cassiopeia Hermione Malfoy. Five pounds, two ounces, of pure wrath.
Draco falls in love instantly.
Hermione insists on holding her daughter before anything other than the weighing and vitals check. She smiles at her daughter with all of the love of a mother who has finally gotten her miracle, and Draco can’t help but think that seeing his wife breastfeed his daughter for the first time is the most precious thing he will ever experience.
The healer takes a picture at the behest of Hermione, Cassie still covered in the white mess and blood, and then takes the newborn to the other side of the room to begin wiping her down.
However, moments later, the entire world dissolves into hell.
Hermione stops breathing twenty seven minutes after she gives birth. Her heart stops less than ten minutes later, and none of the healers can figure out why.
On the sixth anniversary of the Final Battle, Draco Malfoy loses his wife and the mother of his child.
“A freak accident.” Draco hears them say in the hallway after they wheel her to the morgue downstairs. “Nothing we tried worked. No magic, no muggle cpr. Nothing.”
Draco doesn’t remember months after. He remembers feeding and changing Cassie. He remembers holding her constantly, sobbing silently while she sleeps. He remembers throwing up every night when he wakes up expecting Hermione’s warmth beside him, only to go wake up Cassie by checking on her to make sure she’s still breathing.
But, it’s almost like it didn’t happen to him. It’s happening to someone else. Someone other than him. Anyone other than him.
He’s on the outside looking in.
People come and go. Narcissa and Jean come to stay for weeks at a time, but Draco never lets go of Cassie for longer than a few minutes. She does tummy time on his chest. He changes her while she’s settled between his calves, part of him always touching her. Making sure she’s still breathing, making sure she’s okay.
When she starts becoming mobile, Draco feels like his heart is going to shatter. He has to let her go then, let her find her balance and let her crawl.
He spends thirty six straight hours making sure his entire home is baby-proofed. Every ninety degree angle has a cushioning charm, anything smaller than a toilet paper roll is gotten rid of. Everything gets a permanent sticking charm to the walls so it can’t fall over if she tries to climb.
He was looking forward to teaching her how to ride a broom, but he can’t bring himself to even buy one for fear of her hurting herself.
Cassie is two years old when Ginny Weasley finally convinces him to see a mind healer.
The mind healer helps, to a degree. He starts being able to leave Cassie for the night with her Grandmothers, although it takes two more years before it gets to that point.
He begins journaling when Cassie is five. It helps more than the mind healing does. He feels like he’s talking to Hermione when he does it, and it allows him a little bit of reprieve.
He finds comfort in his friends again, going out for a night or two here or there.
Women hit on him all the time, but he doesn’t pay attention to them.
Cassiopeia is thirty-six years old when she loses her father.
“A flying accident.” Are the whispers. “Such a tragic accident.”
Accident, accident, accident.
But Cassie knows.
Her father had never been right after he’d lost her mother.
Their love was something out of the story books. A fairy tale come to life. She grew up on the stories of them, from her mother punching her father in their third year, to her father proposing, to them finding out about her.
The only picture of the three of them stayed beside her fathers bed for the entirety of his life. He would hold it when he thought Cassie was unaware and cry, whispering his love for her mother over and over and over.
She thought she heard him whispering, “I hate you, Hermione, but I want to hate you with you in my arms,” one time. It didn’t make sense, until she found their journals. Journals from her mother, dating all the way back to her first year at Hogwarts until the day of her birth.
My water broke less than two minutes ago. I’m about to go tell Draco. Her last entry said. I can’t wait to hold my angel. I love her so much already, although I could do without the constant kicking my ribs. She’s going to be so brilliant, and beautiful, and perfect.
Five years are lost to the abyss. Then her fathers journals begin.
They’re a sea of darkness, the entries about Cassie being the only light to find.
She reads about the first few years of her life like Draco was writing down everything he could remember so he would never forget. He wrote about sending her off to Hogwarts, and being terrified when he did so. Cassie hadn’t known that, he’d never shown it. She reads about his struggle with depression while she was gone at school, the way he would lay in bed for days on end screaming for Hermione to come back to him.
The journals end two days before his ‘flying accident.’
His last journal entry is simple.
She is, Hermione. She is brilliant, and beautiful, and perfect.
I’m so sorry, Cassiopeia Hermione Malfoy. Daddy loves you so much.
And Cassie knows. And she doesn’t fault him one bit.
Her father was her mother’s love for her entire life, and her mother was her father’s for his.
There would never be another for either of them.
Cassie finds out she’s pregnant the night after she finishes her parents journal, and although everything is fine, and James Sirius Potter is the proudest dad in the world, she still has a healer take a picture of them with her son.
Draco James Potter.