AN: Thanks for reading. If you like this AU, there's more. There are three one-shots: Amortentia at Home, Slytherin Fairy Godmother, and Return of the Young Husband and one multi-chapter, Always Something. DDD
Perhaps they weren't so different from other generations of young people who had gone to war. They came through violence and death craving life, new life, and like their forebears -- like their parents who had done the same -- they wanted marriage and families while they were still very young themselves.
Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy may have been formed differently from the rest, needing more than ordinary circumstances to enlist them into wizarding Britain's new marriage and baby boom, but many of the others did not. Harry Potter was already engaged to Ginny Weasley, and Ron Weasley did not take long to discover that his desire for new life hadn't ended when Hermione left. He was, in all ways, a family man, and as soon as Lavender Brown would consent to it, he brought her back to England to marry her.
Everyone was invited.
It would be late winter, still too cold for a wedding under a tent at the Burrow, so they were to be married in a church in Rochester, where most of Lavender's family still lived.
"We can't skip it," Hermione told Malfoy when the invitation was first owled to the manor.
He sneered over the top of the book he was reading in his mother's green leather chair. "Sure we can. We've got loads of excuses. No one will expect you to be flitting around the countryside in the cold in your condition. By then, all it will take will be one look at you to give them all the excuses we need."
She waited two terrifying beats before she replied. "What is THAT supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," he stammered, sitting up quickly, closing his book. "I mean, you'll be six months pregnant by then and -- so you'll be -- so beautiful -- "
She was reaching for a book small enough to swat him with but he was filling her hands with his, lacing all of their fingers together. "Liar," she said, quick to cloud with sadness these days. New life is not easy to come by.
"Beautiful," Malfoy said again, more sincerely than defensively this time, as he ducked to kiss her. They were, after all, still newlyweds, and there wasn't much that physical affection couldn't make better by at least a little. "Don't go if you don't want to."
She sighed. "No, it's not just an invitation, it's a peace offering, from Ron and maybe from the rest of my old life too. It's an invitation to be normal again, finally. And really I can't put it off any longer. I got sick and ran away to St. Mungo's last spring, but I need to reckon with what I left behind. And frankly, we will eventually want more to our world than what we have here and in Heathgate with Mum and Dad. I mean, when does a honeymoon become a hideout?"
"Hey, we've had visitors here. And you've met up Potter and Weasley's sister in the city already."
She laughed, still melancholy. "Listen to the way you talk about them. And you weren't even with me when I met them, not even after I turned up for that ghastly dinner party at Goyle's."
He smirked. "I stand by my decision to not be within wand range of them when you told them about Perdita. However," he went on, "I'm through complaining and I'll go to the wedding with you. My hearty congratulations to Weasley for a long and happy life with a woman who isn't you couldn't be more sincere." He laid his head on her shoulder and his hand on the rising crest of her belly. "So all of them will know by now?"
"Yes, they must. And since it's not in the papers yet, I'd say they're being very kind and discreet about it."
With the changes in her size, she needed a new dress to wear to the wedding. Malfoy suggested something in green which she refused. Self-conscious, her impulse was to hide in dark colours, and she chose something in a deep purple, with a floor length skirt hung from an empire waistline, falling in rich gathers over her abdomen. It was a style in which the pregnancy might not even be noticeable at a quick glance. She wore the dress with her hair piled on top of her head, leaving her neck and most of her shoulders bare. It was something like a costume from the ballroom scenes of a Muggle movie based on a Jane Austen novel -- old-fashioned, modest. At least, it felt modest until Malfoy drew one fingertip from her ear to the edge of her shoulder in a slow, silky curve.
She wore very little jewelry, just a silver choker, Narcissa's emerald ring, and a bracelet of plastic beads spelling out "Granger," the charmed short-distance disaster alert hospital bracelet she hadn't worn since they moved into the flat in Upper Raleigh. Malfoy's matching bracelet was on his wrist too, tucked under his cuff.
Bundled in a heavy black coat, she took Malfoy's arm at the foot of the manor's grand staircase, ready to aparate to the Rochester train station she'd passed through with her parents many times before. He said he was ready but she looked him over once more.
She smoothed his eyebrows. "Malfoy, your face."
"What about it?"
"You need to fix your face. You look like you're back on trial."
"Aren't I?"
"You have to stop it. I'm not sure the Granger family cheek-kiss-fix is going to work this time, not even if I glued my lips to your face for the entire day."
"Yeah? Try it."
She laughed at him. "Don't fret. Try to think about otters and flying in the rain and shaving brushes and spectral-meter prisms and honeysuckle and sleepy fairy tales..."
It was sweet, but he could promise her nothing.
In a spinning rush, they were in Rochester, in a train station along the River Medway. They walked up the hill toward the old cathedral, into its crypt, and through to the wizarding side of the church. The wedding party was not yet in position at the altar as Hermione and Malfoy took their seats near the back of the church, rows and rows behind the Weasley family. The pipe organ filled the space with rich but gentle music. Arm in arm even as they sat in a pew, Hermione clung to Malfoy like the last of the floating wreckage of a ship that had sunk.
She didn't see Ron and Harry come in but they were suddenly there, at the altar at the head of the nave. Ron's skin was ruddy with Australian sunshine, his hair bleached almost golden. He didn't look like her Ron any more than the elegant woman with the long bare neck looked like his Hermione. All at once, the stops on the organ were pulled out, music exploding through the pipes. And for the first time, she felt movement in her belly, the baby jolted awake by the noise. She gasped but no one heard.
Lavender and her father were making their entrance. The baby turned again as Hermione rose to stand. She dropped her hand over the spot where she'd felt it but the moment had passed. She would tell Malfoy later, when it wouldn't have to be whispered.
The ceremony proceeded as they usually do, whether in storefront Canadian registry offices or ancient English churches. She hadn't seen Ron kiss Lavender in years. The blaring organ playing over it couldn't have been more fitting.
In the hall afterwards, she began the difficult work of exploring the new terrain of her old life. Ginny mercifully came to them first, greeting Malfoy with careful warmth, then cooing over how beautifully Hermione was developing into motherhood.
"Are you going to do the Muggle test where they tell you if it's a boy or girl?" she asked.
Hermione shook her head. "Mum wants me to. But I'd like to think it hardly matters so, no."
Ginny nodded. "What about names then? That must be fun. You get to pick one for a boy and one for a girl. What've you got so far?"
Hermione raised one hand, laughing. "Don't bring it up. Not unless you want to see Malfoy and me start the third wizarding war."
It was the wrong thing to say. Malfoy cringed the only way he knew how, openly. "I'm off to say hello to Madam Hooch," he said, retreating.
"Oh," Hermione called after him, still reaching for his arm as he walked away. "Don't -- don't be too long, Malfoy."
Ginny snickered. "Still not on a first-name basis then?"
"I tried using 'Draco.' It's no good," Hermione said. "Those Malfoys and their names. I can tell you now that he wants to name my baby Perdita Thuban Malfoy."
Ginny shrieked over the chatter of the noisy hall. "Oh no. Why? You won't let him, will you?"
She rolled her eyes. "That's easier said than done. Sharing a human is a complicated negotiation. Just wait until Harry starts pressing you to name some hapless baby Albus. Trust me, it's coming."
Malfoy hadn't gone anywhere near Madam Hooch. Instead, he had veered into the men's toilets and was standing over the sinks, dabbing his face with a cold, wet paper towel. His cheeks and throat were flushed and he had no idea how to fix it. The more he thought about it, meddled with it, the worse it got.
His face was hidden behind the towel when footsteps sounded behind him, hard-soled shoes on the granite floor. There was Harry Potter, the best man, reflected in the mirror with him. Even greeting him by name was complicated. "Harry" was too familiar, impossible. But "Potter" carried too much of the old, aggressive baggage of their history. It wouldn't do.
Malfoy lifted his chin and said to the mirror, "Hey."
"Hey."
They looked at each other's reflections in the glass. Malfoy must have only imagined the burning in the scar on his chest. Stop. Hermione wanted this to work, and he had to learn to want what she wanted. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and said. "Lovely service."
"Yeah. Great -- acoustics."
"Right." Malfoy turned away from the mirror. "Nice talking."
"She looks good," Potter blurted. "Happy, I mean."
"She looks nervous," Malfoy said.
"Well, she needn't be." Potter took a step toward him. "Everyone here wants nothing but the best for her, and her family."
Malfoy felt his face flushing again. Bloody Potter. Keep it together, Draco. He's not saying she needs their good wishes now that she's made the awful mistake of taking up with you. That's not what Potter said. It was simple, clumsy good will. Let it go. Breathe.
"Because through everything, all those years ago," Potter was still saying, "her family was what we thought about least of all. And we had no idea how it hurt her until St. Mungo's and Canada and -- you. But she seems better now. She got the family she wanted, no thanks to us, and -- well, thank you."
"Pleasure," Malfoy said, nearly smiling, nodding one last time, leaving to rejoin the reception before anything spoiled this.
Food and wine were being served and the dancing had started, providing a means for avoiding small-group smalltalk without seeming hostile. On the crowded dance floor, Malfoy and Hermione barely moved and hardly spoke as he replayed the conversation with Potter in his mind.
"You're smiling," she said. "What have you done?"
The smile vanished as Lavender and Ron jostled against them. "Oi, Malfoy," Ron said. "Have the honor of a dance with the bride, would you."
Lavender was smirking at him, pulling his elbow, lifting his hand away from Hermione's waist. "Come on, Draco," she said. "Let's leave them to it."
Ron mimed a small bow, extending his hand to Hermione. "Madam Malfoy?"
She took it. "Monsieur Lavender?"
"At your service."
She grinned but tensed when he touched her waist, so close to the baby.
Two glasses of wine ago, he might not have said, "Blimey, so you really are..."
"Yes, it'll be here by June."
"Wow."
"Yes, Ronald, wow. And congratulations to you as well."
"Thanks. Unbelievable she gave me a second chance, isn't it?"
They were dancing with each other, but not looking at each other. They watched their spouses instead. "Second chances," Hermione echoed. "It's maudlin but, yes, I hate to think where any of us would be without second chances."
Ron snorted. "What do you reckon the two of them are talking about?"
She laughed too. "Heaven knows. Poor darlings. Go on and trade me back."
"Alright then."
"Ron," she said as he steered her in the direction of Lavender's flowing white dress. "Thank you for inviting us. You will always be one of the best people I know. Thank you for inviting me to see you like this."
In the middle of his wedding dance floor, Ron Weasley was hugging her. "Nah, let me thank you," he said, "for fixing you, and fixing us."
He let her go, turning to Lavender and swallowing her in a snog, the dance floor roaring with cheers. The groom's public display of amicability toward his ex was readily adopted, with great relief, by the rest of the wedding guests. Hermione's presence here did not feel like it used to, but there was something wonderfully normal about being back in the company of the people who had raised her -- teachers, old friends, Order of the Phoenix alumni, and the Weasley family themselves.
"How are you, Hermione?" Molly Weasley came to ask her, with the knowing edge of someone who had been through pregnancy herself. She eyed Hermione's figure. "You still don't have much in the way of bulk. Typical for the first go. How are you feeling, honestly?"
She was answering Mrs. Weasley's questions about the frequency of her trips to the toilet when her bracelet began to pulse against her wrist. Looking around the room, she couldn't see Malfoy anywhere.
No, not again. Not when everything was going so well.
She excused herself and let the growing strength of the signal in the bracelet lead her out of the hall and into the cold of the churchyard, across the street, and onto the green at the base of Rochester's old castle ruins.
"Malfoy?" she called into the dark garden.
"Here." He was behind her, sliding her coat over her shoulders, closing his arms around her and the baby.
"What's wrong? Why aren't you inside?"
"Nothing's wrong," he said, finally indulging in kissing her neck. "I was just thinking that I'd never properly enjoyed your skills in astronomy. And now here we are in this lovely open space, on a clear night in late winter -- it's the perfect time for you to find Draco."
"Draco," she repeated, clearing her throat, raising her wand like a baton. "Here we have the Little Dipper, and there we have the Big Dipper, so coiled between and around them, is Draco."
He swayed against her. "Good girl."
She took his hand, settled it over the spot on her abdomen where she'd felt the baby move earlier. "One of its stars, that one," she went on, "it used to be the pole star. But then things changed. The earth moved and changed, and now the true north star," she tracked through the sky with her wand, "is there."
"And look," he continued. "Look at the way Draco is tipped. Summer is coming, the season Draco spends upside down before righting itself again in the winter."
"Always righting itself," she said, looking over her shoulder at him as he cradled her from behind, kissing his cold cheek with warm lips. "How could I not love it?"
He hummed a laugh against her throat. "All these stars -- are they just for looking at to you? You with your scoffing at divination, with your animosity for a mother-author or anything that controls us against our will?"
"He asks as I stand here with an unplanned, unwilled pregnancy," she huffed.
His hand moved over her belly, beneath her coat on her satiny dress. The baby sensed it and shifted, too faintly for Draco to know it. He spoke into her ear. "The pregnancy isn't something that happened against our will. It just happened according to some better, finer will of ours, something that gave us what we wanted before we knew what exactly it was."
Again she kissed his face as he leaned over her shoulder -- his cheek and then his mouth, softly and sweetly, with just enough heat to banish all thought of going back to the wedding. She would take him home instead. But first, she said, "All these stars. If divination did work, there wouldn't be only one star dictating everything, like a single author. Even in the most ludicrous of astrologies, that's never how it works. Look at them, Malfoy. There are millions of stars, all of them part of our lives. If each one was an author of our story, there would have to be some that loved us enough to write us stories with an ending like this."
*************************************************************
Pollux Timothy Granger Malfoy was born exactly one week before the summer solstice, barely missing his father's birthday. He was a tiny boy with silky brown hair and grey eyes that darkened when he cried for his mother. She called him simply Poll, especially around his Muggle grandparents who spelled his name Paul.
When he was still newly born, Poll's parents took him to St. Mungo's Hospital to meet his other grandmother. She held him and smelled him and wept reverent tears over his perfect little form, as pure as anything she'd ever seen.
By the time this grandmother was discharged and allowed to return to life with her husband in Malfoy Manor, Poll and his parents lived in London in a flat of their own, closer to the laboratory where his parents had begun their research on magical intervention in memory.
Sometimes at night, his tummy would ache and his father would pace the floor with Poll's tiny body against his shoulder. He would have preferred to sleep in his parents' bed, between their bodies, every minute of every night. But Draco Malfoy's indulgence of his son ended where his wife began.
On one such night, he laid the baby in the cot, and got back into bed near dawn as grey light slowly suffused through the darkness. He could hear rain against the roof, and could see the contours of Hermione's face as she turned, murmuring, "Is he up again?"
"No, he's fine."
She nestled her face into his chest. "I can smell him on you. He's been up."
"He's sleeping now."
She moved even closer to him, and he took her in his arms in the warm pocket beneath the blankets. She called him Draco -- it had been coming easier to her since the night they watched constellations in the Rochester park. "Happy anniversary, love," she said.
He smiled in the dimness. "Yes, it is."