The Baby Project

Chapter Sixteen:

'She couldn't take one more day,
home was more a prison now.
Independence called out,
she had to get it.
A fight was all she needed,
to give her reason.
She slammed the door with no goodbye,
she knew it was time.'


Dumbledore walked into the Hospital Wing, taking in the scene before him.

He had buggered the birthing dates up.

Through no one's fault but his own, of course.

So now there was a maddening rush of student complaints heading his way.
He had not meant to mess it all up for them...but he was a man; in matters
that concerned the female anatomy, he couldn't be right all the time.

So he had apologised to all of the students, going to their beds and
congratulating them on their success.

He had to stop in amazement however, when he came upon the sight of
Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger;


Draco was pacing up and down beside the bed, carrying the baby in his arms.
It was the only thing he could think of doing.

"She's really not going to calm down, Malfoy" Hermione told him, wincing
whenever their babies shrill cry started to get louder.

"Well, do you have any better ideas?" He asked her, still continuing his
pacing, whilst rocking her slowly.

"Give her to me, I think I might know what's wrong with her"

Draco agreed, attempting the hand over the baby that was no wriggling in his
arms.

Draco watched curiously, as Granger drew the baby to her chest.

Hermione hesitated for a moment, feeling uncomfortable.
She didn't really want to be doing this in front of Malfoy...but at the end
of the day, her baby's needs came first.

Then she did something that shocked him to the core.

She pulled her top down.

And her full breast popped out.

"Granger!" He said sternly, turning his head away. "Have a bit of modesty!"

Hermione gave him a look.
She knew the baby was hungry.
She hadn't had her feed since she was born.

"It's perfectly natural, Malfoy" She told him.

But there was still a blush creeping into her cheeks.

Hermione brought Airyn's head to her breast.
Professor McGonagall had told her that she would have to be patient...babies
would take time to latch on to the nipple.

But apparently Hermione didn't have that problem.
Airyn had sort out her nipple almost immediately, taking her much needed
milk.
She knew that she should have expected it to be painful, but Hermione hadn't
realised just how sensitive her breasts were.
If she was going to continue to do this, then she hoped that it would get
easier.

'Or less painful' She thought to herself, wincing slightly.

Draco hesitated before glancing at them.
He couldn't help but feel embarrassed.

Not because of the situation.
But because of the guilty thoughts that had flashed through his mind when
Granger had exposed her full, well rounded breast.

It wasn't right.
This was supposed to be an innocent act...
and yet those feelings would not go away.

Dumbledore smiled to himself as he watched them.
Miss Granger seemed to be quite the natural...

But Mr. Malfoy had surprised him the most.
His involvement with the child thus far had been uncooperative, according
to Minervra.
But judging by the scene that had played out in front of him; he was sure
that Mr. Malfoy had been having a change of heart...


"Is everything okay, Miss Granger?" Madame Pomfrey asked, as she bustling
over.

Hermione nodded.
"It is now"

The medi-witch looked down at the little girl and smiled brightly.
"She's beautiful" She told both parents.

"She takes after me" Draco piped up, still not daring to look at Granger.

Hermione rolled her eyes.
"You wish"

He didn't.
He knew that Airyn was going to look exactly like her mother.

And he suddenly found himself proud of that fact.

'Jesus Christ, Draco' He thought, scolding himself. 'What are you
doing to yourself?

He had promised himself that any casual feelings that he had for Granger
would be gone once the baby was born...
now they suddenly seemed stronger.

In an admirable way.

Hermione seemed lost in the moment.
Everyone had said that the first feed made the bond between mother and child
inseparable...
and they weren't wrong.

"If you need anything, I should be somewhere around the room" Pomfrey said,
before leaving the bedside and making her way around the room.

Hermione suddenly looked at Malfoy.
"I need my bag" She told him.

The one she had packed the other day...extra prepared just in case something
like this happened.

Draco nodded.
He knew she wasn't in any fit state to get it herself.
"Where is it?"

"In my room" She answered, putting her eyes back on their daughter.

Draco said his goodbyes and made his way to the Hospital doors.

_____________________________________


"I trust everything is going well, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked her,
taking Draco's seat next to her bed.

Hermione nodded.
She was still beside herself.
And she couldn't manage to tear her eyes away from her beautiful little
girl.

"And Mr. Malfoy?" He asked her curiously.

"He's better" She told him, a smirk playing on her lips.

Dumbledore nodded, understanding what she was saying.


"And the name of the baby?"

"Airyn Granger-Malfoy"

"Very pretty"

Hermione looked up at him and smiled.

She opened her legs under the hospital blanket, and lay baby Airyn between
them, playing with her tiny little feet absentmindedly.

"Hermione!"

She instinctively looked to where the voice was coming from.
She saw Harry and Ron waving over at her.

Her face lit up with a magnificent smile.

The two boys left their beds and walked over to hers, their eyes brimming
with their own personal pride.

They both sat on each side of her bed.
She felt surrounded by comfort.

"Awwwww....she's gorgeous!" Harry told her, fiddling with her fingers.

Harry looked up at Dumbledore and smiled.
"Everyone's really happy at the moment"

Dumbledore nodded in understanding.

He got up from his place, smiling at the students before departing from
their presence.
He knew enough to be getting on with...for now.

Ron was looking at the baby intently.
"It can't be Malfoy's baby" Ron told her.

She looked at him curiously.

"It doesn't have any devil horns"

Hermione felt a weird pang in her heart.
For some reason, she felt like she needed to defend the Slytherin...

But she ignored it.
And she ignored Ron's comment, too.

"She's not an it, Ron" She told him pointedly.

"Ron's just sore because Parvati kicked him out of the room, halfway through
giving birth"

Hermione laughed.
"Why on earth would she kick you out?"

Ron looked embarrassed.
"It was all the blood and oozing stuff...it made me feel all woozy"

Hermione sniggered.
Very fortunately for her, Malfoy had been a rather surprisingly big help.

Now that she thought about it...
She should have felt embarrassed about the situation.

She had him calming her down..whispering into her ear...squeezing his hand
when the pain got too much...

"-but Millicent wants to call him Freddie"

Hermione was knocked out of her thoughts.
"Oh god!" She said, smiling at them both. "I completely forgot to ask you
about your children!"

Harry gushed.
He obviously wanted to talk about the baby as much as he could.

"We had a boy" He told her, smiling widely. "I want to call him Jack, but
Millicent said that he suits Freddie much more"

Hermione turned her head to Ron.
"And you?"

"A boy and a girl" He told her, smiling a little. "Benny and Joon...after
some bloody Muggle movie that Parvati fell in love with...."

"Ah" Hermione said, knowingly.

Parvati's Johnny Depp obsession...poor Ron.

"I want to see them" Hermione said happily, stroking her babies little
button nose with the tip of her index finger.

Airyn was wriggling around on the cover, her eyes now beginning to focus
more so than before.
She seemed to be trying to follow the voices that were talking around her...

"How has Malfoy been since she was born?" Harry asked her, reaching out to
grab her little foot.

He hoped that Hermione realised just how beautiful her daughter was.
It was very weird seeing Hermione interacting with a baby...especially a
baby that was one of her own.
It made her look like a mature adult.

"He's been very..." Whats the word?...tender? Happy? unlike his usual
self?..."good" She answered.

Ron didn't really want to believe her.
This was Malfoy...Malfoy was never good.

Harry knew it was true.
He may be naive himself sometimes...but he knew better of Hermione.
And if she said that he was doing ok, then he saw no reason to not believe
her.

"Pomfrey had told Millicent that she can go back to the apartment tomorrow"
Harry told her. "They've given us all two weeks off...and then we are back
in for two weeks before we break up for Christmas"

Hermione nodded, thanking him for the information.

Hopefully she could take Airyn back to the Common Room tomorrow.


_________________________


Draco looked around the room, taking it all in.

'So this is where all the baby stuff went?' he thought to himself,
looking around Granger's room.

There was a small armoire for the baby, stationed next to Granger's own
wardrobe.
The cot was in the corner by her bed...and the little changing table stood
by her dresser.

The dresser held nothing but baby bottles and baby-suckers...
In any other girls room, a dresser would have all kinds of perfumes and
smelly bath products...
But not Granger's.

Draco felt slightly guilty.
He could have prepared his own room a little better.
He only had the Moses basket...maybe he would have to order some more things
for little Airyn, if she was going to be comfortable in his room.

Draco saw something out of the corner of his eye, lying on her bed.

Granger's journal.

She would probably need that...probably want to write about the labour and
whatever else she thought was necessary to waffle on about.

Draco moved to her bed and picked it up.
His senses were suddenly assaulted by the smell of Peaches...mixed in with
another fruit...might have been mango.

'Granger...'

His thoughts swam with that image of her...
Her breast innocently feeding their baby.

Draco shook his head.
He did not need those types of thoughts.

Just because she was now the mother of his child for the next eight
months...it didn't mean that he had to start thinking about her in a
different way...

Draco fingered the leather binding on the journal...
Curiosity suddenly replacing the feelings he was trying to push down.

Should he?
Or was that breeching her privacy?

But, why should he care?
Its not like she would ever find out about it...

Draco slowly opened the cover of the journal, his fingers sifting through
the pages...looking for the mention of his name...

'Christ...every other page has at least one bad thing said about me!'
He thought idly, flicking through the first couple of pages...

'The baby kicked for the first time today

Now THAT was interesting...

...I thought I could share it with my friends, but I decided to keep it
to myself considering Ron had better things to discuss. I wasn't planning on
telling anyone, especially not Malfoy...considering he probably wouldn't
have wanted to know.
But I was wrong...
From the moment he touched my stomach, I felt something. Nothing major; just
a stupid little feeling, like he was finally coming to terms with everything
that was happening to us...

Draco flicked through the pages again; desperate to read more of Granger's
thoughts.

But why?
Why was he suddenly so interested?
He hadn't been before, so what had changed now?

Airyn... He thought to himself.
Yes...she had changed everything now.

...Damn that massage!

Draco smirked, looking down at the neat handwriting in the journal.

It was so relaxing, I could have gone to sleep right there! Not that I
plan on telling Malfoy that...
For some reason, he's been different lately. I can't put my finger on it,
but I think it might just be the fact that he had accepted his duty now.
I couldn't help but admire him when we saw the Ultrasound of the
baby...something had finally clicked inside of him when he saw our child
lying there inside of me...
It made me realise that he might just be ready to do this...

Granger...complimenting him?
Now there was a different side of her he had never seen before.

He contemplated for a moment.
When exactly was it when they had decided to finally accept their truce, and
just be there for each other and the baby?

Was it a mutual decision, or did it just happen naturally?
Nothing was sticking out in his mind...he couldn't exactly place the day...

But it could have been the moment when he had felt the baby moving
underneath Granger's warm skin...
Or seeing the the image of their beautiful little girl moving on the
projector....
Or maybe it was the moment that Airyn had been delivered into the world...

Maybe it was all three, jumbled into one mixed feeling of suppressed
happiness.

He knew he had never felt happiness like this before.
It was selfless...and it scared him.

He had realised;

As soon as Airyn had been born, he had fallen in love with her.
Her tiny features...her hair...her big baby blues...

But what about Granger?
Was she an acquaintance, now?

Did he think of her like he would a friend?

'Goyle is a friend, and you don't go round thinking of his
man-breasts...'

Draco shook his head at the mental image.

Sure enough.
Draco was feeling something for Granger that he never thought he would feel
in a million years;

Respect.

But he couldn't quite place that other feeling...
The one that niggled at him whenever he thought about her holding their
daughter in her arms for the first time...the way she had squeezed his hand
during her labour, taking a silent comfort in the fact that he was there...

Draco realised that other feeling.
All of a sudden, it knocked into him.

He was feeling an attraction to Hermione Granger.

A strange attraction that he didn't think he should explore any further...
but the seeds had already been planted in his mind...and once they were
there, they would only grow stronger...

'Dammit all to hell...' He thought with a sigh.

This was only going to go downhill from here....

Draco finally picked up her bag and made his way towards her door.

If he stayed there any longer, he knew he would end up dwelling on his
feelings even further.

'No good can come of this....' He thought to himself, shutting the
door behind him.

Oh, how wrong could he be?



___________________________




A/N: I don't know about you, but i dont think i did my best with this chapter, so i'm sorry if it was short....BUT the next chapter is ALOT better, i PROMISE you!!!!! It's just starting to roll now (after 15 other chapters of drivel lmao!)




KATES:
I am honoured that you love my work!! Reviews like yours make me write alot faster lmao!!


*SOMEONE (AND FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I CAN'T REMEMBER WHO...COULD HAVE BEEN SAM)ASKED ME IF THEY ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE SEX YET...*
My answer to that is NO...but they don't know that HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!!!!!!!!
***^^^Spoiler, just incase you wondered lmao*


LEXY MALFOY and KAY-RAGE:
I wouldn't worry about Neville...Pansy will get whats coming to her hehehe!!


MOOFACE:
Thankyou for reviewing! I'm glad that you read this fic, even though it was recced by someone else (Lexy Malfoy, perhaps? lol). I'm happy that you enjoyed it!!!

BUFFYXO:
I AM A HUGE BUFFY FAN!! (Spike and Buffy was my pairing...and always will be lmao). I love th ship,and i loved the program!! Great stuff!!!!!


BECKY:
The babies name is pronounced ERIN...But it is spelt AIRYN (if that makes sense lol). Thankyou for asking though, so i could clear it up for you!!!






Thankyou for all of your reviews and support, and i hope that you continue to enjoy this series!!!!

If you keep it up, then i certainly will lmao!!

THANKYOU!!!!!!!
xxx