Pictures

Draco spilled out of the floo network after Hermione and saw her waiting for him near the admissions desk. Not wasting any time, he ran over to her and listened as she gave the nurse their names and signed the necessary paperwork to be admitted. As soon as she was done, she leaned against the wall as another contraction swept over her body. He watched as her belly visibly shifted under the empire-waist dress she wore. He was on her in a flash, picking her up and holding her to him. Her face was flushed and her eyes were bright and she was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen before in his life.

“Put me down,” she hissed. “People are staring.” He grinned and pressed his face into her hair. This was the absolute best and most exciting moment of his life.

“You’re really staying?” he asked. “With me? In the manor?”

“Yes! But if you want another month of sleeping at alone, go right on ahead and keep holding me. Actually, you don’t have to put me down, just take me to a bed and get me some good potions and I’ll do anything you ask,” she groaned as something in her abdomen shifted.

Fortunately the nurse came back at that moment and led them to a private room where Hermione was hooked up to a monitor while the nurse went to fetch Healer Howard. Draco sat next to her in the bed, holding her and rubbing her shoulders. His head was reeling. He’d expected her to be horrified by the pictures she found and he wasn’t sure why she hadn’t left, disgusted by his obsession.

Healer Howard came smiling into the room. Her smile faltered slightly when her gaze came to rest on him, however. He didn’t care. Let the woman think what she wanted. He didn’t owe her any apologies.

“Okay, Mrs. Malfoy, let’s take a look at you and then we can get you prepped for surgery.” Hermione nodded as the woman helped her out of her underwear and into the stirrups at the end of the bed. “Oh dear! I’m so sorry, dear, but we can’t take you in.”

“Why not?” they asked in unison. Draco could feel his wife tense and he did his best to remain calm.

“You are fully dilated, my dear. A few good pushes and you’ll be meeting your oldest son.” The medi-witch put on sterilized gloves and used her wand to point at Hermione’s lower back. Immediately, Draco felt her relax.

“But- but I’m not ready for a natural birth! I skipped over that part in all the books because you said they would be coming by C-section!” she looked at Draco and he saw fear in her eyes.

“It’s okay, love,” he said. “If anyone can do this, you can. Where’s that Gryffindor courage?”

“It’s sitting at home with all the unread chapters on natural childbirth! How could I do this?” She moaned as the monitor began to beep.

“You can do this, Mrs. Malfoy,” Healer Howard said. “It’s the most natural thing in the world. Your next contraction is coming up and I need you to bear down and push!”

Hermione did as she was told and Draco held her hand. She strained and moaned and the sent of blood filled the air, but before he knew it, a tiny little head was visible and following it, a tiny little body with bluish appendages slid into the world and the waiting arms of Healer Howard. He was given a slap and Aidan Malfoy howled in rage at being evicted from his mother into a freezing cold hospital room. Tears fell down Draco’s face as the nurse scourgified his son and then placed him, wrapped in a blanket, in his arms.

Abraxas and Alistair came four and nine minutes later, respectively. The nurse placed a different colored band on each infant’s foot so that the adults in the room could tell them apart. Abraxas was smaller than his brothers, but other than that, the boys were practically identical. They were fraternal triplets, but as with most babies, they were incredibly similar looking. They boys were currently sleeping in their bassinets while Hermione smiled dreamily at them from across the room. Watching her and looking over at the three newest human beings he’d ever seen in his life, Draco marveled at how he’d ever felt alone and how quickly he’d already adjusted to the thought of being a father three times over. It was as if the boys had always been there.

Deciding that now was as good a time as any, he cleared his throat and looked at her. “What made you change your mind? Was it the boys?” he asked. He felt incredibly happy at the moment, so it was best to get the news that she didn’t love him while he was still on his high of becoming a father.

“No,” she responded so softly he almost couldn’t hear her. “It was the pictures.”

“The pictures? I thought you’d be put off by them.”

“Before we go any further, I want you to tell me exactly how you feel about me. If you lie, we’ll go back to the way things were this past month.” He felt like she was looking through him.

“I- well, that is to say… I love you.” He rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants legs and looked at his feet. “It started out as just needing you. I’d never lived with anyone before and after that first night I thought I was just blackmailing you so that I could shag you right under Potter’s nose, but it became more than that. You never once tried to be coy or anything but yourself around me and I started to like it. Then I realized that you might find someone else and I’d be alone. I didn’t have any friends, not the kind you have and the only people who wanted to talk to me did so because they wanted something from me. Those last few months of Hogwarts were more about shared living space rather than sex. I wanted to be the only one you took a shower with, brushed your teeth next to and got dressed in front of, much less slept with. Then in Italy, I realized that just having you behind closed doors wasn’t enough. I wanted people to know I was with you and that you were with me. I did what I did with your brother because I wanted to help you, but also because I needed to find a way to get you to go public. I was sure you would say no and the pictures didn’t seem like enough leverage, so I made it look like I was using you. Then, I realized that one day you would leave and that scared me. It scared me more than anything in life because I couldn’t go back to what I was before. I couldn’t watch you move out or move on and I knew that one day you would unless something drastic happened. I know what I did was horrible and I manipulated you and I’m sorry for it, but I’m not sorry about them. All my life, I’ve had everything I wanted and if I didn’t have it, I could go out and buy it. You were the one thing I couldn’t buy. You weren’t impressed with money or political power and I don’t think that good looks were ever important to you. Those things I just mentioned were my only selling points. I’m selfish, manipulative, whiny and I’d been a horrible, loathsome prat to you for most of my life. Why would you stay if you didn’t have to?”

“When you found out about what I’d done, the only thing I could still hold over your head was the pictures. The only thing going through my head was that I had to keep you. I felt like you would be appalled if I told you that I would ever dare to hope that we’d have a real relationship. You didn’t value anything I had because that’s just one of your many wonderful qualities. Someone like you wouldn’t stay for someone like me. However, making you stay the way I did was awful. I couldn’t stand the way you looked at me and I couldn’t stand how unhappy you were. That’s why I burned the pictures. I love you and even if you don’t love me or want me, I just want to see you happy.”

He was shaking by the time he was done and she had tears in her eyes. He waited for her rejection with baited breath when his mother burst through the door along with the Grangers.

“Oh! My darling babies! Oh Draco, they look just like you did when you were born!” Wondering for a moment if someone had poly-juice potioned his mother, Draco stared at her in shock as she reached for Aidan, then Alistair and finally Abraxas.

“Wow, squirt, this one has hair just like you did when you were born!” Chris Granger had taken Alistair from Narcissa and Hermione’s parents engulfed them both in tearful hugs. Alistair’s hair stuck straight up in the air while his brothers’ hair was plastered to their heads.

“Mum, Dad,” Hermione began and the group finally noticed the tension in the room. “Would you guys mind giving us some alone time? You can take the babies in the other room to get to know them.”

Her mother gave her a concerned look before saying, “Okay darling, we’ll see you in a few, yeah?” Hermione nodded.

When they were alone again, Draco felt his gut drop and the blood drain from his face. Now that he couldn’t see his sons, he was suddenly, acutely aware of their absence and that she would also be absent since he had essentially released her.

“Calm down,” she said. “I know you and you’re jumping to the worst conclusion already. I’m still staying and let me tell you why. I’m staying because in those pictures I saw a girl who was intelligent, pretty, fascinating and desirable. All my life I’ve known I was intelligent and hard-working. It’s typically the first quality anyone notices about me other than my hair. It’s also, up until recently, the only thing anyone has ever valued about me. I love my friends with all my heart, but none of them, not even Viktor has ever made me feel any of those other qualities. I meant what I said to them the night we ‘debuted’ our relationship. There’s something about the pictures and the way you see me that brings out all those other qualities. I feel like all of my personal traits are brought out by you and some are even there because of you. You’re correct in the sense that you are a bit selfish and whiny and you are very cunning and manipulative, but you are also the only person in my life to want me for exactly who I am and to work hard to keep me. All the other boys in my life have acted as if I should have to struggle to keep them. I am quite secure in my value as a person and I have always known myself, but I feel as if you were the first person to recognize me.* I’m still angry at the way you tried to keep me, but I’ll get over it. The one question I want to know is what’s so wrong with just asking me to stay?”

Swallowing thickly, Draco asked, “Will you stay with me for always?”

“On one condition,” she nodded. “From now on, you will tell me what’s going through your head and if you feel insecure, you’ll talk to me about it. We’re married and we have three little boys to raise, so I’m in this for the long haul. I love you, too.” She kissed him and despite her body’s reluctance to move, she leaned forwards into his embrace.

Draco held her like his life depended on it. He was scared. He was ecstatic. He had no idea how to give her the things she wanted, but he was going to break himself trying because she had looked into him, understood what she saw and not turned away. At that moment, his mother walked in with a crying triplet.

“I’m so sorry, Hermione, but I think he needs fed.” Narcissa handed her grandson to her daughter-in-law and the Granger family came in the room carrying his brothers.

Draco would have liked to talk to Hermione more but he recognized the need to bond with his new family. He’d have to discover whatever it was that his mother was on and keep her in a steady supply. Maybe she’d be a more affectionate grandmother than she was a mother. He grinned and watched as Hermione’s mother fussed around her and held Abraxas up to nurse. He walked over to his other sons and held each one in his arm, listening intently to Hermione and her mother talk about the boys.

While Marcus and Chris spoke to Narcissa, he heard her mother ask in a quiet voice, “What was that all about earlier, dear? Is everything alright?”

Hermione’s eyes sought out his own. “Nothing, Mum, just a fight over some pictures.”

“Pictures? Why on earth would you fight over something as trivial as pictures?”

“Well, I didn’t like the way I looked in them.” Hermione smiled at him and the corners of his mouth turned up in return.

“Well, I’m sure you looked lovely in them. Where are they?” Her mother had come over to inspect her other grandchildren and Draco handed Aidan over for his turn to nurse.

“We burned them,” Hermione replied.

“Hermione, that’s a silly thing! It’s not like you to be so vain as to get that upset over how you look in some pictures. This is your children’s birthday, you shouldn’t be focusing on silly things like that,” her mother chided.

“You’re right, mum. They’re just pictures.” She turned and looked back at Draco who had sat next to her on the bed, petting her hair as she fed the second baby. “They’re just stupid pictures that aren’t worth fighting over. I love you, Draco.”

“I love you, Hermione,” he said back, ready to burst from contained happiness. “You know, all this talk has reminded me that I left our camera at home.”

“That’s fine, darling,” Narcissa said. “I brought one. Put all the children with Hermione. We want a picture of all the hard work she’s done.”

They arranged the babies with their mother and everyone stepped back when she spoke up, “Draco get in here too, after all, you did a lot of work ensuring that they would get here as well.” She gave him another knowing smile and for the first time since their talk, he felt truly forgiven. He took Alistair in one arm and Hermione as she held Aidan and Abraxas in the other. When the picture came out, it was over Hermione and Draco looking into each other’s eyes and kissing their babies’ heads before smiling at the rest of the world. They were a picture perfect family.

*That’s a line from Jane Austen that I borrowed.

A/N- Epilogue coming soon!