INSATIABLE

I thank you all for holding your sometimes venemous little tonuges *lol* and greatly appreciate the reviews :) I have big plans in store for our new mother :) and be prepared for a rollercoaster of emotions loves. All I can say is Hermione's in for a season of change... - Love, Esme
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermione dried her tears and gave Draco a long hug before taking the floo back to the Ministry. They had decided to tell Narcissa tomorrow about their plans to wed. Hermione had met a large handful of diplomats, presidents, and world leaders while working with Lucius but she had never felt as nervous as she did when she knew that tomorrow she would be face to face with Narcissa Malfoy, asking for her blessing to marry her son.

Hermione made her nightly routine visit to see Lucius, and was a little disappointed that he was unconscious still. Draco and Oberon were both there and she couldn’t help but realize how much this handful of people started to feel like family to her.

She started reading aloud to Lucius around the time he first went into the hospital, she thought it might do him some good or somehow show him that he wasn’t alone, that she was there in case he could hear her. Oberon and Draco started sitting in on her little reading sessions and she couldn’t help but identify with the characters in the novel. She was reading Les Miserables, and thought it a fitting title of the current chapter of her life. She counted her blessings though and was just glad to have what tarnished semblance of love she had left.

Oberon would frequently correct the way she pronounced all the French titles and names in the book and Draco just smirked at the way she bristled at his constructive criticism.

Oberon escorted both Draco and Hermione home and Hermione couldn’t help but cry herself to sleep since Lucius was put in St. Mungo’s. Some of her tears were from sheer exhaustion from all the stress of beating off reporters wanting details of Lucius’s condition, and the regular stress of being the Minister of Magic. The rest of her tears were for her silver-eyed lover who may never wake up again, and she couldn’t help but blame herself for it all.

She gave into a deep sleep and didn’t wake until she suddenly felt incredibly strong hands on her shoulders, though they were shaking her gently she drew her wand and aimed right between Oberon’s startling emerald eyes. “Easy Hermione! I surrender… its time to get up and get ready ma chère!” he said enthusiastically.

Hermione drew the covers around her, hiding herself from Oberon’s eyes and trying to focus her eyes on him. “Wha? Don’t you knock? I’m going to put a large bell around your neck so I know when your coming” she groused. “Not a morning person are we?” he said with a sexy grin. She narrowed her eyes on him and took a glance over at her alarm clock. “Oh Merlin! I’m going to be late!” She gasped.

“No No we have plenty of time to get you ready for dinner” he drawled. “DINNER? How long have I been sleeping for?” she exclaimed. “No more fussing ma chère, I disarmed your alarm and let you get some much needed rest, you are allowed to miss a day of work…now up! I’m going to get you ready to meet Narcissa.”

“How dare… the audacity! And I’ve already met Narcissa you daft blood sucker!” she sputtered angrily. Oberon’s eyes flashed in anger slightly but his face remained coolly aloof, his hands smoothing back the sheets he withdrew from Hermione’s clenched fists. “It’s a little early to allow your hormones to go raging, but I’ll forgive your cheek for now, and do I need to remind you that you are seeking her blessing? Her standards are impossibly high, never mind she still doesn’t want to cut the apron strings on Draco.”

Hermione simply glared into his arresting emerald eyes. He deftly grabbed her hands and she felt herself being ripped from the bed as if she weighed nothing. “I’ve picked out a rather lovely gown for you to wear and I’ll manage something with your wild and pretty curls.” Hermione goggled at how he seemed to remain so masculine, though his actions and words reminded her of Lavender Brown when she tried to give her a make over.

She sighed heavily and gave in quickly to Oberon’s pokes and prods. Oberon insisted he wash her hair and she begrudgingly gave in, when he rolled up his shirt sleeves Hermione fought the urge to lick him, even the delicate alabaster skin of his forearms was beautiful to her and she loved the way his perfectly manicured nails dug gently into her scalp. Though Oberon was intoxicating to the senses, the bond they formed over the weeks was not sexual in any way, Hermione thought of him as a close friend and a sort of father figure. Though he had a potent masculine sexuality, they remained almost asexual to each other.

She was up to her neck in the thick layer of bubbles and she felt all the tension from missing work washed out of her hair by Oberon. “I’m not going to tell him it’s his baby,” she said quietly to the bubbles. She felt his fingers still for a fraction of a second before he responded, “I see, why is that?” he said thickly.

“I’ve already told Draco, isn’t it enough to know your going to raise your father’s child… your brother or sister while your married to your father’s lover? How dysfunctional can you get?” Oberon quietly considered the brunette witch’s words “I see your point, but Lucius will treat the child as his no matter, I almost shudder to think how Grand Père Lucius will spoil this child” he said with a smile.

Hermione let a heavy sigh escape her lips “I, I never really thought about it like that, I just don’t want this to be any harder than it has to be… I think it would only hurt him to know there is another beloved that he can’t claim as his.”

Oberon rinsed and conditioned her hair lovingly and set a towel next to the enormous tub before leaving her with her thoughts in the tub. When she dried off and was towel clad she found Oberon browsing through her closet. “This one, definitely this one” he said as he pulled the lavender dress out for her to see. She felt like Oberon’s china doll the way he preened her, but she was very satisfied with the results. Her hair had never been more sleek and shiny and she looked breathtaking. Oberon rested his glorious alabaster hands on Hermione’s shoulders “perhaps, for the time being it would be best for Lucius not to know… sometimes ignorance is bliss ma chère”.

Dinner with Draco, Narcissa, and Oberon started out in awkward silence but Oberon managed to smooth every little hostility and tension out easily. By the end of the night Narcissa had the wedding practically planned and Hermione found herself admiring Narcissa’s steel and capability to forgive and forget.

Draco and Hermione both agreed that they should get married soon, both hiding the truth that if they waited much longer Hermione would be visibly pregnant. Only a few weeks later Hermione found herself staring out into a sea of people on her wedding day.

“I do” Hermione said as she looked into Draco’s smiling gray eyes. She looked over the sea of people in attendance, she would forever be grateful to Narcissa for pulling it all off. Her wedding was magnificent, and she and Draco compromised on white, sage green and black colors for the wedding. She saw Professor McGonagall sitting with Snape a few rows back and she fought back a fit of giggles. It seemed that everyone was in attendance, Ginny and Fleur were her bridesmaids in dresses of sage green that complimented Ginny’s flaming hair perfectly. She snuck a peak behind Draco to see Harry beaming at her. Among the sea of people, one person was missing, and to Hermione that one person counted more to her than the sea of people she was looking over. Lucius was still in the hospital, and she never admitted it, but her greatest fear was that he might never wake up.

Hermione felt like she was in a dream, everything around her seemed perfect, and terrifying at the same time. Draco’s soft lips on hers seemed surreal and she felt like a character in a play, like it all wasn’t really happening and she would wake up, and go back to work in the Misuse of Muggle artifacts office.

Over the next couple of days, it all started to sink in and she grew accustomed to Draco’s almost constant presence. Her stomach was growing bigger and bigger by the day and Draco was starting to insist she should promptly find herself a replacement while she went on maternity leave. Hermione didn’t want to find a replacement, the Ministry was the one thing Lucius had put in her command and she was determined to not let him down. To Hermione, finding a temporary replacement made it sound as if Lucius would not make it through, and she couldn’t come to terms with that.

She visited Lucius every night and it had been weeks since he was last conscious. Every night she went and read to him, watched over him while he slept and wept when he wouldn’t respond. She slipped in before and after every doctor’s visit she had for the baby and she was becoming concerned at how easy it was to have a one sided conversation with him these days. She told him all about the wedding, the baby and the Ministry, and she poured out her soul every night.

That night she was feeling particularly tired, her stomach was visible and her ankles were aching from the added weight. It was a particularly rough day at the Ministry and her hormones were on full tilt, she found herself crying for no apparent reason that day.
When she got to Lucius’s room, she cried the second she saw him until the time she waddled to the door, but she stopped dead in her tracks when she heard the most beautiful sound she could have ever heard.

It was Lucius’s scratchy and weak voice calling out her name. “Hermione!” he yelled hoarsely. She looked back at him; he had bolted upright in his bed and was clutching his throat while his eyes searched hers. She couldn’t think or speak but her weary legs scurried her over to his bed in a flash.