We Can Work It Out

After going through her list of applicants, Hermione was suddenly regretting embarking down this path. All she wanted was to reproduce. That was not a difficult task. Some people did it without even trying. However, Hermione Granger never did anything without planning every last detail of her operation. Planning out the potential father of her child was proving to be almost as difficult as searching for horcruxes. At least with the horcruxes she knew what the end result would be. She did not know what the end result of having some man named Michael Flaherty’s child would be.

As she tossed most of the applicants into the ‘no’ pile, she thought about saving a few of the ‘not a chance in hades’ applicants. One man wanted a thorough inspection of her ‘feminine life vessel’ before he would consider the task and another flippantly asked if she wanted him to stick around after he ‘made a deposit’ and even suggested that they could finagle it in his office on a lunch break. Another offered to sell her his sperm for the reasonable sum of three thousand galleons, and of course he would take a weekend out of his busy dating schedule to ensure that the job of impregnating her was done and done right. She, of course, would see to the cost of a luxury suite hotel room for the conception to occur in.

She had a handful of applicants that she was willing to meet with and discuss her situation. The unsurprisingly short list included Dean Thomas, Michael Corner, Lee Jordan, Oliver Wood and Blaise Zabini. She was still very shocked that Blaise had applied. She’d known him through Draco for a number of years and they’d all gone out for dinner or drinks on multiple occasions, but he’d never insinuated any interest in her beyond the fact that they had a common friend. Still, he was intelligent, quiet and rather good looking. They agreed on most policies, so she supposed that they would have no problems on agreeing to terms of punishment and the correct morals to instill in their potential child. Her only problem was that he was quite the philanderer and even though she had no designs on having a relationship with him, she wondered how a little girl would fare growing up with a male role model who was so charmingly flippant about seeing women as disposable. He never outright lied, but he was often misleading about his intentions. She preferred Draco’s cold approach to his one night stands. No one was given false hope. She shook her head at the thought of approving of one promiscuous behavior over another.

She set up meetings with first Dean and Michael, followed by Blaise. She had dated Oliver previously and although she still got on well with him, she put him in a separate ‘maybe’ pile. She got up and found Tim Shinnston eating a goo covered croissant as he scribbled notes down on parchment.

“Tim? Would you mind answering any owls I might receive? I’m going to be gone for about an hour. I’ve a meeting with a potential father figure.” She buttoned up her coat against the February chill.

“You mean you’re actually going to pick one from the letters?” Calves foot jelly dripped out of Shinnston’s mouth and onto his report and it made Hermione wince. Draco would have a fit.

“Yes, where else am I going to find one?” With that, Hermione left the office and tried not to think about used calve’s foot jelly. Honestly, that boy had the stomach of a goat!

After she left, Tim got up and went to Christine’s cubicle. “You’ll never guess where Mum just went! She’s off to interview a daddy for her biological child!”

“What?” Christine actually managed to whisper and screech at the same time. “I thought she was going to be artificially inseminated.”

“Didn’t you read the papers? That’s not a legal possibility.” Tim recounted Hermione’s woes in trying to find an anonymous donor.

“But if she does it this way, that means she’ll have to have some kind of relationship with the father. I don’t want some smarmy wizard poking his head down here all the time. We run things quite well without outside interference and Dorsey will have anxiety attacks if someone not on our team is always showing up, you know how paranoid he gets! Besides, think of how cranky Dad gets whenever someone else cuts in on his alone time with mum. This will be nine straight months of angry daddy!”

Tim snorted and croissant flakes flew out of his mouth. “Yeah, but that’s because he wants to be ‘daddy’ in a whole other sense. She doesn’t need to interview any candidates; he would probably pay her to be able to get a baby on her the old fashioned way.”

“Timmy, you’re brilliant! Dad is the perfect solution. No one else will come in and mess up our little family, Dad won’t get cranky and Mum will have her baby and we’ll get to babysit!” While talking Christine had leaned confidently back in her chair, exuding the smugness of a corporate executive. The image would have been perfect if she had not fallen backwards out of her chair.

It was a credit to how clumsy Christine truly was when Tim didn’t even bat an eye at her fall, merely helping her up.

Hermione was in the front of an airy little café waiting on Blaise to show up. She wished she had worn different shoes. All of her typical office attire was dirty because she hadn’t had time to do laundry and scourgifying her clothes didn’t get them as clean as soap and water. Because of that she was currently wearing a low-cut, curve-hugging red dress that swished when she walked. She’d worn it to Hannah Abbott’s bachelorette party and while it was perfectly decent, it wasn’t office wear and none of her comfortable dress shoes matched it. She was currently standing in strappy black stiletto heel sandals. The criss-crossing straps were cutting into her toes and ankles and her arches were killing her. She wished Blaise would hurry up so they could sit down.

Her meetings with Dean and Michael were very proper. She’d been in office wear and neither had touched her person at all nor brought up her bedroom or hotel room in the discussion. Michael had been very nice and she could tell he was very different from the clingy boy Ginny had dated at Hogwarts. He had charming good looks with intense, electric green eyes that reminded her of Harry’s. He was affable, sweet and looked as if he’d just stepped off of the pages of some chic clothing catalogue for sporty, family men. Dean was a wizarding artist who was by no means starving and had a very bohemian flair to his dress. He was just as she’d remembered except that he now wore his hair in carefully maintained dred-locks that got him many appreciative glances from their waitress.

Both were very good men that would make excellent fathers one day, but for some reason, Hermione knew they weren’t for her. Dean admitted that he had applied because they were both muggle-born and so there would be an equal juggling of cultures and also because his parents were pestering him about continuing the family line. Dean was currently living with his lover Andrew. Michael admitted to having a crush on her back in school and he told her he couldn’t think of a better person to start a family with. He was willing to visit the muggle fertility clinic, but he also wanted to feel out a relationship. Hermione gently told him that she was looking for a baby, not a husband and he graciously accepted the fact, but told her that if she would like to get to know one another better under different circumstances, he knew a place that had wonderful Thai food.


Hermione felt a warm palm at the small of her back, the thin material of her dress making the gesture seem much more intimate than it should have been.

“Hermione,” a smooth, masculine voice purred next to her. “So sorry I kept you waiting. You know how business ventures are.” He bent and kissed her temple and surprisingly, she didn’t blush.

“It’s nice to see you too, Blaise.” She hated that about business men. They always presumed that what they were doing was far more important than what anyone else was doing and that other people would automatically forgive their transgressions because of it.

“Shall we?” he gestured to the restaurant and a waiter automatically appeared and led them to a table. Blaise kept his hand on the small of her back, steering her through the tables. Draco did this all the time, but for some reason Hermione felt belittled by Blaise doing it. Blaise moved his eyes over her body in a lingering appreciative glance, but not leering. Shite, he probably thought she dressed up for him.

“You smell divine. Did Madame Marcheline’s apothecary make that just for you?” Coming from anyone else’s mouth that line would have sounded cheesy, but Blaise made it sound intimate and elegant.

“Actually Luna Lovegood made it for me. She knows I love lavender and other wild flowers, so she mixed it up for me. She actually called it a potion to ward off higgy snigs. It must work because I’ve yet to see one.”

Blaise chuckled. “You were always very good at handling her. I’ve wondered for a while now what you used. It always reminds me of those days between spring and summer.” He flashed a dazzling white smile at her and Hermione cocked her head, her brown eyes meeting his gaze. His eyes weren’t one color in particular. They were greenish brown upon first glance, but when a person inspected closely, they were a shade of gun metal grey.

“Okay, Blaise, I have to ask because this is slightly surreal to sit here with you and talk like we’re on a first date when I’ve known you for years and you’ve never once shown an interest in me for anything other than getting you another beer while we’re at Draco’s. What’s going on? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked at finding your letter amongst all the others. I thought you were like Harry and Draco and saw me as either one of the blokes or as a substitute mother figure.”

Blaise smiled at her and asked, “Has Draco brought up the possibility of himself as a sperm donor?”

“No, but he is being extremely supportive of me. I was going to make him godfather.” Blaise was continuing to smile as if he knew something that she ought to know but didn’t.

“I’ve been attracted to you for quite some time, Hermione, it just never seemed the appropriate occasion to act on it. In school, our houses were bitter rivals, at University you were with Weasley and afterwards, it seemed like every time you were single, I was attempting to shake off whichever girl had established herself as the latest Zabini WAG in the tabloids. Whenever I was single you were either dating Wood or running off to Krum in Bulgaria. Also, one of my oldest friends has been besotted with you for quite a while now and out of respect for him, I never said anything. However, he has had ample opportunity to pursue you and if he is too cowardly to make a move, I’m not going to waste a good opportunity when it arises, especially since I know he didn’t attempt to be in the running for the father of your baby.” Blaise had leaned forwards and was now holding her hand in his, running his thumb over her knuckles.

“My mother has been on me for quite some time to give her a grandchild. I’ve dated lots of women, but I have no desire to get married. All my life, my mother has made it clear that having a man in her life is her most important priority and I was merely the means of securing a particular man. My father died when I was four and my mother had already moved on when I became heir to the Zabini fortune. She increased that fortune with several more step-fathers and I found myself very wealthy and very much alone. If I am to have a child, I want his mother to see him as her first priority. You have no interest in being wealthy, so I know that this baby is not a means to an end for you. The fact that you were willing to go to a muggle fertility doctor just to have a child is proof enough for me. You are the kind of mother I would have wanted; intelligent, beautiful, attentive and above all, loving. I can leave my son with all the money in the world and it won’t matter a bit if his mother only loves him out of a sense of duty.”

Hermione stared at him. This was what she was looking for, but it felt wrong. She decided to test him. “You keep talking about your son, what if it’s a girl?”

Blaise laughed. “If it is, then I’ll be delighted to have my own little princess. I have no doubts that you wouldn’t allow to become spoiled. Maybe the next one will be a boy.” At Hermione’s questioning looked he continued. “Come on, Granger, you can’t seriously tell me you only want one. We’re both only children and you know how lonely it can get. Besides, unless you get married anytime soon, which I think is doubtful or else you wouldn’t be looking for a donor, you’ll likely need to have me around to give you a hand with things as I’m sure there are certain needs of yours that won’t be filled by Draco.”

“I’m firm in my decision that we’ll be doing this in vitro,” Hermione stated, although she had to admit that she had often wondered if the half Italian man’s skills were as worthy of the praise they garnered from the society slags.

“Come on, Hermione. I know you. You don’t place any more emotion on sex than I do, you’re just admirably more selective with your partners. What’s the harm of doing this the old-fashioned way? We would both get what we wanted and we’d get a little stress release as well. Besides, do you really want our children to know that they were test tube babies?” Blaise smiled at her and it was heart melting. She almost lost it when his thumb slid down from her knuckles to trace a slow, erotic pattern on her inner wrist. “Think about it, we both could have what we wanted by October. All it would take is one trip to Milan or Paris or even Tokyo so it wouldn’t seem so weird. You could take a fertility potion and we’d both have our itches scratched.” Hermione let him hold her hand a moment longer. Was this really what she wanted?


A/N- Thank you so much for all the positive reviews and feedback! You guys are so awesome and the more reviews I get, the more my muse is fed. I need a fat, happy muse to update more quickly, so please do leave a note if you feel so inclined. I'm open to suggestion! (wink)

Cheers!
G.C.