Boy - (A 'Blaire Zabini' sequel) || Draco Malfoy

19 - A Very Frosty Christmas

"Would you pass the sprouts please, dear?"

Astoria was addressing her husband, so she found herself feeling a flicker of irritation when instead it was his mother who got up to move them over to her.

"Thank you, Narcissa," she said, perhaps a little too sharply, trying to refrain from snatching the bowl out of her mother-in-law's hand.

Narcissa offered her a thin lipped smiled in return, her eyes giving away her concern as they darted apprehensively towards her extremely preoccupied looking son.

Christmas seemed to get worse every year. Since becoming a Malfoy, it was expected of Astoria to spend the Yuletide season at her in-laws. It really was a tedious and trying affair.

Narcissa clearly didn't think she was good enough for her precious little son and treated her with imperceptible disdain. Lucius was about as talkative and useful as a dried up old vegetable, and Draco looked as though there was somewhere else he'd rather be; his eyes glazed over as if he were somewhere else.

Although that was hardly new.

And to top it all off, she was just a week away from her due date and felt as though some horrendous beast had completely taken over her body, leaving her constantly exhausted, swollen and as good as immobile.

This brat couldn't come out fast enough. Thank Merlin it was a boy or she might have found a way of killing it by now. Last minute abortions could be done if you knew the right people.

The first thing she was going to do with the Malfoy fortune was pay for a decent private Healer to get her body back. Screw diet and exercise; she wanted a quick fix - maybe even a breast enhancement, too.

Theo would definitely come crawling back to her then. And maybe even Draco might start taking an interest... although she somehow doubted that all it'd take was a new pair of tits to get him to snap out of his constant trance.

She'd already contacted an agency about the most expensive nanny hire, too; assuring them that money would be no issue once the baby was out. No way was she going to waste her time rearing and nurturing it; not when she'd already sacrificed her body for nine months, thank you very much.

A body that was clearly not cut out for pregnancy. Astoria had been alarmed to find that the exhaustion had been getting to her so much lately that there were moments when she just blacked out without warning.

The episodes never seemed to be for long; not long enough for anyone to notice, at any rate. For instance, one time it happened when she was on the toilet; one minute she was in the middle of having the worlds longest piss, and the next she was waking up face down on the bathroom floor with her knickers still around her ankles.

She didn't tell anyone about it because she just assumed it was a symptom of the pregnancy.

Besides, it's not as though anyone would even care. Well, Draco might, but only for the baby's welfare.

She avoided Daphne these days, ever since Theo stopped coming round for hook ups. He claimed that now Daphne had her figure back, he was going to make more of an effort with staying faithful to her.

It made Astoria just mad to look at her sister; so she shut her down every time she made the suggestion of a sister catch up over a coffee.

And Draco... well. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something had changed in him of late. When she had first married him, he was almost always in a zombified state, not much unlike his pathetic lump of a father.

But lately she noticed he had a slight spring in his step and his normally sharp features had softened; his eyes seeming less sunken and his frame no longer astonishingly thin but slightly bulked up, as if he'd finally gained an appetite.