Gifts and Other Misfortunes: The Series

Part 1: A Gift From Fate

Please read the trigger warnings in the introduction before reading. Thanks xx

Summary:

Scorpius and Lyra Malfoy were to be born September 13, 2009. The healer had called Hermione's pregnancy a gift from fate— something that had once been impossible. But Fate doesn't offer gifts. Draco Malfoy knows that all too well.

•••

As Draco laid immobile upon lush silk sheets, the concept of excruciating pain did not once pass through his mind. Rather, he could not shake the memory of how much Hermione Granger had hated these sheets. Once, in a fit of rage, she had cast incendio to a set of green linen he had owned since his fourth year at Hogwarts. "I will not sleep in your bloody Slytherin blankets, Draco Malfoy!" She had hissed. Draco did not respond, preoccupied with the task of extinguishing the flames before it burnt the whole manor down. The silk was scorched beyond repair. It made her cry and apologize profusely, therefore he could not bring himself to be upset.

They had been fighting about the decoration of the twins' nursery that day. At the paint store, she decided that she absolutely needed to paint the walls a pastel yellow– yellow for Merlin's sake! Draco, with years of his mother's lectures on the topic of proper interior design, refused to allow her to taint his childhood home with the repugnant Hufflepuff colors. They had settled on a pastel blue. Ravenclaw was still better than Hufflepuff.

Draco wished now that he had allowed her the one simple pleasure of her bloody Hufflepuff room with the stuffed elephant toys and unmoving muggle paintings she had been so stubborn about. Perhaps if he had, he could bring himself to step foot in the room without feeling the urge to retch. Now, it just served as a painful reminder of all he had lost.

She was always so god damned stubborn. She had never grown out of the know-it-all phase and she was still obsessed with books. She'd even take notes in the margins, as if she were studying for O.W.Ls. He would come home from work and find her curled up under a wool blanket devouring a book the size of a small chest with one of those muggle 'pens' clenched between her teeth– which she would absentmindedly leave in various obscure locations around the house like breadcrumbs. He often found himself on scavenger hunts, searching for the contraptions so she wouldn't go out and buy a new box of replacements, insisting she'd lost them all.

Draco was convinced she still thought she was in school. She'd practice complex charms and hexes– many of which she had invented on her own– in their living room, using their couch as target practice. Since she had moved into the manor, Draco had replaced the furniture over twenty times. She'd just wave him off whenever he complained, telling him, "You've got the Malfoy family inheritance, and you're worried about a sofa?" She did have a point, but he'd never let her win that fight.

The other aurors and ministry employees had a running joke that her gravestone would feature the phrase "well actually." It was a grim thought which never quite registered with him, because Hermione Granger was too young, too brilliant, too lovely to die. Death was so improbable for her, the concept made him laugh. No. She would never not be there to chide him for mispronouncing a word, or when his opinion on an auror case was far-fetched. She would never not be there to laugh when he burnt their morning pancakes– he absolutely hated cooking the muggle way, but she preferred her mother's recipe to the ones Topsy had used. She'd never not be there to curl her nose up when she took a sip from his coffee cup– because hers was simply not enough– saying it was so sweet she worried he might clog his veins. "It's three spoonfuls, Granger." He'd laugh. "Not an entire sugar cane."

"That's Malfoy to you." She'd always say. Every time.

She drank her coffee black. Always black.