When Stars Align

Chapter 14

It was official. Hermione Granger had baby fever. Or, was she deluding herself by telling herself that when it was just a certain silvery blonde angel that she seemed to have trouble keeping off her mind? Hermione couldn't understand. Why was she so enamored with this baby? They had only met once briefly and for Merlin's sake, she was Malfoy's daughter.

Regardless, her heart defied logic and dictated that she had to see Penny. Now, about ten days after their encounter, Hermione Granger was desperate. Last night, she had a dream about Penny. Penny was in her arms, giggling and babbling. She remembered feeling so much love for the little girl, and in her dreams, she was Penny's mother. When she woke up in the middle of the night, tears were streaming down her face at the loss she felt. It was difficult to admit, but she wished for her dream to be true.

Getting up from bed and fixing herself a cup of latte, Hermione started thinking.

She knew that there was no way that Penny was her daughter. Piecing together bits of information, Hermione hypothesized that the writer of the letter she had received from St. Thomas more than a year ago, DM, was Draco Malfoy. Although it was difficult to fathom Draco Malfoy of all people utilizing muggle fertility technology, it seemed he had a lot of surprises up his sleeve and the pieces fit together.

However, if he truly was the one that wrote the letter, that would indicate that he had in fact, received a donation from a witch to create Penny. This, for some illogical reason, hurt her. Because when she had received the letter, although she was moved by the writer and his candor, she had ultimately decided against donating her eggs. She just couldn't go through with potentially having a child out in the world that she didn't know about or was not raising herself.

With that conclusion, Hermione had to nurse her disappointment.

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Draco Malfoy was panicking.

Just ten minutes ago, he got an emergency call from his job about a potentially hazardous potion and was called in for immediate assistance. Normally, being on paternity leave would exempt him from any such occurrences, but no one else in the lab seemed to be able to handle the situation. The potion, a creation of one of his colleagues, had triggered a contagious and deadly response for some endangered magical creatures that had come in contact with wizards and witches who had utilized the potion.

The problem that left Draco desperate and panicked was that he had no one to take care of Penny. Draco felt the loss of his parents more clearly at this moment. With a pang of sadness and sorrow, he realized that he could think of no one that could look after his daughter for emergencies like these. He should have prepared for a scenario like this by having at least one person to call in the most dire of circumstances. But this was a first for him and with Penny's accidental magic happening so often and sporadically, he was not able to find a muggle babysitter.

Barely anyone in the wizarding world knew of his daughter. His parents knew, but contacting them was out of the question. That left only one choice; Hermione Granger. He knew that it would be extremely rude and abrupt for him to contact Granger, but she was the only one that knew about Penny. Even though they were not friends or friendly acquaintances even, Draco knew he trusted her based on her character alone. Seeing her interact with Penny ten days ago consolidated his judgment.

With that, he quickly wrote a letter to deliver to Hermione Granger.

"Ozwald, please take this to Hermione Granger immediately. Wait for her response before you fly back." Draco said.

With a hoot, Ozwald soared into the clouds.