Chapter Text
May 15, 2002.
A beep from the medical equipment beside the bed filled the space that words should have occupied. All she could think was…what more was there to say? What words could replace the silence that was already so heavy. She’d spent long moments staring out of the window that overlooked a remembrance garden, bright with new growth. Spring had unfurled quietly, the grey of an English winter rolling slowly into vibrant greens and dots of color as the blooms speared up to give proper adoration to the sun. She focused on the minute details of the wind chimes that hung on the arbor in the center of the garden. She felt as if she’d been dropped into a sensory deprivation chamber the second the wizarding healer and his muggle counterpart had given them the prognosis. The only thing tethering her to the earth was the man beside her…and the light flickering through the colored glass in the wind chimes.
Now, with Draco beside the bed, just as lost in his own muffled thoughts as she was, she tried to grip the edges of her sanity and pull herself back from the abyss. She knew somehow that she would go on living after this day was done…though she was unsure of what that reality would consist of.
Draco shifted in the seat beside her, pulling her attention from the serene stillness beyond the window, to his stoic, handsome features.
He cleared his throat, attempting to force words from his mouth that she knew were just as heavy as the ones clogging her own. He frowned, attention shifting from her to the door of their room opening. Instead of voicing whatever had been on his mind, he reached through the bars of the bed and clasped her limp hand in his.
“Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, the operating room is ready for us.” The surgeon, who worked with St. Mungo’s on special cases of Obstetrics, patted her foot in an effort to offer comfort for what was about to happen.
She shifted in the bed, uncomfortable with the sensor belt that wrapped tightly around her distended abdomen. “I’m ready.” Her voice sounded far away even to her own ears.
Draco’s hand tightened around hers. She could feel the worry pulsing from him. The doctor nodded once, then motioned for the nursing staff to wheel her into the operating room.
Her husband of less than a year pulled her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm. Her eyes filled at the broken expression on his face. She blinked furiously, forcing the tears away until they could grieve in private.
“I love you, Hermione. I’ll be next to you as soon as they allow.” She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. He stood, tilting her head back with a delicate brush of his fingers on her chin to accept his kiss. His fingers paused on her cheek, then trailed down to caress her stomach. The child they’d been so excited for kicked where he pressed in.
Devastation clutched her heart in a vice, cinching tighter and tighter as she watched her normally stoic husband’s lips tremble. He blinked desperately, forcing the tears away. She wanted to say something, anything to ease his suffering, just as much as her own. What was there to say? What could be done?
His fingers pressed into the mound of her stomach until she could feel the indents of each digit. Then, he aimed a small, private smile at her full of the things he could not say in the room full of medical personnel.
They would have time for words later.
He turned on his heel, pausing at the doorway to glance back at her huddled on the bed, surrounded by strangers.
Grief carved his youthful exuberance down to something harder. Gone was the young man that pledged his heart to her a year ago. In his place, stood a man at a loss of how to fix what had gone wrong.
He nodded once, the sheen of tears lightening the silver of his eyes to something resembling ice. Then, he turned from her and stepped through the door and disappeared.
The hard ball of emotion that had been forming in the pit of her stomach since she opened her eyes that morning expanded with something darker. She knew she would be leaving this hospital with nothing more than a surgical scar and empty arms…but there was something in the way he’d looked at her that made her wonder if she would have far less than that as time went on.
—
Their daughter’s cry took far too long to shatter the silence of the operating room. Tears coursed down Hermione’s cheeks in a continuous flow. She had let go of the mask she’d tried to hold firm and was at the mercy of the pain. Her temples were drenched, along with the curls that had been corralled into a bun hours ago. Draco’s fingers tightened around her hand as the nurse turned toward them, clutching a tiny body wrapped in a pink blanket, a gift from Draco’s mother.
The nurse held up the baby for them to see and Hermione reached forward to brush the back of her finger against her daughter’s tiny, pale cheek. She opened her eyes, blinking into the bright lights of the room. All noise muted from Hermione’s awareness. A harsh exhalation from Draco brushed past Hermione’s cheek as their daughter blinked again and let out the small mewling cry they had been praying to hear for months.
“Hello, Lucy…”
Draco pressed his palm to her small body as if to anchor her soul to his own. She knew that he felt the ache of responsibility for something neither of them had any control over. His nature demanded her bear the brunt of what had gone wrong. Hermione covered his hand with her own, praying to anyone that might hear the desperation in her thoughts, that their daughter could be healed. That a miracle could happen and her brain and heart could be fixed. That the words, “incompatible with life,” had never been uttered. That they could keep her with them by sheer force of will alone.
The nurse smiled, lips trembling as she pulled their daughter back to settle in the small white cot across the room while the healers, both magical and muggle, conferred what the next steps would be. The serious expressions on their faces hinted at the lack of opinions.
Magic could only do so much, they’d learned.
Hermione’s world narrowed from the bright overhead lights in the special ward of the best hospital in London…to the quiet young man standing beside her that she knew was dying by increments at the reality of what was going to happen soon…then finally to the tiny hand waving in the cool air of the room. That proof of life vibrant, as if to assure them that yes, she was here.
She exists. She matters.
The warming lamp that hung above the cot beamed down on her pink clad form, highlighting the still damp whirls of brown curls that peaked out from the edges of the delicate pink hat Molly had knitted. Her soft cry echoed in Hermione’s ears, as if her heart were trying in vain to memorize the shape and heft of the sounds before they disappeared. She closed her eyes, allowing the cry of her child to sink into the marrow of her bones, written into the DNA they shared.
She would not forget.
Draco pulled her hand to his lips, kissing the flesh of her fingertips firmly. She met the glistening eyes of her husband, pain and love warring in her breast. She caressed his cheek and prayed that they could make it through this day.
10:43pm…
She lay on the bed, incision from the birth pulling taut as she shifted position to press more firmly to her husband and daughter. Draco’s breaths fluttered her hair in soft puffs. The curl that had escaped the messy bun on top of her head bounced gently against her cheek with every breath that he took. They’d enlarged the bed to fit his bulk as well, and had spent hours holding their child as she lost more strength and color while the minutes and hours had ticked on. The indifference of time made her want to scream.
They knew this would be the inevitable end. The specialists they’d seen over the course of the last few months had told them to prepare. She could die in the womb at any time. Her heart was enlarged and weakening…the missing parts of her brain were not compatible with life. The birth defects were catastrophic.
And yet…they hoped and prayed that a mistake had been made…that love would be enough.
She forced her mind from the spiral that waited in the wings, and focused on the sweet, delicate face of the child they’d made. Tiny lips pursed in discomfort as she wiggled in her father’s arms. Her movements had gone from vigorous to weaker and weaker with every tick of the clock. She blinked slowly into the dim light of the room, seeing little except the grief stricken faces of her parents hovering above her. Her eyes had shifted from the blue of a newborn, to a pewter gray that reflected the light that hung above them. Draco had taken a moment when his parents had arrived to meet their grandchild, to collect himself. She’d felt his pain even through the door, as he’d wept into a soft towel hanging in the connected loo. It was as if she’d cracked his chest open with her own hands. It had been a pulsing, aching thing that had settled in the air around them. She hadn’t said anything when he’d returned, face flushed and eyes bright from the tears he’d shed away from the eyes of onlookers.
He’d then held her as his parents had counted Lucy’s fingers and toes, marveling at the soft brown curls that had dried in a halo around her head. Hermione had watched her former death eater turned father in law pull her tiny hand between the blunt ends of his fingers. The cold, stoic mask he had worn for as long as she’d known him had melted into the floor as she gripped his finger in her tiny hand. Tears spilled down Narcissa’s flushed face, overcome with the reality that they had been thrust into. They’d retreated to the waiting room shortly after that, allowing Draco and Hermione to have privacy through the afternoon. Their friends and families had offered everything they could…love, support, hugs. At the end of it though…the only thing they had requested was a bit of time to soak in her existence by themselves. The flurry of healers and nurses had come and gone as the light had faded from the sky.
Now, she clutched draco to her side as he held their child while she struggled to breathe even with the aid of oxygen tubing that had been wrapped around her tiny ears and nose.
Draco leaned into her, resting his head against hers. “I don’t know how to say goodbye, Mione.” The broken rasp of his voice had tears spilling down her cheeks.
“I don’t either, love.”
Draco sniffled, reaching up to tug her tiny, limp hand to his lips. “I love you, Lucy Malfoy.”
A sob escaped her lips, rough and broken, as Lucy’s eyes closed slowly. They’d given her a potion to ease the pain and exhaustion. She had worked so hard all day to simply breathe…and after watching the chest retractions pull in the thin flesh against her ribs, Draco had asked that she be eased into sleep.
She opened her eyes, regarding them with an indefinable expression. Her eyes, an exact replica of her father’s, slid from Draco to Hermione in a slow shift. She blinked again, slowly opening her eyes to watch them. A small gasp left her tiny, pursed lips.
Hermione wept, sobs wracking her form as she tightened her hold on the man beside her and the small girl she’d yearned for. The salt of her tears spilled over her lips as she kissed her cheek. A mark…the outline of Hermione’s lips left a shimmering print on the soft apple of her cheek. The essence of her love and pain, outlined in the salty kiss print on her dying child’s face.
Draco’s posture collapsed as Lucy’s eyes opened again…a harsh inhale ripped from her mouth as if she wanted just one…more…moment. She watched them, shuddering and gasping with grief…a small twitch of a smile on her tiny lips.
Then her eyes closed and didn’t open again.
Draco wrapped an arm around Hermione, whispering that he loved her. Loved their child. It would be okay. They would be okay. Her chest cracked wide as the color leached from her baby’s face, the pink replaced by the waxy white of death.
In that moment, as her husband held them in his arms, she prayed that they would survive this. But, as the room filled with with the sounds of grief and that strange heaviness in the air that only occurred when death came, she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.