Just lying there shouldn't have been that hard.
It was only a few hours or so before the glow of happiness that surrounded the man holding me lost its shine and I was thrown back into the pit of darkened doubt. And, as usual, Draco never moved. I envied him for this ability. The difficultly contained need to roll onto my back at the very least was relentless but his grasp was just as secure and iron like as it had been before he had fallen asleep. It was almost agonizing.
Don't get me wrong. I was still hopelessly relieved that he was home and only slightly injured. The love of my life had finally come back to me and loved the life growing within me. The look on his face, that awe inspiring affection as he gently ran his fingers over our still undeveloped child, was what forced me to keep my promise. He still loved me. He wanted our child. He had only one request, and it hadn't been the one I had imagined. I would stay until he woke up again and that look was what was helping me through the small eternity.
But my promise was also keeping me from seeing my brother. Ron was in the hospital somewhere, dying, and I couldn't go to him. It made me wish that I had one of those telly-fones dad was always on about. He used to bring them home and pull them apart before forgetting how they should be put together. "Ingenious," he used to say half way through his dissection, "those Muggles are. They can actually talk through these things and have some one miles away hear them and talk back. They don't even need floo!"
I smiled slightly, remembering his excitement about the find. But with memory, in those troubled times, brought back all the pain and suffering we had already endured.
Dad, Percy, Bill, Charlie…
All of them were dead and Ron, as it sounded, was soon to join them. And I couldn't go to him because my husband needed me. It was then that the 'why's started bubbling up from within that dark pit that I had sunken into. Why Ron? Why did it have to be him? Why did he have to go to war? Why did any of them have to go? Why did Draco have to go back?
The last was stifling. I suddenly felt as if I couldn't breath, as if all the air that had not a moment before been flowing freely was ripped from my lung. My body began to shake violently as too many possibilities raced through my mind. One after another, they flew in circles in my thoughts, most ending gruesomely with my beloved Draco lying dead somewhere.
I clung to him, my arms moving of their own will to create a vice grip around what I could hold of Draco's torso.
"He can't leave me again! I won't let him!" I shrieked. But the words did not make it to my lips. They were caught so that I heard them over and over again as if I had managed to speak them into the echoing room.
A coppery taste filled my mouth as a sharp pain seized my lower lip. I didn't dare loosen my hold on Draco to investigate but what had happened wasn't a mystery. In fact, it helped me understand my inability to scream. My nervous habit from childhood had been brought back to life though this time, I had almost bitten through my lip to keep quiet…
(***)
"Can I have some more?"
The boy was reaching up to me, a cup in his small, pale hands. I recognized his face, though it still carried the plumpness of four and a half year old. I recognized him because he was like an extremely young version of, well, me. A vague feeling that I should find this odd flitted across my mind before vanishing as the boy smiled at me.
"Please daddy?"
I felt a smile of my own spread on my lips and I reached out to take his cup. He frowned up at me but crawled into my lap as if he had been invited. I ran my hand through his mop of vividly red hair. Ah, there was the difference.
"You've had enough for tonight," I say easily, as if it were second nature. "Besides, mummy would probably be very cross with me if I let you have anymore. She still remembers the last time I let you have too much cider before bed."
"But its Christmas," the boy pleaded. "Please daddy? I promise I won't be like a…" His face screwed up for a moment, as if it pained him to think so hard, before he grinned widely. "Hyperactive bludger…"
I raised my eye brow at the boy, wondering where he had learned such a large word.
"Mummy says that when I get chocolate from Uncle Fred and Uncle George. Then she yells at them…"
"And I have every right to."
I looked up and nearly went into shock. The boy in my lap began jabbering away about something to the woman who had just entered the room but I couldn't pay attention. Unlike the boy, I recognized her instantly. But there was something different about her, a confidence, an air about her that I hadn't seen before. She was smiling which made her, of possible, more beautiful. But it was that glow she carried that truly made me incapable of producing breath.
"Tristan," she said, though her dazzling gaze remained on me. "You might want to tell your father to close him mouth before he swallows some sort of bug."
The boy, Tristan, giggled as my eyes went wide and my lips came firmly together.
"Daddy," he laughed, his head tilting to the side in a way that dragged my gaze away from my wife, Ginny. But the light in his eyes held my attention once it fell upon him. Though they had the same look, the same shape, the same colour as mine, Tristan's eyes held Ginny's depth and warmth.
"Come on then, off to bed with you," Ginny laughed after a moment. The boy groaned and wrapped his small arms tightly around my neck.
"I want to stay up with daddy," he complained.
"Oh, I see now," Ginny said shortly but there was amusement in her voice. "I'm loved less because I gave birth to you, eh? If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have a daddy to cling to."
Tristan instantly tightened his grip but looked over his shoulder to give his mother a horrified look. When he saw her grin though, he relaxed and gave an exasperated sigh. I almost laughed at how similar it was to my own.
"Of course I would have daddy," he droned as if that explained everything.
The boy's grip again tightened around me, but it was as if he had another set of arms. My chest felt tight, like I was being slowly crushed. I sucked in a breath.
"Daddy? What's wrong daddy?"
"Draco, are you okay?"
The chair I was sitting in began to vibrate as the tightness got stronger. My breath came harder, shorter.
"Draco?"
"Daddy!"
My eyes flew open and I gasped for air. Something was strangling me.
"Ger-off-me!" I grunted while trying to fight away the wretched thing attached to me. It was small, definitely too small to have this sort of force. I tried to push it away but it gave a small shrieked, instantly jogging my memory back into working mode.
"Gin-you-strangle-me! Can't-breath! Ginny!"
"I don't want you to leave me again!" she screamed into my chest. "I don't want Ron to die!"
"You-kill-me-if-don't-let-go!"
Author's note: Short, I know, but I needed to get something up and I am insanely stuck at the moment on this chapter. I hope you like it all the same.