A Second Look - A Dramione Story

Chapter 11

Warning: This is not my story. It is from RiverWriter on ao3.

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Scorpius started squirming to get down so she helped him off the sofa before looking back to Draco. She gathered her courage.

"I need to tell you something though," she swallowed thickly.

Her expression must have been bleak because he immediately closed the gap between them and put an arm around her.

"What is it?" He asked softly.

As much as she appreciated his attempt to comfort her, what she needed at the moment was space. She practically leapt off the couch, and when she turned back to look at him he appeared upset, but was obviously trying to hide it.

"I'm sorry, but I need to get this out and it's just too difficult to say when you're being so sweet."

He started to smirk. "I know I can be distracting, Granger," he said, ruffling his hair.

She rolled her eyes, but appreciated his attempt at humor and began to pace. It was only when she heard Draco chuckle quietly that she was pulled out of her own thoughts and looked around to see that Scorpius was crawling along in her wake. When he saw her looking at him he he plopped back onto his bottom and giggled at her. He thought this was a game.

"You're going to be the death of me," she told him. He clapped his hands and she wondered if it would be terribly emotionally manipulative if she was holding him when she told Draco what she needed to tell him. She scooped him up regardless and bounced him on her hip.

"Remember when I told you that something upsetting happened yesterday?"

Draco nodded.

"Well, in the middle of the party, in front of everybody, Ron announced that he and Lavender are having another baby."

He looked away, frowning. "He really is an insensitive ass, isn't he?" His jaw was clenched and he was obviously trying to suppress his anger.

"Unbelievably so. But it's actually worse than you think," she swallowed nervously again and clutched Scorpius to her as a means of fortifying herself. "The reason it was insensitive is not because he cheated on me with Lavender and now they have a family together and were bragging about it in front of me. It's much more cruel than that. The thing is that I quite possibly won't be able to have children and Ron knows it."

He whipped his head back around to face her looking aghast. She just nodded and continued her explanation.

"We all had health checks after the war and they discovered extensive scarring on my reproductive organs. The healers don't know if I'll be able to conceive a baby much less carry one to term. They believe the chances will get slimmer the more time passes, and it's already been eight years since the diagnosis. Ron wanted to get married and try for a baby immediately, but I knew we weren't ready. When he was in one of his nastier moods he would taunt me, imply that I wasn't a whole woman. He's still rubbing my face in it, it seems," she sighed and pushed that thought away. Ron's insensitivity wasn't really relevant to this conversation, the story was just a conduit to tell Draco about her health issues. "Anyway, if we're doing this I thought you deserved to know from the start that there is a pretty good chance I won't be able to give you more children, if we get to that point."

There was a long pause and she couldn't bear to look at him. She'd told so few people about this and most of them had been completely supportive. But Ron was the only one whom she had been dating when she told him, and he had made her feel like he was doing her a favor by sticking with her. In retrospect, it had been utterly humiliating.