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She has her doubts. Do they love me enough? Do they even love me? Am I a good mother? What if I’m not?
She is a career driven woman. Always has been, always will be. She has no intentions of abandoning her career when she has worked so hard to get where she is. Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic. She has a voice and she sweeps the Wizengamot in a dance of progressive laws and inclusivity measures and step by step she works for a better wizarding world. A world that is better from the one she entered at age eleven. She almost died for this world at age eighteen. She has no intention of letting it be as conservative and prejudiced as it was before Voldemort.
Small changes happen steadily under her pressuring eye. First the werewolves. Then the elves. And she breaks the dam with her marriage to one of the most prominent pureblood families of Wizarding Britain.
War hero and golden girl Hermione Granger, engaged to former Death Eater Draco Malfoy.
The Prophet goes wild at the revelation of their secret relationship. Their friends rage and curse until they finally accept it as fact. Malfoy loves Hermione. Granger loves Draco. There is nothing they can do to change it.
His mother throws a huge engagement party, finally content that her son has found happiness. His father sends howlers from Azkaban that go unanswered until Narcissa sends him divorce papers. He doesn’t sign them, of course. He knows they are only a threat, and he has no intention of being a lonely old man once he is released.
Her parents are cautious to say the least. They know of Draco the bully, Draco the boy that called their daughter a “mudblood”, Draco the cruel little shit that made their daughter cry at age twelve. The man that asks for her hand in a quiet dinner in a small muggle restaurant is a man that is clearly quite smitten with their only child. Besotted, worships the ground she walks upon. Reluctantly they accept him.
After marriage, and the tabloid mess that follows Draco and her everywhere they go, she becomes even more determined in changing wizarding society. Their parents may have accepted it, their friends too, but the rest of the wizarding world looks at them suspiciously. For purebloods she is the mudblood gold digger that married herself to one of the Scared Twenty-Eight to elevate her status. For muggleborns, she is a traitor to the witches and wizards that lost their lives during the war.
She doesn’t care. Determined and goal driven, she works towards a world that is more inclusive, more accepting, more…
Muggle Studies curriculums updated. Approaching muggleborns’ parents earlier from their child’s eleventh birthday. Primary schools with purebloods, half-bloods and muggleborns before they all attend Hogwarts. Building trust. Providing counselling to parents. A better world. For all future witches and wizards. For the child she carries.
Becoming a mother doesn’t derail her from her work, her career. She goes to work until the very last minute and her first contraction hits her during a meeting with Kingsley. Draco protests at first but she persuades him to let her be.
“I know my body Draco. I’m tired but I can still work. It’s mostly paperwork anyway. I’m not excessing myself. Besides, this new law will be about eradicating this backwards law about half-blood children, and I want to bring our little one into a better world.” He complies because he, unlike the rest of the world, understands her and loves her for it.
After giving birth, she spends the necessary time away to heal but after that she relies on the fact that Draco takes a paternity leave as well in order to stay with baby Scorp. She had been the one to push for the “paternity leave” new law.
She has two more children after Scorpius.
Their second child is planned, both her and Draco wishing to give their son a sibling, knowing full well that an only child childhood can be a bit lonely. She continues working with the same fervour, if not more, after Lyra is born. And when Scorpius is six and Lyra is four, they get a surprise in the form of Leo, their youngest.
She has a panic attack when she finds out. Separating her time between motherhood and her new Ministry position as Undersecretary is already hard enough. How is she going to keep up with a third? Restless nights full of crying and feedings, shore feet, two young kids to keep under control as they have their bursts of accidental magic and get into all kinds of mischief. How will she manage?
And then Draco steps in. Loves and supports her as she works into bringing another child into the world. Taking an indefinite leave from his Auror position. Keeping the older children busy with games and visits to museums and quidditch practise, while “Mama rests”.
And thus, life goes on for the family of five.
She is a working mom. Walking up early to make breakfast for her family, her husband stirring coffee and warming the milk as she makes omelettes and toasts for her children. She leaves for work and Draco gets Scorpius to the new inclusive elementary school for children of all blood statuses and drops Lyra and baby Leo to either his parents or her parents. She gets home later than her husband on most days. Her entrance to the house being followed by a squeal of “Mummy is back”, tight embraces, endless bubbling and unstoppable questions about this and that.
On weekdays her time with her children is limited, as is for most working mothers. Yet on weekends she spends every little second with them. Takes them shopping to Diagon or Muggle London, takes them to the theatre or to the park. Draco organizes small family trips and vacations, and she delights in the love her children show to her. She loves them unconditionally.
Yet she can’t help but wonder if she is enough, if she is a good mother.
She has her doubts. Do they love me enough? Do they even love me? Am I a good mother? What if I’m not? Do I spend enough time with them? Am I losing too much of their childhood just to fulfil an ambition?
But it is her life, right? She had her dreams when she was younger and she pursues them, right? She is setting an example for them, to follow their path and do what they dream of doing, isn’t she?
She gets that look sometimes from her male co-workers, some of them pureblood, some of them older. “You should be at home, with your children, not waste our time with more presentations about changing the wizarding world,” their looks tell her. And some of her subordinates, females with families, also judge her. “A mother of three? Woking 10 hours a day, five days a week? When does she even see her children? She must leave them with nannies. Malfoy sure has the money for that.”
She bites her tongue every time, she overhears a comment at the Ministry or elsewhere. She knows better.
She gets days off when one of the children is sick, stays by their bedside, sleeps in their bed until the fever is down. She spends every evening lost in handcrafts with Lyra or projects for Scorpius’ school. She teaches Leo how to walk, teaches him how to speak, how to draw. She leaves work early every Thursday just so that she can take Lyra to ballet class and spends a whole of fifteen minutes taming her blond curls to a perfect updo for her sweet girl. She indulges Scorpius in his pursuit of learning to play the piano and corrects his little fingers on the black and white keys when he practises.
She tells them stories. Encourages them, congratulates every small accomplishment, never misses a single parent meeting at Scorpius’ school. She takes vacation leave in the summer and they go on excursions to places both muggle and magical, all together as family. She hears “I love you mummy,” from their perfect lips every night when she tucks them in bed and every morning before she leaves for work.
“Do you think they love me?” she asks Draco one night, snuggled in his arms after another stressful day.
“They worship you love,” he assures her.
“But how can I be sure? They are young. What if they think I’m abandoning them for my work?” Her fears are unbased. She shouldn’t have them, shouldn’t let strangers affect her way of thought.
“They adore you darling. They are so proud of you. They love you just the way you are and as much as you love them. Just the other day, Lyra told me about how she wants to be like you when she grows up. And the day after your promotion, Scorpius went to school bragging about how his mum is the Minister’s Undersecretary.”
She knows all this. Has always known.
And on her first Mother’s Day as a mother of three, she wakes up to a full bed, Scorpius and Lyra tugged on each side of her, flowers and messy drawings in their little hands. Draco sitting on her bedside with a tray of breakfast and baby Leo crawling up from her legs to her chest. She smiles, and all lingering doubts evaporate.
She is enough.