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Draco swears he’s staying single after the war, after narrowly escaping Azkaban, after staying home to watch his grieving mother after his father’s imprisonment. He swears he won’t fall in love, won't find a girl, and won't continue the Malfoy line. He won’t become his father, he can’t even fathom the concept.
But next thing he knows, he meets a girl at a bar in Knockturn Alley, the only bar that’ll still take his service, despite his status as innocent. Draco hasn’t a clue what a pretty war hero like Hermione Granger is doing in Knockturn and why in the world she’s talking to him, but he won’t be rude. Not to a girl who had multiple parts in saving both his life and his freedom. One minute they’re just catching up, she’s asking what he’s been up to, next thing Draco knows, he’s got her laughing and it’s 2 am.
They’ve lost track of time and Draco’s smiling again. He’s apologized thrice over, twice sober and once as he walks her home to her flat in Diagon. He’s grateful it’s dark, there’s nobody out.
He doesn’t want her to deal with the scrutiny that comes with walking next to a criminal, he admits loud, tipsy.
She shakes her head, “Don’t make me laugh, Malfoy. You’re not the only one with scrutiny, with a chip on your shoulder,” she laughs, pressing a kiss to his cheek and leaving him standing, frozen, in the street.
Draco’s hand slips up to touch his cheek, he cannot process a single bit of the night.
“You’re utterly smitten,” Blaise laughs, uncorking another bottle for the three of them.
Theo shakes his head and offers his glass for Blaise, watching Draco’s ruffled reaction, “She’ll live here in three weeks,” he swears.
Draco scoffs, denying up and down, “We’re only three months in, she’s not moving in.”
Next thing he knows, there’s a Hertz truck outside his flat and she’s waving from the curb. Draco’s down and he and the movers are lifting a couch from the car, next thing he knows, his old flat is his and Hermione’s new place. They take out the carpet and she moves in her book collection but the Quidditch trophies stay, the compromise of living as a pair.
And Draco can’t be happier, waking up with her messy brown hair on his pillow and her warmth in his arms. He’s not big on all the dinner parties, but he’ll deal with Ron Weasley if it makes her happy. He does a good lot of apologizing, but he knows it’s worth it, he’s genuinely apologetic and he knows what Hermione sacrifices for his sorry arse. He and Potter Harry play a game of pick-up Quidditch at the club, they double-date with Harry and Weasley Ginny, she tells him to call her. Draco doesn’t know why they all accept him with Hermione, he’s sure that she deserves better than him, but he’ll have her as long as she will let him.
Next thing he knows, he’s saving money like never before.
The ministry took a good portion of the money in the Malfoy vaults to help with repairs for Hogwarts and left him with the rest in a trust to access at twenty-five. The aim was to encourage Draco to get employed, to contribute to the community, to the Wizarding World.
He and Hermione budget together and all the money he can make, he hides away for her to never find, just to spend it all at a jewelry store, with Blaise at his side and Harry’s notes on ring preferences he and Ginny had pried out of Hermione in secret.
Ring box in Draco’s pocket as he spins her around at the Potter wedding, watching how wide Harry and Ginny smile and knowing he wants just that with the prettiest girl he’s ever met.
Just eight months from that meeting at the bar, Draco gets down on one knee on the Granger porch. After a family dinner, where he’s made entirely welcome in their home in Australia. He’s knelt down and praying she won’t say no.
Next thing Draco knows, his best man, Blaise, is giving a half-drunk speech after he got to watch his beautiful bride walk down the aisle. They’re cutting the cake and Hermione smears frosting on his nose by accident when she tries to feed him. He kisses his, laughing, as her lips taste like frosting and her tongue tastes like his. His wife, his for life.
Then, Draco’s sunburned on a honeymoon beach in Australia, back to their favorite spot. Hermione looks beautiful in the warm light, skin tanned to golden bronze and brown eyes glimmering in the sun. Draco knows his face is more red than ever, with both blush and burn.
They’re twenty-two, newly married and wrapped up in each other. Draco smiles softly to himself as he runs his fingers through her wet curls, Hermione flicking through the channels on the hotel television. He glances down at his pretty wife and doesn’t even notice the familiar metal on his hand, seems that his left hand’s getting pretty used to that ring.
There the next two or three years go, in their flat in Muggle London, a working married couple.
Next thing Draco knows, they weren’t really trying but there’s a test on the counter when he returns from work. Two pink lines and a shock to his soul, next thing he knows, Hermione’s standing there crying and nodding her head, confirming “yes.” Draco’s half excited and half scared to death but he runs to her and spins her around in his arms, embracing her the closest he possibly can. They’re barely twenty-five but Draco can’t imagine a better thing.
They move out of their flat and into one of the Malfoy properties from Draco’s trust, not the manor; he's left that to his mother. They decorate a nursery in yellows and greens.
Draco finds out the gender at one of her appointments, he doesn’t miss a single doctor’s visit all pregnancy. She’s his very first priority. Ginny begs them to let her throw a gender reveal but Hermione shakes her head, it’s a secret to all but the two of them. Their little baby, their little secret. She gives in and lets Ginny throw her a baby shower though, “It’s only right,” Ginny swears, pregnant with her second, “You threw one for me when I had James.”
Then next thing Draco knows, he’s wearing scrubs and a funny white hat and the doctor’s saying, “How are you doing there, dad?” And Draco can’t breathe, can’t process a thing, because nobody’s ever called him that.
He takes the drive home very slow, his fingers intertwined with his wife’s as she holds their newborn daughter, Estelle Andromeda Malfoy, named after the stars, like the Black family tradition and after Draco’s aunt, who he and his mother had reunited with and who had helped save Hermione’s life.
Next thing Draco knows, it’s Estelle’s first steps in their family room, decorated with pictures of her parents’ life together. Her first word, “Mama,” coached by Draco in secret.
Then, Draco’s twenty seven and every time he comes home, his little girl bolts through the house and into his arms to be spun around. With his messy blonde-haired daughter in his arms, her brown eyes just like her mother’s, Draco drops his keys on the counter and pulls his wife close to him, to press a kiss to her lips, ignoring the tongue their daughter sticks out at the gesture.
“Now, now,” Draco lectures teasingly, and Estelle makes grabby hands to her glowing and newly pregnant mother. Draco hands her off and promptly drops to his knees to press his hands to his wife’s stomach and feels the little baby kick, “Don’t kick your mama, son,” he murmurs, softly, pressing a kiss to the bump on her stomach.
Hermione laughs softly, “You don’t know they’re a boy,” she reminds him.
A while later and Draco’s in the hospital again, a second baby in his arms, a boy this time, just as he suspected.
Next thing he knows, there’s a second round of firsts for little Scorpius and Draco’s just as excited with every single moment. Time flies by, as notches on the doorframe get higher and higher as the kids grow and Hermione’s hair flicks with a gray strand or two, which Draco fears only makes her more beautiful.
Draco’s forty when Estelle, “Just Elle, Dad,”, goes on her first date with some boy at Hogwarts. His little girl, a fifth year Slytherin, is on a date with some Gryffindor boy, so they’re informed by her little snitch of a brother.
Hermione smiles softly, “Let her breathe, love,” she rubs his shoulders, with a little laugh, “She’s fifteen, not your little girl.”
Draco shakes his head, but puts his hand on his wife’s, “She’ll always be my little girl,” he argues, with a pout, aimed to make his wife laugh.
Then the kids are home for the summer, seventeen and fifteen, but Draco swears they’re not old enough for the things they’re up to. They hand over the keys to Elle’s first car on her seventeenth, there’s space to drive in the countryside. London felt too busy, too crowded, the minute Elle came into their world.
Summer nights are certainly Draco’s torture, it’s 11:01 and he’s wondering where his kids are. Neither seem to love their curfew but Hermione just laughs, “It’s two minutes past, love, they’ll show.”
Next thing he knows, Estelle wants to go to Muggle university, out to USC in California.
“That’s too far,” Draco swears, hand clenched. But it’s what she wants and they raised her to assert herself, she’s too much like her mother, Draco knows. Next thing he knows, Draco’s on a plane to the states to help move her in and it’s amazing how fast seventeen years go, as he’s kissing her goodbye outside her dorm.
Next thing Draco knows, his son is moving out too, getting a flat with his friends in Diagon and starting work at the ministry. His not-so-little Ravenclaw, out in the world.
Next thing he knows, Draco and Hermione are empty nesters and he’s getting to know his wife all over again. Twenty years since they’ve been truly on their own, all year ‘round. Draco’s more in love than he’s ever been with a lot of years of ‘remember whens’ and still some down the road.
Draco doesn’t know where life will take him, but he watches his children fall in love.
Hermione points out, contemplative, when Estelle and James sit just a bit closer than they used to on Christmas Morning. Draco doesn’t like it, doesn’t like his little girl, now twenty-five, doing anything romantic, especially with a boy like James Sirius Potter. ‘But they’re not to be bothered!’ his wife warns him away. He tries not to worry what would happen if they got together and broke up, what would the Malfoys and the Potters do?
Hermione flicks his arm, “Worry about that later, they’re not anything yet.” Draco hums and takes the gift he’s handed.
Next thing he knows, he and Hermione have a yard full of their kids’ kids. Ginny hands him a beer and laughs as their grandson swarms in, “Can’t believe our kids made one of their own,” she shakes her head, red hair greyed.
Hermione nods in agreement, “But it seems just right, doesn’t it?”
Draco can’t help but nod, Potter Jr. proved himself, he supposes. Who’d have thought he’d have a Potter for a grandson?
“A bit ironic,” Harry grins, still that same smile but surrounded by the wrinkles that come with age.
But Draco loves the yard full of kids, the big, happy combined family, so incredibly different from his lonely childhood. They love to take the grandkids for ice cream and Draco likes to teach them to fish. Hermione tells stories every chance she gets about how fast life can go, featuring a “next thing you know” or two.