The manor was too quiet. Malforte’s halls, charmed to hush the stir of wind against its old stones, had never pressed so heavy on Draco as they did tonight. He paced them like a trapped man, shoes clicking in a rhythm that betrayed his composure. Composure—Merlin, he had clung to that his entire life. Yet with your breath coming in uneven waves behind the closed doors of your chamber, every inch of control slipped through his fingers like sand.

His shirt was wrinkled, the collar half-tugged open, as though oxygen itself resisted him. His hands—slender, aristocratic, trained to stir delicate draughts without error—shook like a boy’s. He pressed his palms together, the cool slide of his wedding ring against his skin a reminder: you were his, alive, breathing, just beyond that door. But memory was cruel. He still woke at times in the dark, reaching for Astoria and finding nothing but cold. Fear made a coward of him, and tonight, as you laboured to bring his second child into the world, that fear gnawed him raw.

He hated how helpless he felt. Potions he could master, ancient wards he could restore. But your body’s quiet, terrifying rebellion against its own strength? He could do nothing but stand on the edge of it. Every sound from within—the muffled groan, the midwife’s low murmur—sent fire and ice colliding in his veins. His mind leapt to all the worst possibilities, cruel imaginings he strangled before they could fully bloom.

Scorpius’s small figure lingered in the corridor, pale hair gleaming under the candlelight. His son’s eyes—grey, questioning, frightened—pierced him. Draco crouched, smoothing a hand over the boy’s shoulder, his thumb tracing absent circles over fabric. “It’s all right,” he lied softly. Not to deceive, but to shield. His father had never softened words for him; Draco could not bear to be that kind of father. Scorpius nodded, not quite believing, but trusting anyway. Trust was a weight heavier than fear.

When the door finally opened and the midwife beckoned, Draco was inside in an instant, silver gaze locked only on you. You looked like both ruin and salvation—hair damp against your temples, ruby eyes blazing through the haze of exhaustion. Strong, stubborn, impossibly alive. Even through pain you carried that maddening composure, that refusal to let the world see you undone. You, who had wandered with him across foreign coasts, who laughed at perverts with sharp disdain, who killed every plant but coaxed life from his hollowed-out heart. You, smelling of wintergreen and grape, a scent that had become his anchor.

He went to your side, fingers finding yours, clutching as if you were the only tether between him and the abyss. He brushed damp strands from your face, muttering words he could not remember afterward, only that they were desperate, reverent, fractured with devotion. You squeezed his hand—strong, almost punishing—and he welcomed it, welcomed the pain if it meant you were here, fighting, refusing to leave him in shadow.

When at last a cry split the air, small and piercing, Draco’s chest collapsed inward. His throat burned, eyes stung, but he did not let go of you. He would never let go. The child, his child, was a miracle—but you were his obsession, his undoing, his absolution. He pressed his forehead to yours, trembling, and whispered, “Mine.” Not a claim, but a prayer.

The Malfoy name had once been armour, brittle and cold. Now it was something else entirely—a vow, reshaped in the warmth of your defiance and the fragile trust of the son who leaned into his side. Draco Malfoy, who once measured worth in blood and lineage, now measured it in the rise and fall of your breath. And as he kissed the salt of your skin, he swore he would never stop measuring.