Chapter Text
Big thanks to knickersandkneazles for creating a fan cover with art by Fuji Xia for this fic!
“A bank of WHAT now?” Pansy cackles.
Hermione shoots her wife a scolding glance. “Keep your voice down! There are people here!” She casts a furtive glance around, taking in the dozen or so fellow patrons of the outdoor cafe, and lowers her voice before continuing. “It’s not a bank in the Gringotts sense, but it’s a place where men go and donate their… you know…” She widens her eyes meaningfully.
Pansy caws with laughter. “Their SPERM?”
Several people at neighboring tables turn abruptly in their direction, with looks ranging from scandalized to downright curious.
Flushing with embarrassment and apologizing profusely, Hermione shushes her.
“Pans, you’re too much. Let’s talk about this later.”
“Absolutely not, love. You’ve really piqued my interest with this… sperm Gringotts idea,” the witch raises a brow at her wife suggestively. “However, my love, I hate to snuff out your hopes there but I must remind you that magical pregnancy is remarkably more difficult without connection.”
“Ok, you’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t understand. Connection as in…?”
“Chemistry, Granger! A spark. Why do you think all of us pureblood spawn are only children? Do you think our parents with their arranged marriages — which are really more like business transactions — really mutually enjoyed the activities necessary for conception? Absolutely the fuck not! But look at love matches like the Weasleys. I bet Molly and Arthur have thee raunchiest, thee most explosive, most dynamic—”
“Pansy!” Hermione sighs and buries her face in her hands. “They’re like my own parents and I really don’t want that thought in my head. Please. I get it.”
“I’m sorry, pet. All of this is to say — we’re going to have to get more creative here. I wish I could put a baby inside of you, but alas, I do not have the parts.” She gestures between her legs and shrugs.
"I just can't believe this is so difficult. We have magic! Most of the impossible is possible for us."
They’ve been dancing around conversations like this for months. They aren’t sure what had spurred the transition, but seemingly overnight they had found themselves in a new phase of life, unable to stop thinking about what their life would look like with a baby of their own.
Hermione sniffles, averting her eyes from the table to a young couple pushing a pram down the road. Pansy reaches across the table and takes her hand.
“We have time! And options! We just don’t know them yet.”
But she knows the words aren't quite enough.
~*~
That evening, Draco Malfoy steps out of the green flames of the Nott Manor floo only to be met by raucous laughter and the sound of glass smashing against marble floors.
“Pansy bloody Parkinson,” Theo roars, surging down the hall back into the drawing room to investigate the chaos.
Blaise rises from the chaise he had been stationed on to greet Draco with a clap on the back. “Good to see you, mate! Get in here and join the fun!”
Theo, struggling to grab a crystal goblet from Pansy waves a hello from across the room. “This one’s in a mood tonight. Be careful, Drac.” He gives her a meaningful look before plucking the last shard from her hands and hustling away.
“Oh fuck off, Nott! Can’t a girl just drink her problems away anymore without being judged for it?” She conjures a bottle of some pearlescent spirit and takes several long gulps before swatting away a few loose tears that had fallen to her cheeks.
Draco pours himself a tumbler of firewhiskey and takes a large swig. “What’s got you in this state tonight, Parks?”
She sighs, plopping down heavily beside him and lifting her feet into his lap. “Hermione. I just…”
Draco raises an eyebrow, “Trouble in the paradise of the Parkinson-Granger household?”
She swats at his arm. “No! Well, yes. But not how you must be thinking. It’s… complicated. I’m just feeling… quite inadequate. I feel… guilty.”
He reluctantly gestures for her to continue while downing more of his firewhiskey. He is not pissed enough for the level of emotional vulnerability he suspects is about to come out of his old friend. He has some catching up to do.
“Hermione and I… We’ve been thinking for a while about—” She hiccups abruptly and her hand flies to her chest. “We’ve been talking about having a baby.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“And how does that work when both of you—”
“Draco Malfoy, if you don’t shut your mouth right this instant.” Pansy snaps at his teasing. She rolls her eyes and continues. “We’re ready. And we want a baby so badly. But well, we’re not sure we really have…”
“Any options?” He answers as she trails off.
“Yes.” She sighs despondently.
“Harry and I have actually been going through the same thing.” He supplies after a moment’s pause. “We’ve thought about a surrogate, but you can’t even imagine how difficult it is to get a mentally stable witch to agree to carry and birth either the next Malfoy heir or the child of the bloody savior of the wizarding world. We’re too worried a surrogate would just abscond with the baby and we’d never see them again. We’re not sure what our… options… are.”
In silent solidarity, they clink their glasses. Draco accios a bottle of firewhiskey from the Nott bar.
“Nothing like drinking away your sorrows and just pushing your problems down deep inside instead of dealing with them, right Malfoy? It’s the pureblood way. Our oh-so-ancient and noble houses would be so fucking proud!” Pansy salutes him before swallowing the rest of her bottle in one go.
Draco raises his glass and brings it back down to his lips before stopping abruptly. “Wait, I thought we were blood traitors now?”
“Well, I certainly am. Married the most famous muggleborn in the world — a witch at that! — and disgraced the lineage of Parkinson. Which may actually end with me because I can’t figure out how I can get my wife pregnant.”
“Sorry, Parks. If I could help I would, alas I—”
Pansy reaches over and plasters her hand over Draco’s mouth. She stares out into space, mouth agape, in contemplative silence. He can almost see the wheels spinning in his head. She turns and gives him a cunning grin.
“Draco. What if…” She pauses and summons yet another bottle of a mysterious spirit, it’s orange this time and he notices it smells like the muggle cereal Harry is obsessed with.
“I feel like I’m going to need this, whatever it is,” he laughs before taking a large swig.
“Draco, what if you donated your sperm to me?”
He spits the alcohol out in his lap. “Parkinson, what the fuck?”
“I’m serious, Draco! It solves me and Hermione’s problem! We’d get a baby and—”
“Right, yes. But you forget the part where Harry and I also want a baby of our own as well.” He drops his head into his hands, the room is spinning too quickly for him to keep up.
Pansy squeals. “Salazar, alright, how about this then!” She waggles her eyebrows. “You and me. Harry and Hermione. Two babies for two couples.”
He laughs and jokingly retorts, “The only way I’d agree to it is if I get to knock Granger up. I’m not bringing yet another pureblood prat into the world, I need to continue my streak of pissing off the Malfoy ancestors after all.”
“Oh? Does Draco Malfoy still harbor that schoolboy crush on Miss Hermione Granger after all?” Pansy teases. “I don’t blame you, her tits are fucking fantastic and her cun—”
“Pansy, are you really going to talk about your wife like this to me?”
She raises her hands in a mocking surrender and shrugs. “I’m just saying, Draco. And I know for a fact she’d be into you. She once admitted that if we ever brought a man into the picture — for a night of fun or something — she used to fantasize about you in school and thought it might be fun. This was before you got with Potter, of course.”
Draco feels himself growing warm and pulls at the neck of his cashmere jumper. He shouldn’t be this affected, he’s married to the man of his dreams and hasn’t given his old crush on the Golden Girl any thought in years. “Ok but even if… What, then you and Harry? I don’t think he’d be ok with that.”
“Well, we never know until we ask! Do we? He is also into witches if I recall correctly.”
Draco looks skeptical.
Pansy continues, “Please, I seem to recall that after Hogwarts and after his childish dalliance with the Weaslette ended he was quite the player, before you of course. But I know he swings both ways. As do I. As do you. As does Hermione!”
She claps her hands as if to celebrate.
He drags a hand down his face. “I might just be absolutely pissed, but this is starting to make sense for a plan.”
Pansy squeals once more. “I know! I think it has so much potential.”
“Ok, but who will raise which baby?”
“Oh, tosh. That’s for future Drarry and future Pansmione to figure out!”
He looked at her, puzzled. “Drarry? Pansmione? Is that what you call us in private?”
“Maybe.”
“I hate it.”
“But I put your name first!”
“I don’t care, don’t ever use the term Drarry again.”
It isn’t long until they stumble their respective ways home, drunkenly lauding each other for their genius thinking and promising to follow up on the plans they had made in the morning.
When Pansy falls in bed next to Hermione that night, she feels a smug sense of pride at the idea that she is about to make her wife incredibly happy with what she thought was genius, Granger-level thinking.