Jack stopped talking; didn't utter a single word since Ginny had returned him to me.

And he'd started drawing again, parchment after parchment of stick figures dressed in black cloaks and angry expressions upon their faces.

"He's probably just missing Mr Dog," Hermione tried to assure me as she pressed a hand to her still flat stomach. "Just give him time."

"It's been six days," I said exasperatedly, wringing my fingers through my hair. "Surely this is not normal?"

"None of this is normal," Ron sighed heavily, his eyes lingering sadly on Hermione; a doleful look flitting across his face. "We're all just taking each new day as it comes."

I knew what was going through his mind, that this was not how he wanted to start a family with Hermione; being stuck underground with a Slytherin and a Malfoy junior for roomies.

It wasn't so much that we were living with the bare necessities, (although, thankfully, due to certain witches and wizards who were adept at transfiguration, it wasn't too unbearable) but to bring a life into a world without sunshine or fresh air, where every day we lived in fear of being caught and brutally murdered seemed unfair and cruel.

"You'll both do amazing," I promised, leaning across the table to squeeze Ron's hand. "Jack wouldn't be half the child he is today if it wasn't for you two."

We all glanced down at Jack, observing as he furiously covered another piece of parchment with angry black cloaked stick men.

"Yeah," Ron said, emitting a low nervous chortle as he ran a long finger along the inside of his neck collar.

Fuck, our kids were screwed.

*****

Draco stopped sleeping; hadn't been able to ever since his encounter with the boy.

His and Blaire's child.

He moved himself to the spare bedroom so as not to disturb Astoria whilst he lay awake every night staring at the Scottie Dog that he constantly twirled around in his fingers. 

He wanted desperately to hold it up to someone and ask if it was real, or was it in fact his mind playing tricks on him again? He couldn't trust anything anymore. Everything he saw, everything he touched, he wondered if it was really there.

That boy had looked real, but he couldn't have been. The Monopoly piece felt solid beneath his fingers, but was it?

He supposed it wasn't far fetched that he would have come across it in the grounds of Hogwarts. It probably had been on Blaire's person during the explosion, after all.

Perhaps finding it was what triggered the delusions? Yes, that made sense. A psychiatrist would agree. Perhaps he should see one, but he feared word leaking out that he was going crazy. Voldemort had no time for Death Eaters with PTSD; he'd most certainly be killed.

But if this Scottie dog was the reason he was suffering with delusions, then why wasn't the child appearing before him as he held it now?

Draco couldn't help but feel stabbing disappointment, and this made him laugh - he actually wanted to go mad; wanted to see things that weren't there.

Madness.

He felt his eyes begin to droop.

"What is wrong with you?"

Draco's eyes flew open as his head shot up. Blinking, he looked dazedly around. Astoria was glaring at him from across the table where he'd fallen asleep in the middle of eating porridge he didn't remember sitting down to.

Panic consumed him as he tried desperately to cover up his confusion. He must be so exhausted that he'd started sleepwalking; getting on with everyday living without realising it.

"It's like being married to a useless zombie," Astoria spat as she slammed her spoon down on the table, "I'm the one who's pregnant - the one whose body is being destroyed by an invasion of your child, and yet here you are making it all about you again. What about me? Can't you just for once show a bit of fucking gratitude for everything I have done for you?"

She picked up the glass of pumpkin juice and tossed it towards him with surprising force. Draco ducked his head just in time, the wall behind him bearing the full brunt of the impact as glass and juice went everywhere.

Draco slowly lifted his head, staring at her aghast as she stood up and stropped out of the room, the sound of the door slamming behind her echoing loudly around him.

He couldn't do anything right by her, he thought glumly, wincing as he pulled out a splinter of glass that had embedded itself in his cheek. He was nothing but a disappointment to everyone he'd ever crossed paths with from the moment he was born.

There were only two people in the world that had loved him despite his failures.

And one of them he had let down so badly; watched as she died before his eyes. He should have been with her, should have held her in his arms as they left the world together.

He wished he'd died too. Maybe he had.

Maybe this was his hell.

*****

All she wanted, all she ever wanted was for him to love her like he loved that bitch.

She remembered watching them back in their Hogwarts days, green with pure envy as he stared at Blaire with absolute adoration.

They hadn't been into openly displaying their affection for one another, but everyone knew they were fucking, and besides, you could see it in their eyes; eyes that they only ever had for one another.

Hogwarts' very own Romeo and Juliet.

So what did that make her? Rosaline? Romeo had loved Rosaline, though, before Juliet came along. Draco didn't love her at all. And she was beginning to despise him more and more each day for it.

He wasn't trying hard enough. And now he'd moved into the spare bedroom so he could mope some more about a ghost.

Good. She had been getting sick of hearing him crying out her name in his sleep as she lay there next to him growing his child inside of her. More than once she had to resist the urge to smother a pillow down onto his face to shut him up.

She didn't know how she was going to cope when the thing inside of her started to physically kick her. It was bad enough that she already felt as though she was being kicked over and over again by the man that had put the baby there in the first place.

It had been a wonderful dream - being married to a handsome prince and living together in a big house with a beautiful child.

But the reality sucked and she'd never forgive Draco for not loving her.

She wished now that she'd married someone like Cedric Diggory. A little rough around the edges perhaps, but he was a true war hero, having single handedly stopped Longbottom in his tracks; clearing the pathway to Voldemort's victory.

But unfortunately Draco Malfoy had been the one she had wanted at the time, the one she used to fantasise about being her prince.

Except that he was already somebody else's, and it seemed that not even death, a marriage nor an impending child could stop him from loving Blaire Zabini.

******

The boy came to him in a dream, silently holding up an empty hand as he looked up at him with those mournful grey eyes.

When he woke up, Draco knew what he must do.

He was going to take the Scottie dog back to where it belonged.

******