Sitting down in our spacious kitchen, looking across the mahogany table at the woman I loved should have been a pleasure. She was just as beautiful as the first time I saw her, the first time I really saw her, with her dark hair framing her face, her eyes full of light. Unfortunately that light was a burning, passionate anger.
"There is nothing further to discuss, Draco, and my work life has nothing to do with you!" Hermione fumed at me over the breakfast table.
"Be reasonable, Hermione. I know you are ambitious but shouldn't you be taking it easy? Scorpius was only born 3 months ago. Besides it's not like this is your only chance for a promotion." I reasoned.
"But it might be my only change to change departments! But you wouldn't understand anything about it, you're a Malfoy." She spat at me.
My reply was stopped by Scorpius's cries from above. Hermione started to head towards the doorway to check on him.
"For Merlins sake, Hermione, let our elf get him." I snapped. The instant I said it I knew I had pushed her too far.
"I am more than capable of taking care of our son, something a person like you wouldn't understand." Her face was tight and her eyes flashed dangerously.
She turned to leave again and this time I made no effort to stop her. Looking down at my watch, I saw I was running late. I sighed as I rose from the table. This was the third time this week I'd had a blazing row with Hermione for breakfast.
Our relationship had been going well, all things considered. Hermiones parents and Aunt Andromeda were delighted when we announced our engagement and Harry and Ginny had been surprised but accepting. However not everyone in the wizarding world was as understanding.
Pansy and Ron had both given nasty interviews to Rita Skeeter in the lead up to our wedding and Rita semed to make ot her personal mission to destroy us. Mother was finally on speaking terms with me again after four years of estrangement and pointedly ignored Hermione anytime we were all together.
All that I could have stood for, I could tolerate, if it wasn't for Hermiones career. Hermione was ambitious, everyone knew it and she felt she had achieved everything she had set out to do for magical creatures what with the sweeping reforms and change in their legal status. Her next step was to change the laws for the purebloods and for that she needed to change to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
It also meant longer hours which meant more time away from her family and drawing even more attention to herself. She already drew a lot of attention as one of Harry's closest friends, as a key part in the defeat of Voldemort and as the muggle-born Mrs Malfoy.
Not all the attention was positive, especially the attention from the purebloods that still shared Voldemorts ideals. The fact that she, a muggle-born, would dare to change their comfortable little world and put muggle-borns on an equal footing with them was both laughable and disturbing to them.
She had talked to me beforehand of the changes and reforms she wished to make. The changes to the laws she was proposing were too drastic and too sudden. I had advised her, in vain, to make the changes less severe, to introduce them at a slower pace to cause less disruption and resistance in the magical world.
But Hermione wouldn't listen, instead she attributed my ideas to my own selfish motives of money and power, of being just like them. Another pure-blood who valued blood over talent.
Why can't she see I am only trying to protect her and make her life easier? I am trying to make her see I'm doing this because I love her.
But making Hermione Granger change her mind was like the Dark Lord to come back to babysit at a muggle orphange. An impossible and ridiculous challenge. I could never admit to her that I wanted to protect her because it would make her more determined to follow through with it. Already I could imagine her voice in my mind. "I don't need you to protect me, I am more than capable of protecting myself!"
Then there was the matter of Astoria. My mother had managed to convince father to hire her at our company as an assistant to him and me about 6 months ago. I don't think mother had given up hope of me falling in with her way of thinking and choosing a pure-blood wife. Astoria hadn't seemingly given up either and wore many provocative outfits to the office as well as trying to have lunch with me every day.
I sighed and apparated away from a home that provided no comfort to a work that would provide no escape.
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