On that cold, metallic chair, Draco kept his eyes locked ahead. He was exhausted, purple bags beneath his eyes, a cold cup of tea in his hand he knew was laced with a sedative. But he would not sleep. Not while he was stuck in that hospital room, hearing the damn steady beep, beep, beep of that muggle contraption Healers recently found use for. 

He would not move until they did. Until then, he'd let his memory plague him.

"She's growing up so quickly, isn't she?"

Draco turned to the small figure lying beneath purple sheets. The large window behind the reasonable-sized bed showed a calm, midnight sea with the full moon overhead, casting a light off the sleeping girl. 

He watched her with fascination, this being that was half of him and the woman he loved. She was radiant, his daughter; everything pure and wonderful about the world, everything he saw in Hermione every day. 

"She'll be going to Hogwarts next year," was what Draco murmured as Hermione bent down to press a feathering kiss on their daughter's forehead. She, too, watched Ariana for another loving moment before walking back to the entrance of the room where he waited for her. 

Hermione's mouth pulled up into a reassuring smile. "She will be fine, Draco. I know you worry about her, as do I, but she won't be alone. She will have family and protection in Hogwarts."

Draco released a frustrated sigh he hadn't known he was holding in. He turned from his wife, walking down the hallway to the end room. Hermione followed quietly. 

"Can you call that protection?" he asked, opening the door. 

Although there was a teasing tone to his voice, Hermione still looked inside with a contemplative gaze. Before the wall conjuring Hogwarts' Quidditch pitch at night, their son slept in tousled and twisted emerald sheets. 

"So he's a bit of a mess," Hermione said, smiling when the moonlight washed over her son's pale hair. "But he's a growing boy, Draco. He will adjust, too. He's just a Second Year, after all."

Draco nodded, crossing his arms. "I'm just nervous of his turn out," he explained. "I don't want his arrogance to conflict with the feelings of others, not like how I did in my youth. Especially because he has his sister to look out for."

Hermione reached a hand out to her husband. "You can't place that burden on him. Nor can we have someone shadow Ana. We have to let them grow. No matter what, I know this family is going to be okay."

Draco scoffed. "You forget we are Malfoys."

She pinched the underside of his palm. "Your past does not define our family, Draco," she told him sternly. "It has no control over who we are. Even if it did, there's no one else in the world I'd tackle life with. Because with you, we will always be safe. Won't we?"

Draco watched her hand slip away from his to land on her swollen stomach, caressing the bump gently. It is where their new child rested, waiting for the right moment to come to life. 

He swallowed, love and adoration in his silver eyes. "I'd give my life for you, Hermione. For them."

"I know," she said, leaning forward to press a kiss on his lips. "With you nothing can harm us."

Gritting his teeth, Draco suppressed the roar he wanted to let out. He had failed Hermione. He had failed his children.  

The only job worth having— the only one he should have been good at, was protecting them. Keeping his family intact. Now here he was, in this bloody hospital room, going insane with every beep, beep, beep, that reminded him of what he had done. 

There was a knock on the door and Draco was hardly surprised to see Harry walk in. His green eyes narrowed when he caught Draco wide awake, his cup of tea (that they all swore was not tampered with) was untouched. 

"Come on, mate," Harry sighed, "you've got to rest. If you don't, you know Dean will have you escorted out."

Draco did not blink in his direction, instead his eyes followed the path of wires and tubes intertwining with each other in loops over the white sheets and the contraption beside the bed. 

"At least...Your mother is outside, Malfoy. Be there for her."

Draco stiffened in his seat.

"There are Aurors inspecting every centimeter of Malfoy Manor as we speak. They are working relentlessly to find anything that can lead us to whoever did this. I'll be leading this case, mate. I'll get justice. I promise you."

Draco finally turned, silver gaze narrowing at the man he now called a friend. "This is my case, Potter. I'll get justice."

"You can't be at the front of this. Hell, you can't even be involved. You know the rules. This is too personal—"

"Of course it's fucking personal!" Draco growled, standing when fury bubbled in his chest, winning. "My family was attacked, Potter! Do you expect me to sit back and let you  handle my business? It's my responsibility to find whoever did this!" His finger pointed at the bed, the blasted beep, beep, beep becoming louder as his voice broke off. 

Harry and Draco must have stayed like that, silent and glaring each other down, for a long moment, but time seemed to creep up on them when Healer Thomas stood at the entrance of the room, arms crossed over his chest. 

"We've been taking bets to see when this animosity would be back," Dean said. "We all thought it'd be something related to Quidditch, but this is just sad."

Harry cleared his throat, shoving his hands in his pockets. "There's no animosity," he explained. "Just a disagreement."

Dean nodded once, knowing perfectly well not to further comment on the situation. Instead, he closed the door behind him and approached the bed. "I've come to check their vitals."

Draco stopped breathing when the Healer waved his wand over the patient. A 3-D image, something close to an x-ray, showed what was happening internally. 

Dean humphed to himself, flicking his wand so the image disappeared after studying it. Then, adding to the fury and desperation in his chest, Draco watched him approach the glass crib beside the hospital bed. He felt an overwhelming flood of pain, like his skin was being burned with the Dark Mark again; except, this time it went deeper, cutting through every layer of skin until it reached his bones and branded him there, too. The glass crib was riddled with wires and tubes, all wrapped around the small, mangled toddler.

Another image popped up with codes and strange shapes, none of which Draco knew how to decipher. When he spent a few minutes studying that, Dean made it fade before turning to look back at Harry. There was a silent exchange between the two before he dared to look at Draco.

"What?" he demanded, voice barely audible enough. "How is she?"

"Her developing system was overwhelmed with spells," Dean said, tone austere and professional, but his dark eyes revealed his own share of pain. "She is almost three; her central nervous system has yet to be fully developed like a grown adult's would be. There is a severe case of head trauma, and we've just managed to stop the hemorrhage since your house-elf brought her in."

Draco tried not to choke on the knot in his throat as the door of the room opened again, this time letting Ron and Pansy in. She marched right toward Draco, grabbing his hand and squeezing with all her might. 

"It wasn't easy to stop the rupture of blood vessels in her brain," Dean continued, apologetic, like all of this was on him. "There is already too much magic in her system, we cannot risk inflicting more without there being more damage. I'm afraid Demi will be in a continuous state of coma."

Everyone in the room had spent the last fifteen years in each others' company one way or another; with that time spent, they learned to pick up traits from one another. As such, they all knew Dean fiddled with a pen when he was nervous, when there was much more he wanted to say but could not find the words to say them.

"Dean," Pansy said, eyes narrowing. "What else?"

The Healer took a deep breath. "We really can't know the state of the damage until she wakes up. And comas vary in length. It might be days, weeks, months....years. If the damage is far worse than we predict, then...then her body might start failing her in time and she won't be able to survive on her own."

"Predict?" Pansy hissed. "You're basing this off predictions. For fuck sakes, Thomas!"

Dean was hardly ruffled by Pansy's outburst. He was a Healer; he dealt with the outcomes of relatives and loved ones hearing the state of their patients. Still, he appreciated when Ron called his wife's name out, something soothing and stern all at once. 

"Everything happened at once..." Draco felt his heart stop when a quiet, weak voice broke between the tension in the room. He turned to find Hermione attempting to sit up on her bed, all pale and purple. "Dean's right. There can only be predictions because there might have been newly created spells."

When she clenched her teeth, showing her pain, Draco rushed to her side, pulling her hands down to stop her from straining herself. When their eyes met, tears flooded her. "I'm sorry," she whispered to him. "When she was hit...when Demi...I couldn't think, I couldn't react—"

"It's not your fault," he told her instantly. 

But it felt like it. Especially when Hermione caught sight of the glass crib beside her bed. A sob escaped her mouth, echoing off the white walls of the hospital room. 

"Who could've done this?" she cried.

Harry felt his heart break for his best friend. Long ago he had promised himself to never let pain touch her, not after everything she had endured for him during the war. "I've got a team working on this, Hermione," he said to her, desperate for her to hear the words, to hear the promise behind them. "We'll find who did this. I swear to you."

Ron frowned at Harry, because both knew perfectly well what this was about. Still, one look at Hermione, and he too forgot how to function. 

"Where's Narcissa?" was Hermione's next question.

"Outside," Pansy answered. "Andromeda and Ginny are with her."

 "And Mister Malfoy?"

This time no one made an attempt to look at Hermione. 

 Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Draco, your father?"

"Dead," he said, emotionless, face void of anything, too.    

Hermione's eyes widened in horror, in realization, and her breathing became frantic.

Dean rushed to her, pulling out a vial with a potent sedative, just as the door opened again. There stood Ariana, school robes and face covered in soot. 

Ariana took a careful step forward, her silver eyes challenging them to lie to her, to try and send her back where she came from. But no one moved. They just stared back at her, bewildered and miserable. She wanted to question them for it, but the answer was right before her in glass walls. 

She faltered, stumbling back a step. She was caught by Harry, but she pulled away from him, dragging her unstable feet forward.  Ariana almost made a move to touch her baby sister, run a hand over her bare belly, coaxing her awake as she'd done so many times before, but she stopped herself. Fear flashed in her eyes. 

"Dad," she heaved, "Dad, Demi is going to be fine, right?"

With that same blasted knot in his throat threatening to choke him, Draco could not find the words to assure his oldest daughter that the youngest would be fine. The guilt would not allow him to do so. 

He was supposed to protect them; he failed.

Ariana moved from the crib, standing beside her mother's hospital bed. Tears welled in her eyes at her state, her heart crushing in her chest. "I don't want to go back to Hogwarts, Mum. Don't make me."

Draco scooped his thirteen year old daughter into his arms, holding her close like she was a toddler again, afraid of the dark and needing her father so the light would shine through. He clung on to her as he moved her over to Hermione, both lowering down on the bed with her. 

Exhaustion seemed to finally settle in, as best as it could for Draco, but the moment was ruined when in his true fashion, Blaise stormed in past the door. He jumped on the bed, throwing his arms around the three Malfoys, crying. 

"For Merlin's sake," groaned Pansy, pulling on Blaise's leg. "Let go, you idiot!"

"Why us?" cried Zabini.

"You're in your underwear!" Pansy added, one of his purple slippers falling off his feet.