The wedding occurred the following year, the date chosen by Cissy. She cut down Draco's protests about waiting by insisting that pureblood custom dictated that the marriage occur before the birth of the first child, an event that was approaching rapidly for us. She made her son heel in a way I was incapable of.

It was the magical wedding of the century and everyone who was anyone was there. Everything about the wedding was Cissy's doing, including the hordes of guests she invited. She was like a force to be reckoned with, with an army of wedding-crazed women behind her. That army was composed of Darwina Malfoy, Druella Black, Dromeda Tonks, and Molly Weasley. The five women seemed to bond over the wedding plans, which led to Dromeda reconnecting with her long estranged mother and Mrs. Weasley being invited to snooty pureblood tea-dates.

I was happy for Dromeda and Mrs. Weasley, despite my misgivings about the scale of the wedding. Personally, I didn't want to think about all of the work that went into it, all those people who were there, or how much money was wasted on the thing, ever again. For me it was about me and Draco and our blossoming love. And it was about tying the knot before our child's birth, so that we could be a proper family.

Our egg hatched a mere week after the wedding in our honeymoon suite, since we took it with us to the Caribbean. We had been skinny dipping in the warm azure water when we were alerted to the presence of the first crack by a monitoring spell and an elf, having used double precaution before leaving it in the incubator. We summoned our bathrobes and apparated back.

The top of the thick shell was sliced off by Draco's wand. That was standard veela birthing procedure, due to the risk of the child dying from exhaustion; a baby bird was evolved to handle cutting its way free, but baby veela evolved with magical assistance. Our son was wet, covered in a thin film, pink, and attached to the membranes bordering the shell by an umbilical cord.

Draco cut the cord close to the stomach, leaving only a short stub. Only then did he pull the scrawny infant into his arms and begin to peel the film away from the face. The limbs were long and skinny and locked tightly into the fetal position. The baby was about the length of a six month old, but much thinner. I picked bits of film from the back of his head, which I soon noticed was not as bald as it initially appeared. Very fine clear hairs stuck to the film and my pulling on them caused the child to cry.

"Leave it; we'll wash it," Draco said, bouncing the baby instinctively. "Shush, it's okay Griffin. Father won't let Papa mess with your hair again."

Griffin was what we agreed to name our first born. We didn't know beforehand if we were having a boy, a girl, or a veela, and it was a unisex name. Plus it paid homage to Draco's veela ancestry and sounded cool in front of Willow Potter Malfoy. Willow and Potter were both the middle names and Malfoy the last name; Draco had agreed that we would reverse the order of our last names for the next child. Willow was chosen for the tree his grandfather had merged with.

With Draco's calming murmurs, our first born quieted down, but the soft whimpers never completely ceased. "Open one of the jars of food. I bet he's hungry after being trapped in that egg all of that time," Draco said, motioning with his sharp chin towards the birthing bag we'd brought with us.

"He," I asked, catching onto the masculine pronoun and glancing down to Griffin's crotch. There was nothing to see, because Draco's arm was in the way.

"Yes, he. It's a human boy," Draco confirmed. "A hungry human boy; now fetch the food already. Griffin, I swear, sometimes your Papa moves like a snail when off of a broom." The last bit was said to our son, despite clearly being directed at me.

"Right." I dug in the bag and found several jars of mashed vegetables. "Yes, er, this one looks good." Choosing the squash, I grabbed the jar and one of the baby spoons, bringing the items over to Draco. I opened the jar, put a little of the orange mush on the spoon, and brought it to Griffin's whimpering lips. "Open up Griffin. Papa has something nummy for you," I said gently, using Teddy's baby-talk word for food.

It was sort of like feeding Teddy back when he was only three months old and eating mashed foods for the first time. Griffin didn't seem to know what to do at first, but I continued pressing the spoon in and then pulled it out along the ridge of his upper gum, causing the food to fall off of the spoon. My son had two little baby teeth, but they were both on the bottom. He snapped his jaw closed and almost caught me with those razor sharp teeth, but he didn't catch much of the squash, most of that was pushed back out of his mouth.

I caught the orange colored mush dribbling down Griffin's face with the spoon, just as he opened his eyes for the first time, revealing a pair of eyes so pale grey they looked translucent. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me, still covered in the slime of birth and ensconced securely in Draco's arms. Together Draco and I fed him the entire jar, which seemed to do the trick, because he ceased whimpering.

After the feeding, Griffin was even messier, covered in both the remains of his birth and the squash. We bathed him next, taking care to remove all of the film from his entire body. His short thin hair we wash three times, until Draco was satisfied that we had gotten it all out, but were careful not to touch the belly button, where the stump of the umbilical cord remained. Then we dried him and dressed him in only a nappy and a soft and fluffy blanket.

"I'm glad he's a human male and not a veela male," Draco said, handing the clean baby to me for the first time. I nodded, even though I would've loved the child either way. Having a baby of either veela sex would result in the annoyance of not knowing which of the two veela sexes the child was. Then there was the potential problem of the human secondary sex not being in alignment with the veela primary sex, as in Draco's case. Plus there were the psychological issues of being different that Draco had had to face. I would rather my child not have to deal with any of that.

When Griffin's hair was finally clean and dry, it proved to be Draco's shade of pale blond. Even the baby's skin was the same pale shade as Draco's. He had Draco's coloration exactly, but none of Draco's facial features. The shape of the face, the brow, the nose, the chin, the jaw, the cheeks, the lips, and even the shape of the eye were all from my side. The shape of the eyes and lips were my mum's and the rest were my dad's. He was the perfect combination of Draco and me and I knew instantly that I would love him unconditionally forever. He was my son. One look at the adoration plastered on Draco's face and I knew he felt the same way.

"I would love him either way," I said, cradling the newborn who was much longer and skinnier than I was used to. "But I would prefer if he had more meat on his bones. I think we need to fatten him up."

"Yes, all hatchlings need to be fattened up in the beginning," Draco agreed, circling a tiny wrist with his thumb and forefinger. "But other than that, I think he's perfect."

"Absolutely perfect," I confirmed, pressing my nose to Griffin's pale head and breathing in the scent of freshly cleaned baby. There is nothing more wonderful than having your own child warm in your arms for the first time.

As for Grandfather Willow, the sight of the Malfoy Crystal for the first time since his joining with a tree jogged his memory. There was a reason beyond mere wealth that the magical diamond was important to him.

"My fierce Dragon, would you please bring the Crystal here, so that I may gaze upon it again now that it is safe?" Abraxas requested one day, his branches reaching out to catch an unusually thin pale blond toddler from tripping on his roots.

Griffin loved to be taken outside to the little clearing in the forest. He let out a happy squeal, babbled, "Tee, ee," wiggled free of the grasping branches, and continued on his way. Ee could mean a great number of things, including excitement, but Tee was his name for Grandfather Willow.

Griffin was just seven months old, but he'd been walking since four months. We didn't think he would, since he was a late crawler, but he was barely crawling before he was running. He looked like a stick figure running around on his bowed legs. We'd fattened him up as best we could, encouraging him to eat constantly and it had partially worked, but he was just growing in height so quickly. I blamed Draco for the height, since Merlin knew I'd always been on the short side; it was the Malfoy genes that made such tall babies.

Grandfather Willow's request seemed reasonable and benign, if a bit odd, so the next time we took Griffin out to the clearing, Draco brought the giant diamond with him. All it took was one look and the old wizard inside the tree remembered. The key to the fusion process was a small diamond that he had had in his wedding ring, grown from the Malfoy Crystal. Malfoy Diamonds were especially pure and absolutely perfect in structure down to the molecular level, which enabled them to do what a regular impure stone could not: hold the living essence of a human while the body died.

Abraxas Malfoy's dying act was to extract the diamond from his wedding ring and lodge it with a spell deep into the meat of the tree. Then he transferred his spirit into the stone and watched as his body succumbed to the dragon pox. He was not dead, but nor did he live. His essence was intact in one piece, compressed into the rigid lattice of the crystalized carbon.

Once the process was known, it was patented. Abraxas Malfoy's achievement was shared with the world, although the source of the super pure diamonds was never revealed; the patent stated only that super pure diamonds were needed for the process, not how to make or acquire such a gem. With the announcement came vindication for Abraxas and the Malfoy family in general as the entire wizarding world came to accept the process as harmless, since no one was hurt and it could be performed only at the moment of death. And those facing death finally had an alternative to being stuck on this planet forever that would allow them to stick around for just a few decades longer.

The ultimate proof that fusing oneself with a tree was not a dark process came in the centuries to follow. Future dark wizards tried to use Malfoy Diamonds to preserve their beings at the moment of their would-be deaths. Then they attempted the same dark ritual that restored Voldemort to his body, which resulted invariably in death. It was not possible for a person to return to a body from a diamond. Any attempt to do so killed the person just as surely as chopping down Abraxas' tree would kill him.

Epilogue:

We were happy after that with the perfect little family. The only thing we wanted was one more child; well I wouldn't have minded more than one, but Draco thought two were plenty. Three years later we decided it was time and conceived a second egg.

The specialist knew when the egg was delivered that something was wrong. "Zis egg iz too small," Madame Thibeaux said. After the fact Draco had reluctantly admitted that the healer wasn't that bad and agreed to have her back for our second child.

It was a beautiful silver egg decorated in intricate patterns that looked floral. It was close in size to the egg Griffin had come out of and much larger than the egg that had been a dud, but it was just a bit too small.

"What does that mean? Is it dead?" I asked frantically. I could tell Draco was worried too, but he was so exhausted from the labor that he looked like he was going to pass out any minute now.

"Wait a moment and let me see," she replied with her wand out. She performed a number of diagnostic spells on the egg before reaching a conclusion. "Eet iz alive. Eet would be perfect, eef eet were full size. Eet iz an inch too short and several inches too zin. Eef zis babee goes full term, eet will be small. I zink eet more likely zat we will 'ave to deliver ze babee early. Eet needs to 'ave monitoring spells on eet at all times. We need to know eef and when eet goes into distress so zat eet can be delivered early."

"Do it," Draco requested of the healer groggily.

Half an hour later, there was a complex net of diagnostic charms engulfing our egg in the nest. Draco and I soon learned to conjure the net without help, since it needed to be redone every day. We recorded the diagnostics ourselves, marking them down in a log book four times a day. Madame Thibeaux stopped by once a week to read the log book and examine the egg, but after a month we felt confident enough to interpret the numbers without her.

We knew which figures should be going up and how fast, and which down. We had the range of normal heart rates and blood pressures memorized. And most of all, we knew that the measure of yolk was the critical one that would lead to premature birth. The shell formed around the embryo, yolk, and the albumin, but Draco hadn't managed to produce enough yolk, which was why the egg was small. The albumin, being a water rich proteinaceous substance, provides the embryo with water, while the yolk serves as food storage. Without the full store of yolk, our child would probably not be able to make it the full year inside the egg.

The level of yolk first dipped down into the low range when our egg was only six months in. From then on we watched even more closely, Madame Thibeaux coming over daily to check for signs of distress. Then six weeks later when the yolk levels were even lower and the fetus began actually showing signs of distress, she insisted that we move the egg to the veela birthing center in France. It was what was best for our baby, so we agreed, packing up Griffin, Narcissa, and even Darwina, to go with us.

The veela birthing center was located inside a small hospital that specialized in veela. They treated only veela and those with part veela ancestry. Having heard the stories about a veela sex being born to parents with only very dilute veela ancestry, they were curious about Draco and our egg. They even marveled at our son Griffin, trying to find out if there was anything about him at all that was veela; there was, but it was miniscule.

We asked for our privacy to make them back away, because we already knew how much veela Griffin had in him. The nature of his birth still showed in his aversion to milk and milk products and the thin bone structure; sometimes we joked that he was so skinny he looked like he was made out of matchsticks. But really Madame Thibeaux said that his weight was acceptable for a four year old and that our Griffin would put on weight as he grows older. And he had almost no umbilical cord scaring, which was typical of the egg-born. But none of that was genetic, so it wouldn't be passed to his children.

Years ago Madame Thibeaux had taken cells from all three of us, to examine the genetics inside for a trace of veela genes. She confirmed that Draco had the two veela sex chromosomes, but could find no other traces of uniquely veela genes. She found one and exactly one veela Z sex chromosome in Griffin. The veela chromosome was recessive, making him the human sex, with the possibility of passing the veela sex on to his children. She found no veela genes inside of me, which was to be expected, since my mother was a muggle and the Potters weren't known to have veela in them. And because of my two human sex chromosomes, she concluded that it was impossible for one of our eggs to bare the veela sex, although one of our grandchildren could.

We stayed in France near our egg for six weeks. Narcissa, Draco, Darwina, and I took turns staying with the egg in hospital, so that one of us would always be with her; the others would sleep and stay with the four-year-old Griffin, who was too little to be allowed inside the veela hospital for visits. The moment the yolk levels dipped into the critical zone, a team of medics and healers rushed in and cut open the egg, to remove our daughter from her shell. It wasn't the only option for this type of situation, but it was the tried and tested method that had worked for generations.

Draco felt far more comfortable with this method than the alternative, which involved taking yolk from bird eggs and vanishing it to the inside of the yolk sack within the veela egg shell. It was a very delicate procedure that was prone to things going wrong, because it was difficult to control where vanished things ended up. If the yolk wasn't placed perfectly, it could damage the fetus or simply do nothing, taking up space. Then there was the fact that this did nothing about the problem of the egg shell being too small, which meant adding yolk could only prolong the inevitable for so long, before the egg would still have to be hatched prematurely.

The baby girl the medics removed from the egg was even thinner than Griffin had been. She was shorter too and less developed, closer to a regular three month old than the apparent six months her older brother had been upon hatching. She was in danger of starving to death, said the medics, who immediately established a feeding tube straight into her stomach. At all hours of the night and day they continuously pumped a liquid made from chicken yolks and water into the tube. She couldn't digest milk, because she was born of a veela not a milk drinking mammal, nor could she digest the mashed food full term veela babies eat, being premature. Thus the mixture of egg yolks and water was the only nutrient that could sustain her.

When cradling her, we were careful of the feeding tube and the fact that she couldn't hold her body up. She slept mostly, but occasionally opened her eyes and looked up at us with intelligent bright green eyes. Her hair was thick, full, and as jet black as a raven, but her face had the pointy chin, sharp cheekbones, and regal brow of a Malfoy. She was beautiful and perfect and we loved her instantly. My heart would break if anything happened to her and I could tell from the fervor Draco used when insisting that she would be fine, that he would be irreparably crushed if she wasn't.

I named her Phoenix Lily Malfoy Potter, Draco having let me name our daughter since he picked our son's name. He liked to say we chose the first name because we knew she would pull through and rise from anything. In actuality I chose Phoenix a year before, both in homage to her veela ancestry and in honor of Albus Dumbledore, whose familiar had been a phoenix. It was also unisex, which was important since there was currently no method of determining the sex of an egg before hatching. The first middle name was after my mother of course; had the child been a boy, it would've been after my father. The second middle name was Draco's last name, just as Griffin's second middle name was mine, since she bore my last name.

As Draco had predicted, Phoenix pulled through. She steadily grew and put on weight. She stayed awake for increasing periods of time and developed physically, first learning to sit up and then to roll over. And when she transitioned off of the egg yolk drip and onto mashed foods, we were allowed to take her with us to the hotel. That was nice, because we were finally able to introduce her to Griffin, who was eager to meet his baby sister.

We stayed in France for a month more so that we would be close to the veela hospital if anything happened, but nothing did. Phoenix passed her next checkup and we were told it was safe to take her home to England.

Our return to Malfoy Manor was a joyous occasion. It was made all the happier by the fact that Lucius Malfoy was soon released onto house arrest, his five years of Azkaban finally being up. Our family was complete and Grandfather Willow, Grandmother Darwina, Lucius, Narcissa, Draco, Griffin, Phoenix, and I, lived happily ever after in a house that was large even for the eight of us.

Author's Note: So there it is. I hope you liked it and that the epilogue gave you a sense of what their lives will be like.

I ask that if you have read the story and enjoyed it, to please let me know, by leaving me a review. They are much appreciated!