AN: Realized I'd forgotten a disclaimer. The characters in this and the previous chapters are not mine. Neither infringement nor profit is among my objectives.
Resistance
Chapter Twenty-Three: Yule
"They're back," Hermione said, when Seamus and Megan reappeared in the central portion of the cavern. "We're up next." She looked sidewise at Blaise as she said it, lifting one shoulder, trying not to reveal how little she looked forward to this - Christmas Eve in the trenches.
Or at least, up in one of the lookouts in the Forbidden Forest.
So far, perching up there was only cold and boring. Random Death Eaters - probably cloned - had meandered back and forth in straggly groups, and one could only wonder whether or not their movements were as purposeless as they seemed. Ron and Luna had taken enormous pleasure in conjuring a gigantic flock of apparently deranged blackbirds to descend upon a large shipment of potion ingredients. The Silencio charm placed around the platform prevented the bewildered servants of the Dark Lord from hearing peals of hysterical laughter, as they danced around, shouting furious curses at the surprisingly adroit birds that systematically shredded their cargo.
Ron had told Hermione later, still wiping tears from his eyes, that they had seemed almost fearful of what they carried, and that the fear had increased to paranoid panic as it was ruined by the birds.
"His Circle is broken; he must have realized that by now," Hermione had mused. "It could have been part of the ritual to reconstruct it."
"You may have done more good than you know," Remus had added, clapping an even more heartened Ron on the shoulder.
Hermione was moving toward the place where the cave yielded itself to the Lake, a more or less unofficial arrival and departure point, but was jarred from her own recollections when she realized that Blaise was not following her.
"Zabini?" she asked questioningly, old habit causing his surname to slip from her tongue. She tried not to sound impatient; the new shifts for the other two lookouts had already departed.
"You've been given the night off, Hermione," Fleur said lightly, approaching them and casually twining her arm with Zabini's. The façade that this was somehow friendly happenstance did not fool Hermione, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously at the half-Veela.
"Come off it, Fleur," Hermione said, trying to laugh, adopting Fleur's idea that this had nothing whatever to do with her condition. "Zabini and I drew short straw; we've got watch for Christmas Eve. Besides, you can't mean to go."
"If you can go, surely I could, Hermione." Fleur's voice was all sugar and honey, and did not really answer the question. Hermione flinched, flicking a warning glance toward Blaise. The cryptic comment was hitting too close to home.
"Take yourself off your high-horse, Granger," Zabini said, not unkindly, apparently only half-listening to her conversation with Fleur. "We all talked it over, and agreed that you should not have to take watch tonight."
"You all talked it over?" Hermione had only just restrained her voice from becoming a shriek. Her heart began slamming itself against the wall of her chest at a rapid clip. The look she shot the other mother-to-be was one of unmitigated betrayal.
"Reckoned you might want to spend the holiday with your husband," Blaise replied laconically, nodding at something just over Hermione's shoulder.
She twisted around, feeling almost as if she was going in slow motion, and her eyes locked with Harry's, as he stood leaning against the support post of the divider that marked the entrance to the infirmary. He was thin, still painfully so, and there were shadows beneath his eyes that Hermione wasn't sure would ever go away, but he was there, real, alive, and evidently, released from the mediwitches' care.
He smiled almost self-consciously, dipping his head, and a lock of unruly hair fell like a raven brushstroke across his forehead. Hermione felt suddenly shy, felt acutely aware of the presence of Blaise and Fleur at her elbow. They had been married for mere days before he'd been injured - and there was now this enormous News that loomed between them, even if Harry had no idea it was there. She swallowed.
"I think you would both benefit from using this time wisely," Fleur said serenely, unmistakable meaning in her eyes. Blaise, misunderstanding the implications, snorted, as Cho Chang appeared, out of breath, and murmured something about being ready to go.
Hermione was already moving toward Harry, as one transfixed. She did not even notice them leave.
~*~*~*~
"I didn't know Madam Pomfrey was discharging you today," she murmured, half-laughing as she did so. A discharge was only a matter of meters, after all.
"I wanted it to be a surprise," Harry said, cupping her jawline with one hand, gazing at her raptly, thirstily, yearningly.
"Christmas present?" She teased.
"Actually, I was planning on digging some of the Potter jewelry out of the vault for you. Only I hadn't got around to it when - " Hermione was shaking her head, putting one finger over the aggrieved apology hovering on his lips.
"Having you back again, healthy, is present enough, Harry Potter," she whispered, and brushed a kiss over his slightly parted lips. She was rewarded with an almost feral light that sprang to life in his eyes, one that sent a corresponding rush of warmth through the center of her abdomen.
He threaded his fingers through hers, and she looked down at his hand twined with hers, outlining with her thumb the faint pink scars that pushing through the wards had branded onto his hands. He followed her gaze.
"We match," he whispered, and the corners of her eyes crinkled in a smile, as they moved with forced casualness toward the dividers that delineated their room. Nobody appeared to be paying the slightest bit of attention to them, though Hermione was hardly naïve enough to think that there wasn't someone marking Harry's whereabouts at all times.
They were only just through the shimmering membrane of the divider, which obligingly faded to opaque gray once they'd entered, before Harry's mouth was on hers, hot, demanding, hungry, his hands bracketing her face. She'd barely had time to react, before she realized that he was saying something, murmuring grunted words of entreaty between the frantic, heated joinings of their mouths.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," was his mantra. She stepped away from him slightly, her dark eyes quizzical.
"For what?"
"For not - for not being there, for - for succumbing to that damned Circle, for - for - Merlin, I don't know! It feels like - like it's been years, not weeks. It feels like - like everything's changed somehow… you - you seem different, and you can't be different… so that means something must be wrong with me, and - what if I - " He was babbling, speaking rapidly, almost incoherently, as he gazed at a point just adjacent to her upper arm, and his fingers played absently in the hem of her sweater. One phrase had stricken her to her core.
You seem different.
Dear Merlin, was she that easy to read? She knew what Fleur had meant with her last words, knew that the young widow had reached the end of her patience, and would be expecting some disclosure from Hermione, especially now that the Circle had been removed from contention as an obstacle, a Wand Bond - at least for the present - not immediately necessary.
"I'm - I'm still me, Harry." A tremulous smile played on her lips, as part of her still shied away from actually opening her mouth and speaking the words. Talking about it makes it real, some irrational part of her stubbornly said.
"I know," he said, and something akin to peace skimmed across his countenance, as he scooped her into his arms, and buried his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. She went rigid initially, wondering what he would say at the feel of her body flush against his, even though changes were as yet unnoticeable to the eye, when under clothing. She relaxed gradually when nothing in his stance seemed to change.
He inhaled deeply of her scent, and moved back to worshiping her lips with his own again, this time, slowly, tenderly and reverently.
"I've missed you so much, Hermione. Even when it - the - when the Circle was trying -trying - you know - even when you were right there beside me, it was always-always trying to make me believe you were gone." Something of the lost little boy echoed in his voice again, and she pulled him closer, running her fingers through the dark hair at the nape of his neck.
"I would never leave you, Harry," she whispered, kissing him back with all the love she could express. When she pulled back, something was glinting in his eyes; he played along her jaw and neck with light touches of his fingertips.
"That's what kept me going," he admitted simply, and she felt tears suffuse her eyes so that they shone like his own.
"I'm glad," she said, and unspoken in her tone was, let's not talk about that anymore. They kissed again, and the fiery intent was back. His hands left her face and neck, and roved down her back, caressing, swirling, searching…
They reached the rolled hem of her sweater again, and moved beneath it, questing and intent. Hermione disconnected from him suddenly, careening backwards, with panic stamped all over her face, afraid of what his roaming hands might discover.
"Wait!" she cried involuntarily, before she even realized she was going to say anything. She collided with the edge of the mattress, and sat down abruptly. Harry's face fell momentarily, before concern flared in his eyes.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, coming to sit on the bed beside her. He placed one hand on her arm, peering round to try to see into her eyes. She averted them, sure that he would be able to read her entire soul there, and shifted away from his touch. It was Harry, and she'd missed him, and they were sitting on their bed…
She closed her eyes against the hurt she knew she'd see in Harry's, at her recoil.
"Did I - did I do something wrong?" The question was tentative, somehow hopeful, and it made Hermione feel worse than ever.
"Of course you didn't," she said automatically, and then tried to temper the impatience in her voice - that was really irritation with herself - with a weary sigh.
Now or never, Granger. Are you a Gryffindor or aren't you?
"I just can't - I can't concentrate when you're touching me, and there's something - " Deep shuddering lungfuls of oxygen; there suddenly didn't seem to be enough air in the room. "There's something I need to tell you." She curled her fingers inward on her lap, and studied with detachment the white crescents of her fingernails.
"Something is wrong," Harry said. "What is it?" He seemed to be steeling himself for some kind of blow, and Hermione was not sure herself what exactly he thought this blow would entail.
"When - when we came back from the Circle, we - we were - anyway, I discovered something…" Discovered something, she wanted to wince at her own inane and clinical-sounding words. "I - I certainly didn't intend for this to happen, and it was - it was such a shock that I - I didn't know quite how to tell you, I didn't know what you'd do, and - "
"For God's sake, Hermione, spit it out!" He said raggedly, and she looked up to notice that his face was white to the lips. Her brow creased with concern, and it was her turn to lay a hand on his arm.
"Harry?"
"Is it - is it over?" He spoke with effort, and it took a moment for Hermione to process what exactly he meant.
"God, no, Harry! Do you think that after all this - after all we've been through - do you really think I'd - no! I love you - and only you - and I'll do so until the day that I die." Guilt rocketed through her at the thought that she had frightened him, worried him, shaken his foundations on his first day back - all because she was too much of a coward to tell it to him straight.
She closed her eyes in a long, determined blink, and opened them to look unswervingly at her husband. She took another slow, steadying breath.
"We're - I'm - we're going to have a baby, Harry," she finally said, her eyes skittering off over his shoulder at the last minute, appearing to study the doorpost with great interest.
Out of her peripheral vision, she saw him shift, felt the mattress move beneath them. He said,
"Wh - what?"
Her lower jaw vibrated suddenly with her effort to speak, and she clamped her teeth together with an audible clack.
"You heard me," she said succinctly, struggling to maintain control over the muscles in her face, which seemed to want to waver and melt all over the place, launched out of control by the force of her emotions.
"I - I don't understand…" he said. His voice was low, monotone, almost as if he was focused on something else, and the words were slipping out without his concentration or permission.
She looked at him then, slowly and with agony, as if her eyes were magnets wanting to repel themselves from Harry's. She saw his Adam's apple bob up and down beneath the skin of his neck as he swallowed unevenly.
There was no anger in his face, no disgust, no condemnation, no annoyance.
There was just fear.
Blanching, naked, nauseated, wet-the-bed fear.
And Hermione knew it was fear for her, fear for their child.
"What you're thinking…" she said quietly. "It isn't anything that I haven't already thought."
"Oh, God," he said, clearly seeing the thousands of horrible ways his family could be destroyed, as they had been the first time, when he was too young to even remember. "Oh, God." His head went down into his hands, fingers threading through his hair, his gaze somewhere between his knees.
"I know, Harry. I know." She leaned into his side, putting her head on his shoulder, touching him for the first time since she'd sprung from his side. "I'm sorry."
Those two words seemed to ignite a reaction in him, and he looked at her sharply.
"For what?" It was his turn to ask.
"For - for this," she replied. "The timing - well, it couldn't be worse, and - and I - "
"Don't apologize for this," he said, somewhat incoherently. "Not for this. I just - I just - " His eyes bounced down to her lap almost imperceptibly, and then shot upward to her face. "I just hope to Merlin that I can keep you safe." He drew in a deep, noisy breath, much as she had earlier. "Both of you." He pushed her hair back from her face with one hand, shook his head, and closed his eyes as if in pain.
"But I - I can't - " He stopped, struggled to articulate what he meant, swore, and then stood up, moving restlessly around the perimeter of the small room.
"You can't what?" she prodded.
"I can't promise you that, Hermione. I can't promise anything. I - what kind of father - I can't even keep a baby safe - can't keep anybody safe. I - you - " He raked his hair away from his forehead with one trembling hand.
"I haven't asked you for any promises, Harry," Hermione said softly. "Only that you love me. We've been through this before… I know there are no guarantees."
"But it's different now."
And she knew he was right. They had raised the stakes, however unwittingly. It was not only their lives being placed on the line now, and in the embryonic stages of forming a family, they had given Voldemort yet another advantage.
"It only means that we've more incentive to get through this alive," she said, not flippantly, but sincerely. He turned back toward her, and drank her in with his brilliant eyes. The fear was still there, but tempered with some kind of longing and - dare she even think it? - hope.
"How - how far…?"
"Nearly fourteen weeks," she murmured, in answer to his abbreviated question.
"Fourteen…" Hermione could tell the number meant little to him. She doubted if he was even aware of how long a normal pregnancy lasted.
"I should - I should be feeling movement soon," she ventured. "It - the baby is due in - toward the end of May, I think."
"You think? Hasn't - hasn't Penelope or Madam Pomfrey - ?"
"I - I haven't been to see them about it yet." The admission shamed her, and she dropped her gaze to the toes of her trainers.
"Why not?"
"I didn't want anyone to know. I wasn't - I - "
"You don't want it," he supplied for her. She whipped her eyes up to his face, but now he was studiously avoiding looking at her.
"I want it more than anything in the world." Her voice was low, but heavy with sincerity and meaning. It dropped into the stillness of the room, and seemed to reverberate in the corners. "Why - why wouldn't I want it? Your baby? If … if it's half as special as its father…"
Hermione had braced herself back on one arm, but moved the other one to rest on her abdomen, her fingers wandering over the newly acquired firmness there. A sudden noise jolted her attention upward again, as she belatedly realized that Harry had swallowed back a sob.
"Harry?" she breathed out in alarm, but had no opportunity to say anything further, as he came back to her side, and knelt down in front of her. The tears were shining in his eyes.
"I love you, Hermione Granger Potter," he said, fierce and low. "And I'm not going to lie to you by saying that I'm nothing but thrilled. I'm not going to lie by denying that I'm completely and utterly terrified about what this - this baby means for the Order, for me, for you, and for the war… but - but I - " He gripped her hands tightly between the tips of his fingers, and drew them up to his mouth, kissing them gently. He had protested his ability to make promises, and she had claimed she didn't need them, but he seemed to be compelled to make a vow anyway. "I - I will do what I can."
His eyes were blazing, and Hermione thought suddenly and incongruously of her conversation with Ron.
You may have saved us all.
"Ron said - Ron said you'd have kittens…" she said absently, in a breathless kind of way. Harry rocked back on his heels, and cocked his head up at her.
"Ron knows?" he asked.
Damn.
"I - I didn't tell him," she said quickly. "He saw it - in my mind, the night you… threw off the Circle."
"How was he?"
"He seemed okay. He said I should tell you straight away…seemed to think that it would - would galvanize you to - that winning would be a sure thing, if you had a child to protect."
Harry seemed oddly touched.
"He said that? Really?"
At her nod, he turned his attention back to her waist, which happened to be on his eye level as he knelt before her. Gently, he lifted her sweater, exposing the tautness of her belly that had not quite progressed into protrusion. His fingers warmly skimmed over the skin, and her breathing hitched.
"I can't believe…" he whispered, in a voice of awe and reverence and unworthiness.
"Believe it, Harry," she whispered back. "I love you so very much, and we - we made a baby…us, together…even now…" The amazement in her voice mirrored his. He leaned forward and brushed her stomach with his lips, and her abdominal muscles quivered involuntarily.
"Harry…" Her voice was uneven when it came out, and it cracked in the middle, as she tugged on his shoulders, pulling him up to where they were face to face. Her mouth fastened to his, as pent up passion and desire flared around them like rekindled flame, and his hands delved the rest of the way into her already hiked up sweater.
They collapsed onto the bed, and Hermione noticed that Harry was excruciatingly careful not to put his weight on her, but instead slid to the side. She arched one leg between his, hooked it behind his knee, and pulled their hips together.
"Are you - can you - ?" Harry sounded as if he was not getting enough air. Hands were everywhere, and clothing was being rapidly discarded. Hermione breathlessly remembered to cast a Silencing charm.
"Did you know that the second trimester is often called the honeymoon trimester?" she asked, gazing at him through heavy-lidded eyes, as his fingers swooped and swirled over her hips.
He grunted a response, as he turned onto his back, and pulled her up to straddle him in one fluid motion.
"We never did have a proper honeymoon."
~*~*~*~
Hermione supposed, as she untwined herself slowly and reluctantly from Harry's slumbering form, that - all things considered - the disclosure had gone quite well. He'd been too shocked by the news to be overly angry at any perceived errors in handling on her part, and he'd missed her too much to get terribly worked up over it. He had been under the Circle's influence the entire time she'd known of the pregnancy, and, while there had been windows of opportunity in which she could have told him, they had been sporadic and quick to disappear.
She had told him, and he hadn't run for the hills, hadn't shouted angry reprisals. He had cried and told her he loved her, and backed up his words with the most tender of actions. She reached out with one hand, and gently brushed her fingers through the ebony hair that tumbled across his arm, where it cradled his cheek.
He stirred, mumbled something unintelligible, and reached for her again, pulling her into his embrace, though his eyes never opened. She snuggled down into his arms, languidly watching her fingers as they created small pearly wakes in the darkness of his hair.
When she looked back at him, his eyes were open and gazing at her, and she started. He pulled her to him, and kissed an apology into her hair, but not before she'd seen the brooding worry lurking deep in the shadows of his eyes.
"How have you been feeling?" he asked, his voice rough with sleep, but concerned nonetheless.
"I've been fine. There's been a little sickness, but it hasn't been that bad really." She could see the regret that he hadn't been there for her, and she hastened to speak before he could express it. "I assure you, I'm quite healthy. Fleur - well, Fleur's the one who actually diagnosed the whole thing on her wand-scan after we got back, and she's been giving me advice."
"You should still see one of the mediwitches."
"I know," she said. "I wanted you to know before it became common knowledge. If you like, I'll ask one of them to have a look before the feast tonight."
"And no more patrols or guard duty," he said, and she could already see his jaw setting mutinously.
"Harry, I can still do things, I won't be… incapacitated for awhile yet. I'm not even showing…"
"Of course you can still do things," Harry said in a cheerful tone that did not fool her. "As long as they don't include patrols or guard duty, or other things where you have to leave the cave."
She inhaled a breath to protest, feeling somehow marginalized or shunted to one side - patted on the head and given a lollipop. Thank you, sweetheart, but the adults will handle it. She knew how she felt was ridiculous, even as she felt it anyway, and Harry had read everything on her face before she could verbalize any of it. He put one finger over her lips to stem the rising protest that seemed a knee-jerk reaction on her part.
"I am not trying to put you in your place, or prevent you from contributing to the Order," he said. "You are perfectly capable of pulling a shift on the lookout, if nothing happened. We can't risk something going wrong, Hermione, you know that. I remember what you told me about Michael, and that is not going to happen to you - or the baby - not if I can do anything in my power to stop it." He eyed her dourly for a moment. "Let's not even talk about the fact that you already knew you were pregnant when you went on that mission." She averted her eyes.
"I know," she admitted weakly, half-sighing. "I know you're right."
"Loads you can do around here," he said, unconsciously echoing Ron. "Don't tell me there aren't at least a dozen experimental spells or charms that you have in the works." He was trying to cheer her up.
"I know," she sighed again. "There is one thing - Fred and I have been working on it over the last couple of days, and it looks quite promising, but - but I … I was… I was going to be with you until the end, Harry." It was a feeble copy of what she'd said to Ron, but she couldn't help but feel that she was abandoning Harry, that she was betraying something beyond sacrosanct.
"Now, you'll be with me after the end," he murmured, gathering her to him and burying his face in her tangled hair. "You're doing this for us, don't you see? Keeping our baby safe is the best thing you can do for the Order."
~*~*~*~
Hermione thought that Madam Pomfrey did not look at all surprised when she and Harry trooped into the infirmary some time later.
"Mr. and Mrs. Potter," she said, arching her eyebrows at them with a knowing look on her face. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" Hermione met the mediwitch's gaze squarely. You know why we're here.
"We're going to have a baby," Harry said in a sudden, breathless rush, either missing or ignoring the wordless conversation going on between the two women.
"So I was recently made aware, Mr. Potter," said the mediwitch. "I'm glad you've come to see me, Hermione. If you would please take a seat on the bed?"
Wordlessly, Hermione did so, and Harry followed her, standing beside the bed with a distinctly abstracted, this isn't happening to me expression on his face. The mediwitch performed a wand scan, obviously much more detailed than the basic one Fleur had done, and a readout flowed from her wand tip, as it had when Professor McGonagall had examined Fleur.
"Fourteen weeks tomorrow," Madam Pomfrey murmured. "The baby's size is right on track for its age…heartbeat is fine - would you like to hear it?" They both nodded, and the mediwitch flicked her wand in an intricate figure-eight, saying, "Audio."
Two sounds immediately surrounded them, one a slow, heavy thrum, and the other a faster - almost impossibly fast - higher swish swish swish.
"The slower one is yours, Mrs. Potter," said Madam Pomfrey. "The other is your baby's."
Hermione found herself looking askance at Harry once again, as the tiny, racing sound swirled around them. He was staring into middle distance, dazed, and again, there were the lurking shadows of fear, along with its cousins, worry and despair.
I am not going to be the one that piles on even more pressure and expectations.
Guilt swamped her again, as he seemed to snap out of it, allowing a small smile to play across his face, as though he thought it was expected of him.
"That's - that's really amazing," he mumbled.
"Harry, I'm sorry," was Hermione's response.
"I thought I told you not to apologize for this," he told her. "But how long have you had to adjust to it, to agonize over it? I've only just found out, Hermione - and - and the happiness keeps getting drowned underneath the `keeping you alive' part. That doesn't mean you ever have to doubt how much I love you and my baby."
Part of Hermione's heart seized up gratefully at his use of the possessive `my'. She had had weeks to grapple with it, and yet somehow expected him to accept it in the span of so many minutes. It was patently unfair, and she was ashamed of herself.
"I don't doubt it, Harry," she whispered. "I've never doubted it. We'll - we'll just take it one day at a time, right? I've made it this far…" Her eyes were swimming with tears, and she barely heard Harry's choked whisper of,
"Yeah…"
"I can tell you the gender, if you like," Madam Pomfrey inserted gently, compassion and understanding etched delicately into her face.
Hermione sniffed loudly and reached for a tissue from the side table, remembering that they weren't alone, and the couple exchanged wet, questioning looks.
"Do you want to know now?" Harry asked. Hermione took a moment to think, but then nodded, the fretful and worried part of her wanting to seize every scrap of happiness she could, drain each day dry of joy, so as to not waste a single moment of it, as if there might not be another.
"Yes," she said more certainly. "I'd like to know now." The lines of the mediwitch's face softened into a smile, and Hermione got the feeling that Madam Pomfrey had more than an inkling of the reasoning behind the decision.
"Mrs. Weasley chose not to find out," she said, as she muttered an incantation and began a new scan. "Although, I'd say that she's got good odds of having a boy."
A golden aura floated from the end of her wand, and surrounded Hermione's abdomen. It shimmered a couple of different colors - deep bronze and then the palest of purples - before fading into nothingness. Harry and Hermione looked expectantly at Madam Pomfrey, unsure what they should have gotten from the wand's display.
It was evidently as clear as Veritaserum to the mediwitch, since she smiled again and said,
"You're going to have a daughter."
~*~*~*~
The members of the Order who made their home in the cavern beneath the Lake traditionally took turns in the kitchen, making a large amount of food that was kept under warming charms. Meals were catch-as-catch-can, whenever one found a break or came off shift, or felt like eating, and generally were taken at one of the small round tables scattered in the area that had become known as the War Room. One could generally find at least one person eating at the same time, and it was a decent way to get to spend time with everyone in turn.
However, on this day, their first Christmas since the world had changed into something unrecognizable, Remus had melded the small tables together into one long dining table of shining mahogany. Those who weren't working were busy in the kitchen, or decorating a tree. Faces were somber - though there were flashes of delight every now and again - but most seemed to think that this was something necessary, something positive, something hopeful. A symbol, as Ginny had said of Harry and Hermione's wedding.
Harry had been working quite diligently in the kitchen with Luna and Mr. Weasley, while, over at the table, Hermione helped transfigure their everyday dishes into fancier holiday fare. Every so often, she could feel his burning gaze on her from across the open floor of the cave, and she would turn to look at him, finding an odd sort of wistful, wondering look on his face. The worry was never completely absent from his eyes.
The happiness keeps getting drowned…
She thought of the magical conglomeration of spells and potions on which she and Fred had been working, wondering if tonight would be a appropriate moment to disclose it, or if Christmas Eve should be a time devoid of any and all `shop talk'.
Her hands shook as she pointed her wand at a stack of plates, changing them into dishes gilded with gold and wreathed with holly sprigs. The odious vial of the Circle essence floated into her mind.
If it works, she thought, this could be it…This could be it: the beginning of the end.
And then it would all be up to Harry.
The thought sent trembles of fear throughout her limbs, as she attempted to force herself to face the possibility of losing him, of raising his daughter without him.
There won't be another girl in the entire world prouder of her daddy. Her face became almost ferocious with the thought, and her empty hand strayed almost unconsciously to touch her stomach. I'll make sure of that.
But he's not going to die. I'm not going to let that happen.
She watched detachedly, as Ginny approached the kitchen, her carefully spaced steps barely noticeable as they carried her across a memorized route. She saw the redhead speak to Harry, and Harry's face came alight with a natural smile. He nodded and said something complimentary; Ginny's shoulder lifted in a self-deprecating shrug. He then began Levitating trays down from a cabinet, piling three of them high with food and utensils. Ginny placed Warming charms, and then what looked like some kind of Hovering charm, and she balanced all three trays carefully out to the middle of the cave. Hermione saw her close her eyes and vanish.
It took her only seconds to figure out where Ginny had gone, to take some of the Christmas Eve feast to the guards on duty, which included her oldest brother. A faint, admiring smile crossed Hermione's face.
Do you think Fleur and Ginny just sit round looking dainty all day long? Ron's sardonic, but tender words came back to her suddenly, and she turned back to her transfiguration, feeling more satisfied with herself than she had in quite some time.
The vial of smoky gray vapor drifted into her mind again. It would work, she was almost sure of it.
I may not be on the front lines with Harry anymore, but I'm going to do something to help, Baby, you can rest assured of that.
~*~*~*~
The food looked both delicious and plentiful, and Hermione, whose unreliable stomach was promising to be amenable, was planning to thoroughly enjoy it. Most of the Order present, save the six in the lookouts, was beginning to drift over and select places around the large table. Ron was at a smaller standard War Room table alone, a plate laden with food already in front of him, but still keeping one weather eye on the Map.
"Before we tuck in," Remus said, clearing his throat purposefully, as the multiple murmured conservations slowly dwindled away. "I'd like to say how honored I am to be spending the holidays with such noble, brave, and honorable people. We've all lost people very dear to us, some more than others." Here his eyes drifted reluctantly to Arthur Weasley, who was sitting next to Ginny near the opposite end. She reached over and clasped his hand, without saying a word. Hermione cast a furtive look at Ron, whose face was pale and sad. "However, I think that, were they here with us tonight, they would heartily approve of our celebration. It is a way to remember what life to used to be like, and a way to look forward to when we live that life again. With that in mind, I say to all of you, my family, Happy Christmas." He glanced briefly at each rapt, attentive face, and lifted his glass. "To better days."
Everyone lifted their goblets and echoed Lupin's last words, with Tonks adding a muffled,
"Hear, hear."
There was a kind of shuffling, as people began to reach for trenchers of food, but it was interrupted by the noise of chair legs scraping across stone floor. Hermione looked to her right side to see Harry standing unevenly to his feet. He looked more than a little nervous, with everyone's attention unswervingly fixed on him.
"I - I just wanted to thank everyone who's here, for being here - for not giving up on me, on the fight, no matter how - how black everything looked. I wish I could say I knew that how everything would end, but I don't. It just seems that - that with people like all of you behind me, with us, that failure is not even a possibility." A faint whistle at that; Hermione thought it might have been Ron. "All of you," his eyes tripped to Remus, "have been with me at some of the most pivotal moments in my life." A look at Ron, then Mr. Weasley, McGonagall, and Madam Pomfrey. Lastly, he glanced down at Hermione, with a caressing, lingering look. "So, I'd like you to be present for another one."
It was then that Hermione realized what he intended to do, and she felt the telltale heat creeping up the sides of her face and neck.
"Today, Hermione - my wife - " There were traces of amazed disbelief in those words. "She told me that she - that we were going to have a baby, a girl - in May." There were murmurs of astonishment, punctuated by calls of congratulations. Hermione looked down at her plate, unable to meet anyone's eyes, thought that perverse part of her desperately wished Cho had been there to hear the announcement.
"I wanted you to know because - because you deserve to know, and I - well, if I wasn't determined to win this thing before, I certainly am now." Hermione finally raised her face toward her husband on his last words, to note that he looked solemn and shining, like a knight taking a sacred oath.
You may have saved us all.
Harry raised his goblet, as Remus had, and waited for everyone to raise theirs.
"To victory," he said. There was more scraping, as everyone stood nearly as one, around the large table, holding the glasses aloft.
"To victory," everyone echoed. Hermione sipped at her water, certain that there was not a dry eye in the place. She leaned against Harry briefly, and was only mildly surprised when he pressed a brief, but hard and fierce kiss on her lips before all of them.
"To victory," she whispered back, through a rapidly closing throat.
"And she will be called Victorious,
A phoenix, arising from destruction,
A pathway to a new horizon
She shall be greater than her father,
Even as he surpassed those before him,
Born out of light, into light, at the heart of rebirth,
Illumination in darkness, bringer of
Hope in death,
She will be called Victorious."
The cavern was so silent that one could have heard a soap bubble burst. People were still frozen, standing, some of them with glasses halfway to lips.
"What the hell…?" came Ron's uncertain murmur. Hermione snatched up a serviette, transfigured her fork into an inked quill, and began to scrawl feverishly.
"That was a very nice speech, Harry," Luna said amiably. "Are we going to eat while standing? I've heard it's good for digestion, but it would be shame to waste all of Professor Lupin's lovely chairs."
"L - Luna," Harry said hoarsely, having flopped back into his chair as if his legs would no longer support him. "Do you - do you know what you've just said?"
"Of course I do," she said, her voice as bland as always, betraying no wonderment at Harry's odd question. "I asked if we were going to eat standing - "
"Luna, you've just prophesied," Hermione blurted, looking back over the sloppy rendition on her serviette. She read it out loud again, slowly, to an enthralled audience, the Christmas feast absolutely forgotten. Luna's eyes became more than protuberant with mild surprise.
"Well then," she said with some satisfaction. "Aunt Lilith shan't be able to say I've no Seer ability now. My mother had it, you know, though it couldn't have been terribly reliable, or she would have foreseen what happened to her."
"It's bloody nonsense," Ron grumbled. "Be a sight easier for all of us if Seers would just use English and tell it straight out. Bloody poetry." He was clearly trying to defuse the situation.
Hermione looked over at Harry, to see if he shared Ron's view, something she thought possible, as he had once told Ron the prophecy was rot.
He was staring at nothing, his face pinched and tense. She tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow, and felt relief as Seamus asked Luna a question about Seeing, and a low hum of conversation began.
"Another prophecy?" His mouth twisted sardonically. "Another generation where a Potter is shoehorned into a mold, based on - based on - on what? `Bloody poetry'?" There was anguish in his face, and she knew he was taking on the weight of the world again. "She hasn't even been born yet. She - she - "
"But it's not like your prophecy," Hermione interceded, chewing on her lower lip nervously. "Listen to it - it sounds much more optimistic, `born out of light, into light' - that doesn't sound like a world where Voldemort is in charge. `She will be called Victorious'. It - it sounds fairly positive to me."
"'Arising from destruction', `hope in death,'" Harry countered. "Whose destruction? Whose death?" He looked at her for one heart wrenching moment. "Yours? Mine? What happens to L - " He bit off the word and looked very embarrassed. Hermione eyed him suspiciously.
"What happens to who, Harry?"
He dropped his eyes to his lap, and squirmed a bit before replying. Hermione thought it adorable.
"I was - I was thinking that I'd like to give her a flower name. Luna and Mr. Weasley were helping me think of some while we were cooking."
"What did they suggest?" Hermione asked eagerly, her eyes beginning to sparkle, in spite of the seriousness of what had just occurred.
"They mentioned Rose, Iris, Violet… Luna brought up Bryony - said it was some kind of poisonous vine. Seemed to think that was a positive thing." He shook his head. "But - but I liked Laurel." He looked like he was preparing himself for some kind of chastisement, especially once Hermione's eyes grew wide and she dropped her quill, which turned back into a fork and clattered noisily to her plate. She pressed her hands tightly against her mouth.
"I - I wasn't trying to decide anything without you. We don't have to do that - if you don't like those sorts of names," Harry was speaking hastily, forestalling what he obviously thought was going to be some kind of major hormonal meltdown.
"Harry, I think Laurel is a lovely name," she said, talking over his babbling apologies. "It's just that - that laurel… laurel is best known for being used in ancient Greek games. The winners were crowned as such with wreaths of laurel leaves."
"And?" Harry prodded, not seeing the connection.
"Laurel crowns symbolize victory," Hermione's voice was quiet, almost gentle, as if she were breaking some kind of news to him, and his eyes grew wide with realization.
"'She will be called Victorious'," he repeated. Slowly, he lowered his forehead into his hands, and she heard him utter a muffled, "Sweet Merlin." After a moment, he looked back up at her, and said half-heartedly, "We can call her something else."
Hermione smiled at him, and shook her head.
"I've never put much stock in Divination," she said unnecessarily. "But I think that's what she was meant to be called."
They had been speaking to each other quietly, largely ignored by the other diners, as they were ensconced in their own conversations. But a sudden loud exclamation from Ron, who had been listening to Remus, Tonks, and Seamus, caught their attention.
"You don't think that makes any difference, do you?" He said, his eyes sliding anxiously away from Harry's, when the young couple looked up.
Remus looked pensive.
"I honestly don't know. We have no way of knowing that anyone's even watching that room, but - but it's got to be taken into consideration."
"We could try to get in," Seamus said off-handedly. "Get it out of there before they even have a chance to notice it exists."
"We don't have enough people," Ron argued. "Nor enough intelligence about the place. There's no way to tell what we'd walk into."
"We were there not too long ago," Tonks said.
"During a rally," Ron shot back. "Those were hardly normal operating particulars."
Hermione darted a look at Harry, who seemed to have instantly discerned the thread of the conversation, and was looking more and more worried.
"What are you talking about?" she finally blurted.
"The Hall of Prophecies." Harry was the one to answer her, sounding quite hoarse. He swung apologetic eyes up to her, and seemed to be, in that one glance, expressing total contrition for ever having met her, loved her, or gotten her pregnant.
It took Hermione only an instant - but that seemed an eternity - to realize the ramifications of the discussion. The warm golden sphere on row 97, with Harry's name on it, flashed into her memory as though it had been hours ago rather than years.
"So you - you mean there's one there - a new one, now… about - about our baby," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. Her arms, apparently of their own accord, were curling slowly around her abdomen, in an unconscious gesture of defensive protection.
Harry closed his eyes, as if trying to recall the details of that long-ago label.
"There were just - just initials, who spoke the prophecy and to whom," he said, nodding at Luna. "If - since she's not born yet, it - it can't give a name. It probably just has a question mark, like mine. I reckon it will fill in after she's born."
"Why the concern about it then?" Hermione asked. "If it doesn't identify Laurel, then what's to worry about?" The baby name slipped off her tongue with ease; she marveled at it with a small corner of her mind, as if she'd always known.
"What we don't know is how many initials are on the prophecy," Remus said, "since Luna spoke before an entire table of people. If Voldemort is keeping an eye on any incoming prophecies, it can hardly escape his notice that H.P. is listed as a hearer. It wouldn't take much more to deduce who his companions were, and how many of them there are. It gives too much away about our numbers."
"But they don't know where we are," Hermione pointed out, "and they don't know I'm pregnant. It - it could be talking about anybody."
"Do you know how they're formatted?" Harry asked, directing his question toward Remus and Tonks. "Are question marks used when the person in the prophecy hasn't been born, or just if they're unknown?"
Tonks shook her head helplessly.
"The Department of Mysteries guards its secrets closely," was all she said.
Hermione felt something akin to panic rising in her chest. She had first been ambivalent about her pregnancy, then irritated, then ashamed, and now, when she had just begun to feel the first glows of real happiness and anticipation, a new dread had been tossed into their path like a smoldering land mine. A ferocity accompanied the worry, and she felt sure that had she come across Voldemort himself in that moment, that he would have been no match for her - for any mother struggling to keep her child from the maw of his megalomania.
Harry seemed to sense her rising anxiety, and he reached over and took her hand without looking.
"It's Christmas Eve," he said easily, arresting the attention once again of everyone at the table. "I'm sure we could leave off this discussion until later. It would take awhile to come up with a plan, if one is even necessary. Voldemort knows I'm alive, and he knows that a remnant of the Order yet remains. As long as Laurel's identity - and her mother's - remains a secret, I'm not sure we have anything to worry about." He hesitated for only a fraction of second, cleared his throat, and spoke again, the timbre of his voice clearly bespeaking a new and lighter subject.
"The best Christmas I ever had was my first year at Hogwarts," he said. "I had to stay at Hogwarts, but I wasn't fussed, as it was a sight better than my aunt and uncle's house. Ron was there," he grinned at his friend. "And I got my dad's invisibility cloak…"
"And one of Mum's sweaters," Ron added, sounding only slightly misty.
"The Christmas after Ginny turned four," Mr. Weasley spoke up suddenly, "sticks out in my mind. She was finally old enough to really understand that something exciting was going on, and was just dying to get her hands on those presents beneath the tree. But Fred and George enchanted the tree to roar at her every time she got within a meter of it… scared her so badly that she had to be coaxed down to the living room Christmas morning."
There was laughter, and Ginny made a strangled noise of negation. He smiled wistfully, but it did reach his eyes, and Ginny leaned over to place her head on her father's shoulder.
"The Christmas before I was bitten," Remus began, and Hermione allowed herself to stop listening, letting the smooth sound of Lupin's voice wash over her, punctuated with laughter and humorous interjections. There were bittersweet pangs every time someone who was no longer present was mentioned, but they kept it deliberately light-hearted, and Hermione was grateful to Harry for initiating it.
She had not forgotten the prophecy, what it might mean, and the danger that could be accompanying it. She had not forgotten the tremendous odds they were facing, and, by the look on Harry's face, even as he laughed at something Seamus said, it had not fully left his mind either.
But it was Christmas, and maybe - for just a little while - as they had tried to do on their wedding night - maybe just on this silent night, they could pretend.
TBC
AN: This is a little shorter than most of its predecessors, but I thought this was a good place to stop. I wanted a little fluffy interlude, and I hope you enjoyed it, even if it waxed a little angsty at the end.
I'm sorry for the delays in updating, and I hope to have a new chapter for "Shadow Walks" before too much longer, but my energy level has gone down the tubes, as I've recently found out that Hermione and I now have something in common! (And I'm not married to any famous wizards!)
You may leave a review on your way out if you like
lorien
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