A/N: The following chapter is very short, I know, but I just had to get it out of the way to get on with bigger and better things. Erm, I hope you like it though. Please note, having never been to London, I have no idea of what it is really like beside the Eye, however, I did try to research it as best I could. Just a warning.
Also, after this and A Tale of Winter, okay, and two more stories I have, I swear, it's just going to be Harry/Hermione, Ron/Luna and Draco/Ginny fics.
One more, because I keep forgetting and I really shouldn't, thank you to all of you who read this story and are still with me. Thanks a whole lot. :D
Disclaimer: At this point if you believe that I am JKR or in anyway affiliated with her, then you should also believe in St Mungo's, where you need to be, on the Irreversible Spell Damage ward.
*~***~*
A Changed World
"What have I done wrong? What? Why can't any of my children wait until they're married?" cried Mrs Weasley, clasping her hands together and dropping her head towards her chest.
Behind her Bill protested, "Hey, we did!"
"That's because you're very repressed, dear brother," said Fred, beside him.
"Not-the-time…" whispered Charlie, as Mrs Weasley turned back to glare at him.
That earned him a glare too, but Hermione cut in, pleading, "Mrs Weasley, please… I mean, I could be wrong, I haven't been to a Healer yet…."
"You did the spell, didn't you?" she demanded.
Hermione looked down, away from her and nodded.
"Then I guess you are…" said Mrs Weasley, staring at her bowed head clearly unhappy. "But what are you waiting for; we're at a hospital aren't we?"
"Please, please Mrs Weasley, we just came here to see Ron," said Hermione, pleading with her to drop it, looking up again. "It's far too soon anyway, I could be wrong…."
Mrs Weasley shrugged off her husband to demand, "When did this happen? (She turned to Harry as well.) When did this happen?"
"I am not going to answer that," said Harry, firmly. He swallowed slightly though, dampening the effect.
"And you don't have to," said Mr Weasley, pulling on his wife's arm again, but Ginny answered for him.
"I'm guessing this little miracle came into existence some time Saturday night… Sunday morning?" she asked, staring at Harry with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
Hermione went beet red, while everyone else turned to Ginny scandalised and upset. Mrs Weasley looked even more shocked, and from the look on her face they could see that she was beginning to calculate something in her mind. Harry, guessing that it would not do for her to come to her conclusion, at once turned to Ron and said, "Listen mate, I'm sorry, but we… we got to go…."
Ron, staring at his mother's face warily, only nodded. Harry stopped a moment to ruffle Gemma's hair a little, and then snatched Hermione's hand and made a hasty exit, the others closing in behind them to prevent Mrs Weasley giving chase. As soon as they were out in the hall though, Hermione broke down and he pulled her into his arms whispering profuse apologies.
In all likelihood those within could hear her cry, but Harry didn't care. She had been humiliated, even though Mrs Weasley would probably argue that she had every right to be mad at them, or even that she had not known, and for that his only concern was her. This was his fault, and he had to make it up to her.
Eventually though, she stopped crying, but remained staring up at him, the sleeves of his cloak gathered in her arms. He looked down at her, still whispering what he had been all the while, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I never meant-I was stupid, I'm sorry…."
She looked away from him, shaking her head and said, "Stop it, stop it! You say you're sorry but what good is that now? And besides, I told you that you didn't do anything wrong. (She looked down at her stomach.) W-well… except that…."
He looked with her too, and then said, "Hey, you know what… m-maybe we should go see a Healer… Mrs Weasley's not going to leave now… and Ron's not going anywhere for the next few days… we can check him back later…."
"Harry…" Hermione began to protest, squeezing the bunch of fabric in her fists.
"I know… I-I know… you're not ready for this, but you think I am…? When I planned… when I thought that we should spend more time together, I-I didn't exactly mean this much-okay, maybe something like this-" he replied. "But you just said in there-even after all that this morning-that you're not sure, that you could be wrong, let's just make sure now…."
"No, no, I don't want to know, not right now. I just want to go home now, I want… I need to go home…" she replied.
He refused to back down, "Hermione, please… you wouldn't let me… you wouldn't before… but we have to do this now. I mean we have to know things, like when it will be born, and if you have to take any special potions, change your diet, how many times do we have to come back… what kind of clothes and stuff we would have to get-"
"The Healer can hardly tell us that… it's only been a week Harry, we've got thirty-five to thirty-nine more to go," she said, fighting a smile.
But having succeeding in getting her to smile Harry continued, pretending not to have heard her, "We're going to have to start looking at names, and then there's play-dates and schools and… oh boy, Hogwarts…. I wonder if he'll be in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. He'll definitely play Quidditch of course-Seeker-and then there'll be a dozen OWLS and seven NEWTS, Auror, Minister of Magic… wow…."
She released his robes, stood back, folded her arms and glared at him, though a smirk was tugging at the corner of her lips. He trailed off, flashed a grin and then reached over, tugged a hand free and began to march her down the corridor.
"We can call him Stephen James Potter, after my Dad and yours, or maybe Lily Alice Potter, after our Mums, or…" he continued, before she finally stopped him.
"Harry…" she said, and she didn't sound happy.
He should have quit while he was ahead.
But she must have noticed his changed mood, for she turned him to face her and said, "Harry, it's not that… it's not that I'm not… I just…."
"I know, I know, you're not ready for this… but that's okay, we've got thirty-five to thirty-nine weeks to," he replied.
Suddenly, the door to Ron's room swung open behind them and they turned to find that Mrs Weasley had finally escaped her family, and she didn't look happy. Harry at once dragged Hermione off to the fireplace that would take them home. He couldn't let her go through this again; he wouldn't let her go through this again…. And just as Mrs Weasley got to them, calling to Harry, "Harry, I need to talk to you!" he stepped into the fireplace with his arm tightly around Hermione, and swept them home.
*
When Harry and Hermione returned to their flat that morning, much sooner than either had expected to, they quickly separated to an uncomfortable silence. They were alone again now, and they had two choices, either speak to each other, have a proper conversation about what they were going to do, where they stood in the first place, or retreat to their rooms and hope that it was all a dream. But neither attempted to make the first move either way, they couldn't bring themselves to.
So, for a time they just stood staring at each other… that was, until Hermione could take it no more and went around to the kitchen and had a seat at the table. Harry took only a moment to join her after.
But still nothing happened. They sat in silence, listening to the subtle sounds of each other's breathing, of the clock in the living room, of Crookshanks stalking around the bedroom and the noise of the city without, once more through an open window.
In the span of a few short hours their lives had been altered, possibly forever, and they barely had taken any of the time since to process it. But others would for them. Already Mrs Weasley was probably interrogating her offspring about how this all came to be, and once she was finished with them it would be their turn. The minor humiliation in the hospital would pale in comparison to the one to come, with Hermione's parents, the press and very much the entire Wizarding world waiting for answers.
When had it all gone wrong, why had it all gone wrong?
And then, finally, Harry asked, "Do you want something to eat? Or are you thirsty? I'm… I'm not sure I could cook right now, so maybe we could go out and get something to eat…?"
Hermione looked away from her hands, which she had been nervously wringing on the tabletop, to reply, "I'm fine… actually, but I think… I think I'd like… that I need to get some fresh air…."
"Oh," Harry replied, "Well then, how about we go out for a walk, I don't know how fresh you would call London air, but maybe we could go down to the Thames, there's always something happening near the Eye."
She thought about it for a moment, and then replied with a smile, "That would be nice."
*~*~*
Harry was not surprised when, on finally getting to the river, Hermione made a beeline for a stall selling books. All along this part of the Thames there was a series of small vendor stalls for tourists and locals alike. In this particular one, there was everything from Muggle romance novels to biographies, and at slightly cheaper prices than the conventional bookstore. From the look in her eye as she spotted it he knew he had probably lost her for the rest of the day, but he went along anyway. It was better than starting their now inevitable awkward conversation.
But Hermione didn't go for her usual in the stall. Instead she wound up at a small makeshift shelf looking over children's books, and asked, "Do you think Stephen or Lily will like these?"
Not expecting the question Harry looked at her confused, and asked, "What?"
"Well I don't know what children like, I haven't been one in a long time, but I think they like these things. Um, Goodnight Moon, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and The Cat in the Hat…. Gemma and Avril read these things don't they?" she asked.
Realising what she meant now, he nodded, and then said, "But it'll still be year and more before our baby can read, maybe a picture book…?"
"Oh, right…" she said, and replaced the books she had picked up and went over to another makeshift shelf lined with brightly coloured, four to seven "page" books. Harry followed silently after her, wondering only mildly what she was up to.
She made no further comments though, selected three of the little books and then went to pay for them. He watched her from the shelf, and then joined her as she went off with her purchases to a new stall filled with various stuffed animals from the obscenely large to the absolutely miniscule. This time she didn't even bother to ask before purchasing a spotted foal, a black and white puppy and a little golden lion. So he did, asking as she paid for them, "What are you doing?"
"Shopping for the baby," she replied, and then continued, "You know, I'm not so sure about naming this child after our parents, I want he or she to have their own name."
Harry wasn't sure how to respond and Hermione didn't seem to notice as they came upon a stall selling little souvenirs for tourists. And it didn't take her long to purchase a tiny white t-shirt with "I heart London" on the chest and a black one with a very strange rocker design that reminded Harry of something Tonks would have worn.
With all her purchases on hand then, she finally stopped and looked up to the giant steel and glass Ferris wheel and said, "Let's go for a ride."
Harry stopped her then, gripping her arm and forcing her to face him, "Hermione… are you… are-are you sure you want to do this?"
"I've never really gone for a ride on it, always too busy and it seemed kind of silly going alone," she replied, intentionally misinterpreting his meaning.
He refused to let her, "Hermione, we have to talk about this sooner or-"
She cut him off, "Then let it be later, right now I want to go for a ride on a giant Ferris wheel."
The look in her eyes clearly meant that further protest would be futile, so Harry took her hand and led her to it.
Up in the London Eye overlooking the murky steely grey waters of the Thames river and a tour boat sailing past them, sharing a small glass room with five others, Harry leaned over and whispered, "We have to talk."
She did not look at him to reply, "There's nothing to talk about. We're going to have a baby, as I understand it we love each other, and we both feel ashamed of something and afraid of everything else. What else is there? Now how does Ingrid sound to you? It means 'daughter of the hero'."
"Hermione…" he began, in a warning tone.
"Do you know what you looked like when you woke up that Sunday morning?" she asked.
He did not answer, just shook his head.
She told him, "You looked… like you had just, I don't know, won the lottery. Like if you had just been told that you were now one of the richest men in Britain. Like if you had just… I can't explain it properly, but you looked so happy. And then you realised what had happened and it all went away, as if you had done something very, very bad and the guilt was eating you whole. You ran away to your room and I let you."
She turned to look at him then, "And then this morning, for just a second, it was there again. You found out that we were going to be parents and you looked as if you were about to walk on air… and then it vanished. It made me feel like even though I was probably giving you what you wanted, you didn't want it from me."
He was quick to protest, "No, no Hermione, I'm not ashamed of you, of wanting you, I was… I felt bad about how this all happened. You deserve so much better than this, so much better than me…."
She scoffed, "'Better than you', all I've ever wanted was you."
"Then why are we having problems, why are we… like this?" he asked.
She sighed, long and sad, "I don't know, Harry. I wish I did but I don't."
"I want it to stop," he told her.
She was about to ask "How" but then realised that they would never find a proper answer. Instead she surprised herself by replying, "Okay…."
Harry was surprised too, and asked, "W-what? I mean, really?"
She did not answer at first, taking a moment to think over what she was really saying, and then she replied firmly, "Yes, really. If there's no reason for us not to be together… why shouldn't we be?"
Harry couldn't disagree with that. He smiled at her, his brightest, happiest smile, and then, after a moment of debating whether or not he should, enveloped her in a hug. She snuggled into his chest, smiled into his shirt and said, "Yes, we can do this…. We stopped Voldemort, we can do this."
If only it was really so easy.
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