"Look at Me"
AUTHOR: Mystic25
Summary: Sequel to "The Eve." The birth of Harry and Hermione's child.
RATING: PG for language and imagery.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, his friends and his world are the property of J.K. Rowling. No money is being made off this. Suing me is useless, the money I have wouldn't buy dinner for a mouse.
A/N: This is a sequel to my other story "The Eve" but it can stand alone as well.
A/N #2: This has Harry and Hermione together, if you're someone whose not open to that, don't torture yourself, there are plenty of other fics to read that have what you're looking for, heck there's the last actual book of the series.
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The young assistant healer working inside St. Muguo's flipped through another page of Witch Weekly, one featuring a spread on the Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum. She smiled at the handsome face stretched out in a full two-page spread riding his broom over the cheering crowds in the stadium below.
A loud, varied pitch moan interrupted the witch's fantasy about Krum playing Seeker inside her bed. "Miss," the witch set down her magazine with a fair amount of annoyance. "You need to calm down. You've got a long road ahead of you. All that moaning will only wear you out."
Lying sweat soaked in the bed, Hermione glared at the blonde witch with perfectly styled hair. Her own hair was plastered to her head like filthy ropes. The witch also wasn't reek of drying sweat and body fluids and she wasn't experiencing a screaming amount of pain. Hermione hated her.
"Have you had children?" Hermione asked the assistant coolly when her pain allowed her a moment of rest.
"No Miss, but I don't think it's really that big of a deal, just some pushing and it's over," she said it so calm and collectively that Hermione was two seconds away from jumping her.
Another, lengthier, contraction hit her and dropped all thoughts away except for the pain. She cried out again and squeezed the hand that was holding hers.
"Cripes!" Ron tried to free his hand but found it so tightly gripped by Hermione that he couldn't move it at all. His hand went numb in three seconds from the strength of her grip. "Can't you give her something?" these words were spoken through gritted teeth.
"She'll have to wait until the Healer comes in," the assistant responded, turning another page in her magazine.
"How long?" Ron asked. He very much wanted to keep his hand as something other than a dead gravitational force.
"Your wife will have to be patient Sir," the witch flipped another page.
"She's, ahh!" Ron didn't think his hand could experience a higher degree of pain but he was proven wrong by Hermione's next squeeze. "She's not my wife."
The witch's eyebrows rose. She didn't make a verbal remark; she didn't have too; her look had said it all.
"Her husband is on his way," Ron added to correct the question he knew she was going to ask but was pretending to be too polite for.
Hermione had been on maternity leave from her job at Jordan College for the past three weeks. She had gone into labor at home while Harry was still at his job. She had no luck trying to find him. The Professor of Mythology's secretary said that the department's students were on an outdoor study period. Her pain hadn't been that bad yet so she had traveled by Floo to the Weaseley's (She didn't want to have to explain the finer points of Floo travel to her parents during labor pains). Her arrival at the Burrow was met with shock. But shock quickly gave way to action with Mrs. Weasely keeping Hermione calm and screaming for her children – being Ron and Ginny who still lived at home – to meet her at St. Muguo's just as she and Hermione vanished into the green flame.
"I don't have a husband," Hermione spoke through clenched teeth.
Ron turned to her in shock. "Hermione, what are you talking-"
"He's a prat Ron!" Hermione screamed as only a woman in labor could when speaking about her husband. "What's the point of me giving him that mobile if he doesn't use it!" She didn't wait for Ron to respond and snatched a silver wireless PCS phone from a small wooden table beside her bed. She flipped the phone open and pressed the first speed dial number.
The assistant healer stood up from the chair she was sitting on. "Non magical devices aren't allowed," her voice was demanding and irritated.
Hermione scowled at her muttering cursed – the non-magical kind – under her breath. "Where the bloody hell are you?" she screamed into the phone. She had tried to call Harry's wireless three times and had gone directly to voice mail.
The witch dropped back into her chair, shaking her head at her charge "Muggle born witches."
"I had to get your mum and dad," Harry's response echoed for an unknown reason, but the reason didn't remain unknown for very long as Harry walked into the small birthing room. He was followed by a tall middle-aged dark haired man in a tan overcoat and a stunning woman with honey colored hair curled loosely in sweeping layers across her face wearing a white pea coat.
"Apparently you forgot to tell them." Harry took a longer look at Hermione – her pregnant stomach quivering, her eyes set in hard pain – and wished he hadn't said his last remark.
"Baby," Alexandra Granger's ears were deaf to Harry's bumbled words. She pushed past her son-in-law, perhaps a little harder then intended, but not apologizing and walked up beside Hermione.
Hermione gave her hand up from Ron and clutched it in her mothers. Ron immediately began flexing his hand to regain circulation.
"Mum," Hermione's words were a grimace.
Mrs. Granger kissed Hermione's forehead. "I know darling, Ooh," she cooed, wiping her seat soaked hair with the back of one hand. "I know."
Hermione's father – William Granger – too stepped over to his daughter's bedside, but not before slapping a hand against Harry's shoulder. "Don't worry son, she'll take it all back once this is over." He left Harry feeling completely unsoothed and kissed Hermione's cheek.
"You look beautiful love."
Hermione looked up at him in disbelief. "Daddy that's ridiculous-"
"Uh-uh," William tutted his daughter. "I am your father, I mean every word I say."
"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Ron whispered to Harry, still flexing his fingers to work the blood back in. He had stayed with Hermione at her request while they waited for Harry. "Your hand should be on pins and needles not mine! I thought you had one of those movable communications."
"We were out in the Botanic Gardens, the trees blocked the reception." Harry whispered back. The students from the Mythology class had been out in the Botanic Gardens on the grounds of Jordan College. They were searching for the homes of fairies in the trees and bushes. None of the students were as sure of actually finding them as Harry was however so it took a long time to convince them that they weren't just looking at piles of leaves and sticks. When they had returned to class Harry found three separate voicemails from Hermione. He only listened to the first 30 seconds of the first one before saying a quick apology to the professor and his class (several of the students knew Hermione from the library and congratulated him) and running to his car. Once inside the Benz he flew down the roads so fast that he could easily have outrun his Firebolt. He made it to the Granger home in ten minutes and Floo'd them all to St. Muguo's.
The door to the small labor room opened again and a thick framed man in dark maroon robes entered. Around his neck – where Muggle doctors would have hung a stethoscope – his wand hung around a thick gold chain.
"Hello all," the Healer nodded a greeting to everyone before addressing his assistant: "Has she been checked?"
The witch nodded "She's open, nearly complete, not much longer."
The Healer took in all this information with a nod, He twisted a clasp on the end of the chain at his neck and it separated, allowing him to slide his wand off. He closed the snap on the gold rope and proceeded over to Hermione's bed, a smile – more for duty then for warmth – on his face. "How are you doing "Ms.-" he read the place card at the end of the bed "Potts."
"It's Potter," the assistant corrected. "The ink's been smudged."
"Potter?" the Healer's face turned inward, as if he were unearthing a great secret. "Are you in any way related to Harry Potter?"
"Not in any way that I'm too happy with at the moment," Hermione responded in a "get on with it" tone.
The Healer turned suddenly and stared at Harry as if he had just walked in. "Mr. Potter," he stuck out his hand. "It's a pleasure."
"Thank you," Harry accepted the handshake somewhat reluctantly – he had never desired his fame.
The Healer looked him over, still smiling, but it was as if Harry's appearance didn't match up to the one he had in his mind of what the Boy Who Lived should look like. He turned back to Hermione. "Everything is going fine Mrs. Potter. I daresay you're getting uncomfortable, but it won't be much longer."
"Can I have something for the pain?" Hermione heard the pleading note in her voice but she was beyond caring at this point.
"You're extremely close my dear. Any potions I give you could affect your baby's functioning once it's here. I could cast a disembodiment charm on you. You would be out of your body, but it still would perform all the necessary actions for birth."
Hermione had a horrifying image of herself floating above herself watching her soulless body give birth to her child. "No, never mind-" she broke off in a grimaced cry.
The Healer placed a hand against her bulging belly, his wand under the hospital gown she wore. Hermione was too far gone in her pain to feel anything from his wand.
"Completely open," The Healer said this both for his benefit and his assistant's. "She's ready. Begin preparations."
The assistant nodded, and drew a wand from the pocket of her white robes. She waved the wand at the shelves situated across the room and an assortment of sterilized drape cloths hovered out of them and levitated to the bed.
"I'm sorry, but you have to leave," the Healer waved his wand at the small group as if dismissing a disruptive class. "Only Mr. Potter can stay."
"Doctor," Mrs. Granger said. The Healer's eyebrows rose in puzzlement at the odd sounding word. "I'm her mother."
"A crowd is not good for the baby's aurora. It must take its first breath the moment the child does – too many people will suffocate it. This is the last time I'll ask, out! Only the Potter's can remain. Go!" The Healer had been practicing for almost 35 years, and was very set in the old ways of delivering wizard babies. He had delivered Harry to Lily nineteen years ago in this same arrogant manner but Harry had been just another baby back then, not nearly important enough for the Healer to remember.
Alexandra looked flustered at the Healer's order for her to leave. She turned her head from him to Hermione and back to him again, but his expression did not change. She squeezed Hermione's hand. "Be strong baby, the pain doesn't last forever." She kissed her, her eyes wet with tears.
William Granger was much more put together then his wife, but tears still coated his eyes. This was his only child, his little girl. "Give it hell darling. I've been waiting to meet that grandchild forever." He kissed her on the bridge of her nose like he had done when she was a small child.
"Out please!" the Healer ordered again, much more insistent then before.
"Alright Old Codger we're leaving," Mr. Granger retorted. The Healer glared at him but he paid it no attention. He stepped over to Harry, once again clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Remember what I told you Harry."
"Good luck," these words came from Ron who was standing just in the doorway.
"OUT!" The Healer's words were a bellow.
The Granger's left the room followed by Ron. Mr. Granger whispered something that sounded very much like "Uptight Old Codger to correct myself."
Ron laughed quietly as they left the room.
Harry and Hermione were now left alone with the Healer and his assistant.
Harry stood next to the bed, unsure of exactly what to do. "Are you alright?"
"No!" Hermione said, her voice angry but scared at the same time. "It hurts-" She gasped at the start of another contraction. "Damn." "Harry-"
"I'm right here baby," Harry kissed her fingers hiding the grimace at her grip on his hand because he didn't want to upset her.
The assistant spread a sterilized drape under Hermione's leg to protect the mattress from the afterbirth. As she did this, the Healer levitated himself in a sitting position at the foot of the bed.
"Let's get started shall we? Mrs. Potter, every time you feel the pain, I want you to push, hard, like you have to take a shit."
"He's disgusting!" Hermione complained, low enough so only Harry could hear.
"I doubt there's time to find someone else," Harry teased, but agreeing that the Healer wasn't the most tactful wizard in the world.
"I'll hex him if he uses that analogy again!" Hermione hissed.
"That would be a feat, especially without a wand," Harry teased her again rubbing her hand with his thumb. He felt her grip tighten.
"Argh!" Hermione's words were lost in a strangled garble as the most painful contraction she had experienced so far hit her full on. She arched her back and bit back a full scream, instead drawing her chin down to her chest. She had never had a baby before but what she was doing made more sense then staring at the ceiling.
"You are a complete git Harry Potter!"
Harry recoiled from Hermione's anger. He had been the recipient of that anger many times before and it wasn't something he relished the experience of.
"Why did you have to do this to me!" Hermione screamed and pushed at the same time.
Harry could only take what she was saying; he knew she was in pain. He had to take what she was saying or leave, and he wasn't about to go anywhere.
"You're doing fine sweetheart," Harry kissed her forehead. He couldn't stand to see her in that much agony, but the pain couldn't be helped; he could only focus on getting her through it.
"Harder!" The Healer's voice was more demanding. "I can see the child is large, push hard!"
"Come on baby, it's almost over," Harry coached her. "Keep going!"
Hermione gasped in exhaustion. "I can't!"
"You have too Hermione, you don't want a teenager hanging around in there," Harry wiped the sweat from her face with his hand.
"Again Mrs. Potter." The Healer's assistant – who was standing on the other side of Hermione – ordered. Her voice wasn't gentle, but her job was to deliver babies, not make life long friends.
Hermione breathed away an irritated sight at the coldness of the witch and pushed down harder then she had been doing all that time. The pain ripped through her and she screamed.
"It's a boy," the healer caught the baby as he came out in a rush of blood and amniotic fluid. He waved his wand over the baby's mouth and nose, suctioning the secretions out of them both. As soon as his airway was clear the infant gave a piecing cry.
"A boy," Harry's words could not form themselves around a phrase worthy enough to describe the emotions that had rushed into him after seeing the baby. "Hermione," he pressed his forehead to hers. "We have a boy."
Hermione returned the smile he was giving her, panting through the edge of pain that still lingered. "Is he alright?"
"Do you have ears?" the assistant said. She cut the baby's cord with a flick of her wand then levitated him over to a bassinet filled with blankets where a warming spell had been cast.
Harry's eyes followed his newborn son's every movement. He felt the corners of his eyes brick but Hermione had already beaten him to it and tears began sliding down her face.
Harry kissed her once, twice, three times. "I love you."
Hermione returned his kisses with a long one of her own. "I love you too-" she broke off in what sounded like a cough, but it was more desperate, it was a choked gasp. "Harry," she gripped his arm, her words a pained whisper.
Harry saw the change in her eyes. "Hermione-"
"Harry something's wrong," she gasped again, like cold water had just been dumped on her.
"Healer Thomas!" the assistant pointed her wand at the drape between Hermione's legs. It was soaked with blood, some of it leaking into the mattress itself "She's flooding!"
Thomas noted the blood and this time a flash of shock broke through his medical sterility. He waved his wand and lowered Hermione's legs back down on the mattress.
The movement sent a wave of cold nausea coursing through Hermione and her body convulsed on it.
"Hermione!" Harry took her face in his hands; he could feel the tremors through his fingers. "Hermione look at me, look at me!"
Her eyes met Harry's but they were clouded in a haze of pain, then they dropped back in her head and she went limp.
"Hermione!" Harry felt the pulse in her neck; it was there but weak, very weak. "What's happening?"
"The baby was big. It ripped her inside," he worked five sterilized towels around Hermione's torso and packed them in tightly.
Harry saw all the blood that soaked the towels "She's loosing too much blood, you have to do something!"
"We are Mr. Potter," the assistant said; her voice wasn't reassuring or even cold, it was nothing.
"Get me two bottles of Blood Regrowth Potion!" the Healer barked to his assistant.
The witch took his hostility uncaringly and went to do as he asked.
Thomas turned Harry. "You need to leave."
Harry stared at him in shock "What?"
"I have to repair this damage. I can't do it with untrained eyes constantly watching me." His voice no longer held any semblance of civility towards Harry.
"She's my wife!" Harry retorted. "I can't just leave her."
"Your son is alive, which is more than his mother is at the moment. Focus on that."
The anger of an event gone horribly wrong boiled over inside Harry. His wand was in the back pocket of his pants like always, but he didn't make a move to grab it and jumped the Healer in the way he had fought before he ever found out that he was a wizard.
Thomas's shield charm threw him onto the ground, he slid across the tiled floor, crashing into the wall, his lip split open and blood sputtered down his chin.
"Get him out of here!" Thomas's orders were to two burly wizards who had just entered wearing dark blue robes- resembling them to Muggle police officers in costume dress. They were members of the security force at St. Muguo's.
Their wands were pointed at Harry, and one of them men – with large muscled forearms – grabbed Harry's shoulder and hauled him to his feet. His partner grabbed Harry's other shoulder and stuck the wand at his back.
A dark haired assistant in a long white robe appeared behind the two male wizards. "What is it Sir?" Thomas had paged her via a bewitched sapphire broach pinned to the collar of her robe.
"Take this baby to the nursery," Thomas levitated the bassinet towards her.
The assistant caught it, holding the heavy object securely. She peeked inside the bassinet. "Sir, there's no band on the baby's foot."
"Boy. Potter." As the Healer spoke he waved his wand and a white plastic identification band with these two words appeared around the baby's ankle.
The assistant stared at the pinched face of the infant; he was bald except for a tiny patch of dark hair. "Potter?" Her eyes moved across the room until the settled on Harry with the two guards. "Harry?"
Harry's eyes started into Cho Chang's. There was a shocked recognition that came across both of their faces before Harry felt a jerk as the two guards roughly pushed him towards the door.
"Get off of me!" Harry struggled against them, but their holds only tightened. "I'm not leaving Hermione! GET OFF ME!" His cries did nothing to deter the guards; it actually made them hold onto him in a tighter, more bone crushing hold. They pulled him through the door as he fought them, screaming Hermione's name.
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Harry was shoved through a set of gray painted double doors with such a tremendous force that he pitched forward, his glasses flying off his face as he fell.
"Harry-" Mr. Weasely was up from the sofa he was sitting at. He pulled Harry to his feet and away from the wizard guard, seeing the blood on Harry's lip. He turned an accusing eye towards the guards, instantly taking Harry's side."What's going on?"
"You need to remain calm Mr. Potter," the guard with the large forearms glared down at Harry, ignoring Mr. Weasely.
"How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Harry got right up in the guard's face.
The wizard backhanded him across the face, ripping him a new cut across the other side of his lip.
Mrs. Weasely screamed and jumped up from her chair, but Ron beat her to her actions.
Harry reeled for a moment from the slap, but after three seconds he recovered and lunged at the guard, and he in turn pulled out his wand, thrusting it in Harry's chest.
"Get off him!" Ron grabbed Harry's shoulders and pushed him away from the guard.
"Healer Thomas is renowned Potter," the guard with the enormous forearms spoke. "He can save-" he eyed the air up and down as if something filthy had just walked in front of him and he couldn't decide whether to torture it or kill it." Any one."
Harry lurched forward again but Ron's held him back.
"Get out of her both of you!" Ron cried.
The guards turned and left, but not without an air of pompous satisfaction.
Ron let go of Harry, or rather Harry jerked himself out of Ron's grasp so Ron either had to let go or have his arms ripped off.
Mrs. Granger was beside Harry, her eyes frantic. "What happened? Is it the baby?"
Harry didn't answer her, his eyes looking everywhere but directly into hers. He couldn't bring himself to look at someone who had Hermione's eyes.
Mrs. Granger's eyes grew wide when Harry didn't respond, suddenly understanding just what that silence meant. "Oh god. Hermione!" She turned to her husband. "Will it's Hemione," Her head flew back towards Harry. "What happened? Harry what happened?!"
Mrs. Weasely took Harry's arm, pulling him away from Alexandra Granger's questioning. "My god dear, you're bleeding."
Harry was bleeding, but this was nothing, this was nothing to what he saw happening to Hermione, the vision assaulted him, he stumbled.
Mrs. Weasely seized his arm tighter. "Harry-"
"Leave me alone!" Harry yanked his arm away.
Across the waiting room there was another set of gray door Harry fled out that door, banging them open so wide that they hit the wall with a loud thud that reverberated for several long seconds.
Mrs. Weasely stood there, looking as though she had been slapped in the face. But it wasn't Harry's words that had evoked that look, it was the raw fear she felt coming off of him.
Mr. Weasely stepped over to his wife. "I'll get him Molly."
"No dad," Ron met his father's eyes, a look of understanding passing between them in that moment. "I'll do it." He walked to the doors Harry had gone through.
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Ron came through the steel doorway and found himself in a seemingly endless hallway. A huge window covered almost two thirds of the wall on the right side looking into an equally large room. The echo of crying came from this room and after Ron approached it, he found it to be a huge nursery with rows and rows of newborn babies in bassinets being tended to by witches in white robes.
Ron found Harry beside this window; his entire body was bent low, his head resting on the glass. He looked like a man who had returned from a great war only to be told that his entire family had been burned alive in their house.
"Harry," Ron came across the hallway and called out to him. Harry's head didn't rise from where it was for a long second, making Ron think that he hadn't heard him at all. But after he was one-step away Harry's head whipped up so fast that Ron thought his neck had broken.
"This can't be happening, it wasn't supposed to be like this. " Harry's voice held a note of fear that Ron had only heard once before, when he thought that Sirius Black was coming to kill him, long before the reality of who Sirius was.
"What?" Ron knew something had gone horribly wrong, but he didn't know what it was. A part of him didn't want to know, but it was overruled by the part that needed to know. "What is it?"
"She's dying Ron!" The words that Harry had been terrified to say out loud, an action that could very well make them true, came pouring out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Ron stared at him in a shock so horrified that there was no way to completely describe the look that came across his face at that moment. But the shock began to fade, it was still there, but it became overpowered by something else, another more powerful emotion. "No."
"You weren't there!" Harry screamed at him, moving away from the wall just enough so that his chest could heave in an out in a desperate gasp of air. "She was bleeding everywhere, even that stupid Healer was smart enough to see that-"
"NO!" Ron grabbed Harry's shoulders forcing the other man to turn and look at him at him in the eye. "That Healer's a fowl little Git! He doesn't know Hermione like we do! She's not dying you hear me!"
"I can't lose her Ron," Harry didn't scream this time, his voice was low, broken, shattered, the scream of someone whole only on the outside.
"Look at me! She didn't go through all that bloody crap with us for seven years to die like this!" Ron screamed back at Harry, echoing the fights of their early youth, but much more terrifying.
There was a moment of crushing silence, a moment where a glint of pure raw emotion fell over Harry's eyes. It was the kind of emotion that was unnamed, it could become any emotion, anger, sadness, madness, it only needed a trigger to release it.
Ron could see that glint; he prepared himself for whatever came next, to be hit by his best friend, if he could express no other release. Harry turned, Ron waited for the sting of a punch, but it never came. Harry's hands instead found the wall, bracing themselves against it. His head slammed into the middle of them, hard, cracking the old plaster. A sobbing scream tore through his throat.
Ron felt the scream tear through him like a tempered knife. "Mate-" his word was weak sounding a pathetic to him, but he didn't know what else to say.
Harry whirled on him, his chest heaving, his hands balled into fists that he no longer knew what to do with. He attacked Ron, but he didn't hit him, he didn't throw him to the floor. His arms clung around Ron's shoulders.
Ron's arms were at a momentary loss at what to do, but it only lasted half a second before they fell across Harry's shoulders the same way. Standing in the sterile hallway, that cared for nothing, Ron hugged his friend.
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"I've told you he's doing the best he can!" The dark haired woman with the long hair – Cho Chang – was standing inside a room full of people who were treating her like she had personally caused everything bad that had just happened. No one in the room knew her, except Ginny Weasely who was glaring at her in anger.
"You can't just tell us nothing!" Ginny barked. She had never expected to see Cho Chang as an assistant healer in St. Muguo's, but then again she hadn't expected to be feeling the terrified rage she was feeling at that moment.
"I've told you everything I can!" Cho insisted.
"That's not good enough!" Mrs. Granger roared in a voice that would have put Mrs. Weasely's to shame. "You tell that, that, man to get his ass in gear and save my baby, do you hear me?!?"
"He is, believe me he is," Cho's voice wasn't unfeeling like the Healer, she was terrified.
The door she knew led to the opposite hallway opened and Harry came through them, followed closely by Ron. She hadn't seen either of them since the fall of Voldemort, and she hadn't expected to see them here, in this ward. She always thought it could be a possibility, but certainly not like this.
Harry spotted Cho instantly. She was still stunningly beautiful, but he was no longer 15, desperate to hold her hand in Madam Puddifoot's Tea House. Her beauty was now below something. Below the beauty of Hermione, his lover, his best friend, whom he had last seen collapse under his eyes.
"Cho," He walked over to her stopping les then two steps in front of her. "Is she-" Harry had used the word moments before but it had been in a tense that indicated things that had yet to happen. He couldn't say that word in its rearrangement.
"She's alive Harry," The last time Cho had spoken with Harry face to face there had been such coldness in his eyes, a fight over Hermione Granger. It was the same now, only aged much more dramatically. "Please, I don't know any more than that."
"And my son?" It was the first time Harry had said this out loud, but his happiness over its usage was lost to him, engulfed in a painful menagerie.
"We have him," Cho told him. By 'we' she meant her and the other assistant healers who ran the newborn nursery. "He's alright." Cho's words ran out. She felt the collective fear and worry of everyone in that room, her empathy pressing itself against her ribs, crushing her. "I have to go back," she turned in an almost fleeing run- held back only by her forceful action to walk –and disappeared behind the gray doors.
"We should have taken her to a hospital!" Mrs. Granger was pacing in front of a black leather sofa with moth holes in it. "A real hospital! They could have taken the baby – Hermione wouldn't have – she wouldn't-"
"Alexa," Mr. Granger stood in front of his wife, laying both hands on her shoulders.
Mrs. Granger sniffed once then threw herself in his arms, crying.
Harry watched them. What Mrs. Granger had done –throwing her arms around her husband –her daughter had done to Harry so many times, more then he could count.
"Harry," Ginny tugged on his arm, pulling him towards the leather sofa – the only one in the large waiting area they were in.
Harry didn't resist, he was numb. Ginny was rubbing her hand across his back, talking to him. But he didn't feel anything, didn't hear anything.
"Harry," Mrs. Weasely's face swam in and out of focus in front of his eyes. She took the vacant spot next to him on the sofa sitting with such a light weight that it could have been air that had brushed across the sofa's cushions.
Harry didn't look at her. He ripped his glasses off his face, bending his head, covering his eyes with the edge of his hand.
Mrs. Weasely laid a gentle hand on his leg.
There was silence, moments of nothing then – A whispered sob broke from Harry's mouth. He bit his lip till the last remaining part of intact flesh bled, but it didn't stop.
Mrs. Weasely pulled him into her arms without a word. Harry's chest heaved on aching sobs that were drowned out in the fabric of Mrs. Weasely's brown overcoat.
Ginny's hand stilled on his back. She leaned forward and pressed her head between his shoulder blades, her face buried in the cotton of his steel blue long sleeved shirt.
Ron couldn't move. Harry's agony shock waved through him, rooting him in his place. That agony was his own. Hermione wasn't his wife, but she was still one of his best friends. He loved her. He choked a flood back down his throat; he couldn't break down in front of Harry, not now. His eyes were blurred from tears that had refused to let fall. He wiped them away like a nuisance of flies darting his eyes across the room.
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It was a baby crying that snapped Harry's head up from the folds of Mrs. Weasely's coat. A newborn's cry of life – the same tone of crying he had heard from his son in the room with Hermione.
Cho had come back into the room levitating a bassinet in front of her. The baby cried again thrusting out a tiny wrinkled foot where the word "girl" was clearly visible on the band attached there. It wasn't Harry's child.
Cho kept her wand aimed carefully in front of her to keep the bassinet and its contents straight. But she was out of breath, like she had just finished running from somewhere. Several pieces of her long hair sat in disarray in front of her face, slapping against her cheek as she tried to regain her breath.
"Harry," Cho's breathing was already fast, but it quickened, almost on the verge of hyperventilation.
Harry stood up from the sofa so fast that a rush of dizziness slammed into him. "No." He felt his heart in his throat and ears.
Behind him Mrs. Granger's hands flew to her mouth and Mrs. Weasely leapt up from her seat.
But Harry saw none of this. The faces of those around him, their bodies, inanimate objects, became nothing but blurs. He knocked into Cho as he ran, but he didn't stop, stomping the tiled floor.
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The same hallway he had been thrown out of met him. A maze of doorways danced by him until he stopped at the one. The security guards who had been there were gone. They wouldn't be needed if she were –
Harry slammed into the door, it flung open wide, crashing against the opposite wall.
She was there. Her hair soaked in sweat, her face glistening, pale, her eyes-
Her eyes had focused on him the minute he tore through the door.
Harry was at the bed in less than three seconds. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes. He was breathing through a hail of tears that hit her skin like a storm.
Hermione kissed him back, pressing her forehead to his, gripping his neck, stroking it.
"You need not have worried," Healer Thomas replaced the wand back on the chain around his neck. "I knew what I was doing."
Harry turned up to him, leveling his eyes with the other man's. "Thank you." He had to force the words out past an overwhelming physical urge to thank him in another way. "I won't forget you." The last part was in no way a compliment.
Thomas met Harry's gaze, but he didn't balk from it. "I have other patients." He turned and walked out the door but just as he did Cho entered and the two almost collided with each other.
Thomas glared at Cho like what had just happened was entirely her fault. He stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut with his wand.
Cho stepped the rest of the way into the room, her white robe rustling on the floor as she walked. A wand was looped around her neck like the Healer's had been, but hers was on a piece of braided string instead of a gold chain. In her arms she held a bundle of loosely wrapped blankets.
The blankets moved. Cho lifted off a section of them, removing the fashioned hood from the head of a baby. The infant wriggled in his blankets at the sudden contact with the air. She walked over to the bed, placing one hand under the baby's neck, supporting his body with her other hand. She looked down at the tiny bundle, then at Hermione. "He's alright." She laid him across Hermione's chest.
Hermione felt the warmth of the small weight on her body. "Oh my god," she stroked the baby's head with one hand, wrapping her other arm across his back. She kissed his neck; her tears hit the baby's small patch of black hair.
Cho looked at the pair, Hermione and the tiny baby. She saw the way Harry looked at them both. She remembered back into their world at Hogwarts, all the incidents she had seen even then. She was right to be jealous of Hermione, this was the final proof. But she wasn't a school girl anymore, so she let it go as she walked out the door.
"He's beautiful," Harry touched his hand above Hermione's that was on their son. He was crying again with the myriad of emotions that fought for release all at once. He kissed the baby's backside. "You're just like mummy James, she's beautiful too."
Hermione closed her eyes at the sudden torrent of new tears that streamed down her face. She had wanted so badly to name their son James. While Harry was holding her she had wanted to tell him, but she felt herself slip away. She heard Harry scream for her, and she screamed too, she cried, because she couldn't see him.
Harry kissed Hermione, a long deep kiss that would have gone on for years had they had the breath for it.
Hermione relished in it, Harry's breath warm against her mouth, his hands in her hair, touching her skin, their baby pressed so closely against her beating heart. This was what she had cried for when she couldn't see them – being alive.
The baby opened his eyes and was looking at Hermione with piercing emerald green eyes – Harry's eyes. "Hey," Hermione's words were choked in tears that had settled into her throat. "Hi James."
Harry kissed the side of her neck then turned his head down to rest in the hollow created by her neck and shoulder, looking down at the baby.
The door opened again, quieter this time. Ron stood in the entranceway, staring into the room, just standing, a statue that didn't know whether to stay inanimate or suddenly chose life. Then he came upon Hermione and hugged her tight from behind.
Hermione squeezed Ron's arms that were around her shoulders, pressing her lips to his hands.
Ron kissed the top of her head, then stared down at the baby who was balling tiny fists against Hermione's chest, gazing at them all with eyes that he didn't seem to want to close now that they had seen.
"Bloody hell you two. What did you do?" Ron laughed, but his laughter was laced with something that sounded very much like tears. "He's already got Harry's bad hair."
This time Hermione laughed with a voice of falling tears, she laid her head against Ron's arm, loving her son's bad hair.
Mrs. Granger came into the doorway next. She saw the baby, she saw Hermione holding him. She cried. Then came Hermione's dad, Mr. and Mrs. Weasely, Ginny. All of them crying, even Ginny, who had always kept up an attitude of toughness, the only girl in a family sibling of boys. She was crying too.
Harry heard their joyous exclamations, felt the warmth of their embraces. But his gaze was constant on Hermione and James – his wife and son, together forming a single echoing phrase: look at me.
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I couldn't just do a happy moment with a baby's birth, I tried, but this came out instead, I wanted something more then just a sugary moment.
Even though I don't have Ron together with Hermione I wanted to show the closeness of their relationship, they still love each other. I also wanted to show Ron's relationship with Harry, something sometimes lost in the desire of who Hermione gets to be with.
R/R please.
Peace,
Mystic