Written for Quidditch League

Team: Falmouth Falcons

BEATER 2 Prompt: The Adumu Dance from Africa; write about a character that breaks a familial or societal tradition.

Additional Prompts:

(song) Demons - Imagine Dragons

(object) snow

(genre) tragedy

Warnings: Pregnancy loss

This is a slightly AU/epilogue ignoring fic.

Big Thank Yous to my teammates who beta'd this fic for me. All the love and appreciation.

"I'm thinking a sort of vintage vibe. Sepia and cream wallpaper with a text print, then a border with Golden Snitches that fly about the background."

Hermione shook her head. "Draco. Why is it always Quidditch with you?"

His pink lips jutted out in an adorable pout. "Just once I'd like to have the nursery give a nod to the best sport ever invented."

He wrapped his arms around her still-flat belly and rubbed his pale hands over her blouse in a soothing motion. "Isn't that right, little guy? Wouldn't you love a beautiful little Snitch floating around your bedroom?"

Hermione smiled as she ran her finger over the pale wood slats of the stylish crib that had safely held her two sons. The image of their sweet, sleeping bodies flashed through her mind and hit her with a wave of longing nostalgia. Soon. Soon this crib and her heart would be filled all over again.

"It might not be a boy this time, you know. I've been sicker than I was with Scorpius or Leo. They say that girls will do that to you. More estrogen, you know."

Draco rolled his eyes. "More Muggle wives' tales, I think you mean."

Hermione took a deep breath to fuel a well-researched lecture about hormone levels and scientific studies, but was interrupted before she even began by the nursery door being abruptly yanked open.

"What is the meaning of this?" Narcissa Malfoy's sharp stilettos stabbed into the floorboards as she marched into the room, brandishing that morning's copy of The Daily Prophet. She threw it down onto the changing table and jabbed her finger at a second-page article. "These traditions are traditions for a reason. Do you have any idea how improper—"

Draco waved his hand towards his mother dismissively. "Really, Mother. The only reason wizards normally delay the announcement of pregnancy until the second trimester is for fear of miscarriage. Hermione is nine weeks along, now—the largest danger has passed. She's no more likely to lose the baby now than she is in two months' time."

"Besides," Hermione said, "The papers were already publishing wild speculations. You can only appear pale-faced and nauseous in public so many times before people begin to take notice."

"Well, I don't like it. It's a shameful display."

"Now, now, mother—you'll upset the baby. Isn't that right, little Carina?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows at her simpering husband. "So you admit that you're hoping for a girl?"

A wink and an outstretched arm was the only answer she received on that subject. "We'd best be going, love. The appointment with that dreadful Muggle doctor starts in half an hour, and it always takes so much longer to arrive anywhere by car."

The sound of newspaper rustling followed them from the room as Narcissa trailed behind. "That's another thing. Why won't you allow me to recommend to you a magical healer for your pregnancies? I find it quite unusual that the Malfoy heirs are being seen to by those vulgar Muggle doctors. A hundred years of time-honored tradition—"

"Mother." Draco's voice was a warning. "Hermione has perfectly researched the subject, and it is non-negotiable. A magical pregnancy is no different than a Muggle one, and their doctors are just as capable of overseeing it."

As they crossed their expansive country home towards the elegant front door, Narcissa was finally distracted by two small boys attaching themselves to her feet like a pair of rambunctious slippers. She was just beginning to scold the pair lightheartedly as Draco and Hermione slipped out the door.

Thirty minutes later, the couple found themselves leaving a double trail of shoeprints in the thin layer of snow on the sidewalk next to the maternity clinic, on their way to their first prenatal appointment. Draco's grin was wide with anticipation as he opened the door and ushered his wife inside.

Hermione felt like a hummingbird had replaced her heart as she found a seat in the crowded office. Even after two children, the first time she got to look at her baby on an ultrasound never got old. She had been looking forward to this moment for two long months, and it was finally coming to fruition.

Tap, tap, tap went Hermione's foot on the beige tiled floor until a bubbly young nurse called them back to the ultrasound room. As she settled onto the crinkly paper over the exam table, the nurse looked over papers on a standard wooden clipboard.

"So, your due date is September 25. Third baby?"

Hermione nodded. Draco, high spirits that he was in, reached for Hermione's hand and gave it a squeeze as the nurse squirted warm lubricant onto Hermione's belly. "What's it going to be like, sharing a birthday month with your daughter?"

Her heart grew warm at his open enthusiasm. "I'm so excited. She—or he—will be a Virgo, like me. Maybe she'll share my love of reading."

Three pairs of eyes glued themselves to the monitoring screen of the ultrasound machine as the nurse began rolling the plastic wand around on the flat skin under Hermione's belly button.

Any minute now, the tiny image of her little grape-sized baby would pop up there on that screen. Images of black shapes surrounded by fuzzy gray captivated the group. The nurse frowned and changed the angle of the wand, capturing different views of a black blob. Several minutes passed by. This was taking too long. With each empty image, Hermione's heart dropped deeper, until it seemed to reside at the soles of her feet.

Finally, the nurse swallowed and spoke. "Here's your uterus. You can see that there's an empty pocket of fluids in there where your baby should be. That's the gestational sac. It's measuring nine weeks along."

Tears stung the corners of Hermione's eyes and she blinked rapidly in a vain attempt to hold them back. "That's just not possible. I've had a perfectly healthy pregnancy. I've been sick. We were going to paint the nursery next week."

The nurse set the ultrasound wand down on a steel metal table. "I'm so sorry. This happens sometimes, when the baby passes very early on in the pregnancy but your body doesn't get the memo. I'm afraid there is no baby; not anymore."

The nurse was still talking and Draco was nodding stoically along, but Hermione had stopped listening as she felt death spread through her heart. The nurse fetched Hermione's doctor, who discussed medical options with them as she sat numbly on the table.

There was no baby. There hadn't been any baby, not for weeks or months. She had been a walking tomb, carrying around her dead seedling inside her body as she lovingly stroked her empty womb and dreamt of names and nursery colors.

Draco was pulling on her arm, leading her out to the waiting room when she suddenly snapped back to the surface to hear the doctor address her. "Make a follow-up appointment for next week, and we'll see if there's any change."

Obediently, she lined up behind three women in varying stages of pregnancy to request an appointment for the doctor to assure her of the death of her baby. Tears fell unbidden from her eyes as she stared at the swollen bellies surrounding her. She began to gasp and hiccup before Draco placed his hand on her back and led her to the door. "This was a terrible idea. We'll call for an appointment," he murmured in her ear as he led her through the dismal March snow to his sleek black Jaguar. She noticed the pure white powder had turned to an ugly grey sludge under the tire tracks.

She had almost given up all pretense of keeping herself together as he swerved out of the parking lot and started down the road back to their family home. The radio, still on her favorite station from the ride out, began to play a familiar song that tore a wail from her lungs.

When your dreams all fail

And the ones we hail

Are the worst of all

And the blood's run stale

It felt too appropriate, too painful to contemplate—a dagger to her already bleeding heart.

After Draco had pulled his luxurious car into the carport and killed the engine, they sat there silently for a moment. Narcissa, with all her judgment and propriety, was sitting on the other side of that heavy wooden door.

"I'll deal with my mother. You can go lie down."

Hermione pulled her winter scarf around her face to hide the trails of her tears and pushed through the garage door, past Narcissa's raised eyebrows and straight to the bedroom she shared with her husband, warding the door behind her.

She fumbled with the expensive magic-compatible radio system she had bought from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes back when the shop had taken an interest in adapting muggle technology to be usable by wizards. The music didn't start quickly enough to drown out her mother-in-law's outraged murmurs warring with Draco's pleading tones, but once it did, she blasted the volume and cocooned herself in her down comforter as she listened to the song the fates had placed in her path on the way home from the worst doctor's appointment of her life.

She played it on repeat, over and over, until she had the lyrics memorized and began cry-screaming them through her strangled sobs.

A week came and went. Hermione had taken to furiously googling "missed miscarriage," and from what she could tell, there wasn't a lot of hope for her situation. She felt numb and cold as she stared up at the now-hated ultrasound screen for a second time to reveal to her what she already knew would be there: nothing.

The doctor gently led the couple to a private room to discuss their options. "You could just wait and see if your body expels the failed pregnancy on its own. But it's already been a couple of months, and it could still take up to two more months for it to happen naturally."

Hermione shook her head. "Please, I need it to be done. I need to let her go."

"Your other options are surgery or medical induction."

"Please, give me the pills. I'd rather not have surgery if I don't have to." Besides, she was sure if it came to that she would rather look into magical options than have a scalpel poking around her uterus.

When they finally arrived back at home, prescription tucked safely into Hermione's beaded bag, Narcissa was waiting to pounce on them. "Have you figured out what to do about your premature pregnancy announcement?"

"I've decided to go with the truth. The papers will speculate no matter what, so I might as well control the narrative."

"Well, I never." A pristinely manicured hand flew to rest over Narcissa's silk-spun robes. "A respectable witch would never dare to allude to something so crass. It is strictly taboo."

Rage boiled beneath Hermione's skin. "Well, maybe it's about time that changed. Women are suffering in silence, hiding their grief from the world and mourning in dark corners because people like you have some outrageous idea that miscarriage is shameful."

"My dear, I really didn't—"

"I have nothing to be ashamed of!" Hermione's foot came down hard on the glossy wooden floor. "And I will not be silenced to satisfy your outdated, harmful traditions. I will mourn my loss however I see fit!"

Narcissa's face was not so much proper as it was pink; she narrowed her eyes at her unruly daughter-in-law. "I told you not to make an announcement—your defiance has tempted the fates. If you had listened to me, this never would have happened."

A moment ago, Hermione didn't think it was possible to become any angrier than she already was. She was surprised to discover that even she wasn't right one-hundred percent of the time. "Don't you dare. Don't you dare put this on me. My miscarriage was not my fault. Breaking your ridiculous traditions had nothing to do with it."

Draco snapped out of his stunned silence and stepped between the feuding women. "Mother, I think it's time you left."

Hermione didn't wait to see the back of her. She stomped through the living room, towards the sliding glass doors that led to the back garden. She paced until she came to the spot she and Draco had marked out to become a memorial for their never-to-be-born child.

Her knees sank into the thin layer of snow and she ran a finger over the moonstones they had arranged into a large circle next to the rose garden. When the snow melted—the unseasonably late spring snow that seemed to be hanging around like the sorrow in her heart—they would plant a cherry tree in that circle.

Tears began to wet her cheeks as she considered the child that might have been. Was it another boy, the child who she would never meet? Or a sweet girl; the daughter they had dreamed of? Now she would never know, as the body had never had a chance to develop enough to tell. She would always wonder.

A peal of laughter ringing over the shrubbery was her only warning before two pairs of brightly shining eyes rounded the corner. She swiftly dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief that had been living in her pocket ever since her life had been flipped upside down. The boys didn't need to be subjected to the darkness she was holding inside. She carefully schooled her face, hiding away her grief as she threw her arms around her sons.

"Hermione," Draco's voice was soft warm behind her shoulders. "Luna's in the drawing room. I'll keep the boys busy out here so you won't be interrupted."

Her fingers trembled as she stood and spun from what had become her favorite spot in the world and headed towards the house. Luna had always been a reliable reporter and a loyal friend.

Hermione knew she could count on her to tell her story, and to tell it with dignity. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that she was opening up about her experiences in a culture that still considered it a taboo subject would embolden witches across Britain to feel a little less ashamed of their own losses and a little bit more empowered. That way, at least some good could come of her personal tragedy.

AN: This story is dedicated to my own September baby, may he or she always rest in peace, and to all the women who have ever felt marginalized by the lonely grief that surrounds the unfairly taboo topic of miscarriage. May we all be less ashamed and more empowered, and free to tell our stories.

P.P.S: There is more to this story, but it may be a while before it gets written. If you are interested in reading on, hit the follow button to be notified.