Disclaimer: None of the characters in this story are mine. Well, I created Vivian and Andrew and the kids, and Maggie, so they would be mine. But other than that, they're not.
Author's Note: The story was written for a challenge on The Third Floor Corridor. The lines are from the poem Silkie, particularly as sung by The Singing Milkmaids, which was the reason the muses woke up and started working on this fic.
Prologue – An Earthly Nurse
An earthly nurse
sits and sings
And aye, she sings
by lily-wings
Saying "Little ken
I my bairn's father
Far less the land
where he dwells in."
Hermione Granger hesitated outside the small house, looking down at the sleeping face of the tiny child she carried. Pain clenched at her heart, a voice crying out for her not to leave her son here, alone and abandoned by his mother. A sob caught in her throat as she ruthlessly shoved the pain aside. He would be safer here, far from the war that raged in the Wizarding World. Far from those who had caused his conception to be a necessity.
Reaching up a hand, she wiped away tears before knocking on the cottage door. She had watched the Muggle man who opened the door, and the woman who watched from a chair by the fire for weeks. They would provide her son with the home she could not. The home he deserved, rather than brief moments of attention between potions and patients.
"Can I help you, miss?" The man was giving her a concerned look, and Hermione realized tears had crept down her cheeks despite her efforts.
"Please, may I come in?" Hermione's voice was quiet and strained from the effort of holding back sobs.
The man exchanged a worried look with his wife, but he stood aside, letting her to step through the door into the warm room. Hermione heard the door close behind her ,but she was already halfway across the room, stopping just in front of the fire. There had been no fires at her small clinic for months, and the fireplaces were all bricked over, so no one could Floo in. She missed the cheery warmth a blazing fire could lend to a room.
"Are you all right, miss?" The man followed her, and she knew he was taking in her bedraggled appearance.
She wore a threadbare cloak, and patched robes, the only possessions that she had not given to others more in need of the warm apparel. And the blanket she'd had on her bed until tonight was wrapped securely around her son. The tiny baby boy she would in all likelihood never see again.
Hermione turned around, carefully laying her precious bundle on the woman's lap. "Take him. Take care of him, and love him, and give him the home I cannot." She held the woman's eyes. "Keep him safe, and tell no one he is not yours. He must be safe, and you must remain safe. No one must know he is not yours."
She knew no on in the village would believe he wasn't theirs. Ron and Neville were already in the village, carefully modifying memories so they would think the woman who now held her son had been the one to carry him, and give birth to him.
"But, why?" The woman looked puzzled. "And who are you?"
"Knowing who I am could place you in danger. Please, just take care of him. You can give him everything I cannot. Love, a family, and a home that is safe." Hermione let her wand slide into her hand. She would modify their memories, and leave. "I'm sorry I have to do this. Obliviate!"
A few minutes later, a pair of sad brown eyes watched through a window as a Muggle couple cooed over their newborn son for a moment before Hermione turned hurrying to the waiting boat on the beach that would carry her back to the mainland, and the war that awaited her.