Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I do not seek to make profit off this work. Harry Potter and its characters belong to JKR and I am happy for her to have that title. All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners.
She informs Dumbledore first, as a matter of pragmatism and expediency. His response will guide her toward the rest she must tell. Also, she is sure Dumbledore will not yell at her.
She knows herself, and knows she can take his bitter disappointment, since she feels it herself, probably more than anyone else could, but she is filled with unfamiliar hormones and guesses, quite rightly, that she'll start bawling if he so much as clears his throat too loud.
She knows too, if Dumbledore does not yell at her, she will carry hope to the rest of the people she must tell. That hope will be obliterated, she knows, as soon as she talks to McGonagall, to Ron and Harry, to her parents in person, but she still wants it, just for a time. It might be hopeless—and she knew that she shouldn't take comfort in something doomed to be temporary—but the hormones have not tampered with her essential self, and she has always had hope. It is foreign to not have it.
Hermione thinks this was the first time she had ever seen Dumbledore speechless. Certainly, it is the only time she has seen his mouth hang open in that manner.
"You are…" He shakes his head. The small bells twined in his beard tinkle merrily. "You are certain?" He glances at her stomach. Hidden behind bulky robes, there is not much he can see, even if there was anything there.
"It's only the ninth week, sir," she tells him, telling herself not to enjoy his discomfiture so much. "I won't start really showing for a while."
Dumbledore appears to come over his shock, his bells ringing again as he leans forward and clasps his hands over his desk.
"Miss Granger, I will not pretend to not be shocked"—he smiles obliquely at her and she blushes and looks down—"but I cannot understand your insistence to resign from not only your Head Girl status, but from the entire school. I was under the notion that your education is important to you."
"It is." And she realizes that she might cry anyway, because she loves Hogwarts. She loves the drafty castle and its nosy, moving portraits, she loves the library and Gryffindor tower, and all the secret rooms and passageways. She loves it as only one can love the first place to be accepted for everything weird and strange that she is. She bows her head and sniffs hard, once, telling herself she can do this, she can do this, and she will not cry. She swallows and lifts her head.
"It is," she repeats. "However, I have heinously abused my position as Head Girl, taken liberties with the responsibility you have honoured me with, and, forgive me, Headmaster, but I feel it is the best if I remove myself from the school in light of this. I know pregnant students are not directly forbidden from attending Hogwarts"—not that they weren't dissuaded quite forcefully, if the unabridged version of Hogwarts, A History was to be believed—"but, as Head Girl, it is a horrible example to the students who look up to me as a moral compass.
"I have asked and been accepted at Morgana Le Fay's Light Day School and have arranged to let a cottage nearby." It says something, she thinks, of her war hero status, that she can be accepted at one of the finest and elite magical institutions besides Hogwarts in Britain just by asking. Where she would have found it horribly unfair only two weeks ago, she has only to touch the small bump of her stomach and be grateful now.
"And the father?" Dumbledore asks, distracting her from the direction her thoughts had taken. She catches the Headmaster glancing at her stomach again, but when he looks back into her eyes his eyes are not unkind. "Does he support your decision?" he gently elaborates.
Her heart beats hard in her chest. She shifts, but cannot get comfortable, and her hands have started sweating sometime in the interim. "His consideration led me to the idea of transferring, sir," she said, to get her mind off it.
For the first time, Dumbledore is angry. His eyebrows draw down and his magic stirs the air around them. Her breath catches in her throat. Hermione, who expected this from the second she opened her mouth, leans back, wondering why he is only angry at her now. Until he opens his mouth.
"Has he forced you into leaving?"
"No!" she yelps, and Dumbledore settles down, but the intensity does not leave his face. She's impatient to explain now, not wanting him to shift the blame to the wrong person. "Our wishes just happened to coincide, sir. Our relationship was never serious." Yes, she told herself impatiently, feeling the burn on her cheeks, not that I would have complained. But that's over so stop it!
"Perhaps we could come to a compromise," says the Headmaster. He stands and walks toward the far side of his office. He walks like he is on a private walk through the forest, not as if her anxious eyes follow his every movement. He picks up a shiny ball off the windowsill and says, "The Deputy Headmistress and I will need some time to find your records. As you know," he says, turning to her, his smile doting, "without your records you cannot officially leave Hogwarts."
This is troubling. And, contrary to his opinion, not something she knew. Her fingers double their grips in her lap.
"Why are the records lost, Headmaster?"
"The organisation was never very good, I have to admit," Dumbledore says. Like a crocodile shedding tears for the dramatic value, he pauses, and then adds, "Regrettably."
Hermione waits. And waits. Finally, bold and impatient, she asks, "And...?"
As if pulled from deep thoughts, Dumbledore lifts his head. "The last battle destroyed the foundation of the room where it was kept. Mr. Filch kindly agreed to sort it out. It's a demanding task. I would trust no one else with it."
So that's where Filch is sequestered. She had wondered.
She readjusts her hands on her lap, thinking about what she wants to say. She doesn't want to appear rude, but Dumbledore is acting suspiciously vague on this front. She suspects he has something up his purple-starred sleeve.
"When do you expect to find my record? Couldn't you just Accio it?"
"Not possible, I'm afraid," he says. "Student records cannot be summoned by just anyone."
"But you're the Headmaster."
"Exactly!" he says, pleased as he leaned back on the balls of his feet like a young boy gleefully anticipating candy. His smile is achingly familiar, almost taunting in its nature. "I estimate it will take, hm, a week to export your records. You can come back to me then."
A week. She sighs. Now she knows for certain. This is one of Dumbledore's schemes. For what reason?
A week, she thinks. Does he want me to think over what I'm doing? Does he want me to reconsider?
Dumbledore clears his throat. When she looks up, his eyes dart between her and the door. She takes the hint.
For whatever reason, Dumbledore wants her to take a week to think.
It's a good thing, then, that thinking is what she does best.
She tells Professor McGonagall next. As her Head of House, the witch she has looked up to from her first week of Hogwarts, and the woman who has mentored her for the past year, she owes her a great many things, not least of which is the truth.
She waits for the NEWT Advanced students to walk out, cursing her timing as she's forced to avoid Harry and Ron's attempts to get her to come with them to lunch or, when that does not work, tell them right then why she hasn't left her dormitory three days in a row and missed a whole day of lessons and the Prefect meeting. She fobs them off as best she can—which isn't very good at all—feeling other eyes on her and burning under them. She never thought she could use the fact that she's pregnant to escape her best friends, but she does, and gladly, shutting the classroom door behind her so hard it rattles the candelabras hanging next to it.
McGonagall's disappointment is harder to bear. She almost does cry, then, and the professor doesn't even yell at her. She doesn't have to tell her she's disappointed. Hermione prides herself on knowing her favourite professor, and can see it in her eyes, in the lips that have never thinned her way but do now.
The only reason she does not cry is because she promised herself she wouldn't, at least until she finished telling the people who need to know and got back to her dormitory. She is not back in her dormitory. There are two more people to tell. She cannot cry.
Hermione leaves with the strict order to appear before Madam Pomfrey every week, echoing the Headmaster's order, and deliberates between going back to her dorm and waiting in Gryffindor Tower for Harry and Ron.
She chooses neither, and heads toward the Great Hall for lunch. She can catch her friends there and bring them to an unused classroom after to tell them.
It is not procrastinating, she told the voice that whispers in her head. Just having my last normal moment with them this year.
She takes the shortest path, leading her by the Charms classroom. She passes the humpbacked witch and a hand reaches out and yanks her behind it.
Her startled yell is smothered in a familiar mouth and her muscles try to relax and tense simultaneously, leading her to push him away as her body tries to pull him back.
"Malfoy," she breathes. Her fingers dig into his shoulders when he tries to lean forward again. "Wh-what are you doing?"
"We've got ten minutes for me to do you." He smirks and her eyes flutter as he takes her lips again, softer, almost chaste, compared to before. His tongue skims her lips, begging entrance and she lets him, uses her hands to grab his collar and pull him closer.
He's flush against her, his entire length pressed against her like he's wearing her as a second skin and it feels so good. She can't remember why she would want to keep away from him for so long. It's a sin, she thinks, and muffles her moan in his mouth as he sucks her tongue. She's missed this so much, him and his devilish tongue that's mimicking what he'll do to her, and the wicked fingers that leave her aching wherever they touch. She tries to think and can't. He's done it again. Taken away all the common sense that makes up half her brain, leaving behind only her senses. He smells like metal and a blown out match, and she's never smelled anything so tempting in her life, and it's no wonder she's pregnant, with him throwing out half her brain when he comes near.
"Fuck. I've missed this. Where have you been?"
"I—"
"Doesn't matter." He groans as he pulls her hand down to wrap around his cock. She gasps, her fingers squeezing as she presses her thighs tight together, and he grunts and thrusts forward. "Hermione. I – ngh – won't last."
He pushes her robes aside and attacks her skirt like it's done him some grave offense and he's going to challenge it to a duel. He curses and pushes it up, his hands shaking too badly to undo it, and his fingers brush over her bare stomach.
She jerks and pulls away with one coordinated effort. Her eyes are wide and she probably looks like she's seen a demon from the seventh level of Hell. In the second's silence, her brain tells her that he felt nothing, that from his shocked eyes he has no idea what happened, but then the silence ends and still she gasps, "Don't!" like he has seen into her mind and knows everything.
She hears his "Granger!" and doesn't stop. She runs like Dementors are after her.
She ducks into the closest girls' loo, her wand out. She's sealing the door shut before she even has the idea. She turns around and realizes it was a mistake to lock herself here—it seemed Moaning Myrtle has visited sometime today. The sinks are all filled with water and spilling over onto the floor.
She releases a breath holding all her terror, her surprise, her anxiety. She allows nothing more.
She sighs and walks over to turn the taps off. A simple spell dries the floor, but she'll need to go back to Gryffindor to change her shoes and socks. Drying charms just leave them itchy for some reason. She waits five minutes, enough to straighten her clothes and for Malfoy to have left the level, and leaves for Gryffindor Tower. Twenty minutes later, after Harry and Ron check the library and the Prefect's Office, so they tell her, they find her waiting for them in the common room.
"Let's go to my dormitory," she tells them, and they follow her to the Gryffindor Head Girl's room. She sits braced against her headboard with her two friends at the end of the bed. She takes a deep breath and says, "There's something I need to tell you…"
She had only visited the Hospital Wing to get a Pepper-Up Potion. She had been feeling fatigued for a few months, but now it was affecting her during class! It became critical that she got this flu sorted out.
Except it wasn't a flu, or even stress. Madam Pomfrey performed a diagnostic. She stared at whatever had come from Hermione for almost two minutes, her usually unflappable self becoming flustered, her cheeks reddening in something like embarrassment. Hermione almost laughed out loud. She performed the diagnostic again, and stuttered at Hermione.
The comedy long gone, Hermione listened in growing disbelief as Madam Pomfrey explained to her that there would be no more Pepper-Up Potion, not for seven more months at least. Nor could she imbibe any potion that held parts of dragons, lethifolds, or any other dangerous creature. She was, in effect, banned from taking two-thirds of the common potions available, and none of the not so common.
Calming Draughts were, luckily, not included.
Hermione waits, begging words strangled in her throat—she will not plead, she will not beg, even if it is tempting to fall to her knees and hug their knees the longer they stare at her with pale faces and dropped jaws.
"Say something," she whispers. Her hands move, but she forces herself to grab hold of her pillows instead of reaching out to them. "Please."
Ron shuts his mouth. She can see the moment pure anger, pure Ron anger, which is worse because he's looking at her, fills them. A muscle in his jaw twitches.
"I'll kill him," he said. His voice is very quiet and she believes him utterly. "I'm going to kill him."
The quietness of his voice convinces her that he very well would if Malfoy had been there, or if she has the insane idea to tell him just who the father is. She doesn't like that voice, not one bit. She silently knocks him off the list of people she could confide in, and looks at Harry.
He stares at her for a moment, then huffs and sits back. "Don't look at me like that, Hermione," he says, making his hair even more untidy as he runs a hand through it. "I – I'm just surprised. You didn't even tell us you were seeing someone and now this."
"We weren't even seeing each other," Hermione says, clutching her pillow tightly. "Just having fun. The war's over, I had this whole bright life in front of me, and I wanted to have some fun for once. If I had known it would backfire so brilliantly, I would have reconsidered."
"Aw, Hermione." Harry pulls her into a hug. She resists at first, but then his arms wrap around her, and she's enveloped entirely in his warmth and cannot think that she doesn't deserve this anymore. Her eyes close and there's a Quaffle lodged in her throat, and then Ron hugs her other side, his lips pressed into her hair, saying "Shush, shush." She's confused until she realizes that it's her making those choked, sobbing noises into Harry's shoulder. They rock her between them, Ron shushing and Harry murmuring it's alright, Hermione, it's okay. We're here, we love you.
She can pretend, as she pulls one arm from around Harry and strains it wrapping it around Ron, that he might be right. It will be okay.
They disentangle awkwardly, looking furtively at each other until Harry knocks his head against the bedpost and they begin laughing. Hermione's still giggling, a hand covering her mouth, when something presses against her bladder. Hard. "Oh!" she exclaims. "Excuse me."
She hurries into the toilet, shutting the door behind her and barely pulling away her robes before she almost wets herself.
She sighs, letting her head fall between her knees. This will always come first. I musn't forget that.
When she comes out, having abandoned her robes since she's not expected in her classes today, Harry and Ron are talking quietly at the end of the bed, their heads bent together. She remembers when she last saw that pose, on a plotting Fred and George during the war, and narrows her eyes at them as she resumes her seat. She narrows them further when they both look up at her innocently.
She scoffs. Like I believe that.
"So," Harry says, wiggling his eyebrows. "Who's the father?"
"My sickle's on Goldstein."
Hermione blinks. Goldstein? Who—? "Anthony Goldstein?" she exclaims. "What?"
"Told you," Harry says, plastering a haughty look on his face that reminded her uncomfortably of Malfoy. "It's Zacharias Smith. He's fancied her since fifth year."
"How do you even entertain these ideas?" she asks, shaking her head as she flops back onto her pillows. "Neither Anthony nor Smith like me."
"You haven't been thinking Smith joined the Order because he wanted to fight Voldemort, is it?" Harry snorts and glances at Ron, who performs a mightily good impression of a fairy tale witch by cackling loudly. "You should have seen how pissed they were when we got our letters and they found they didn't make Head Boy. We were there, remember, at that party at the Leaky Cauldron?" Yes, she remembers. It had been August, and so hot she'd worn a short skirt. She had later seen that skirt on the floor of Malfoy's bedroom, waking up still tasting the triple firewhiskies she ordered in celebration—then Malfoy had bought her more rounds, celebrating his own Head Boy position. His sweaty shirt had landed beside her skirt.
She swallows. "Why were they angry?" she whispers.
"Because then they had to find another way to spend time around you," Ron says, ceasing his cackling and sounding remarkably like she does in lecturing mode. She glances his way, glaring a little, and he laughs again, smacking Harry's arm. "Look! She still doesn't believe us."
Harry's grinning when he says, "Just watch them next time you're around them, okay? Merlin, Hermione. Aren't you supposed to be explaining this to us?"
"I've been busy this year." She can't believe how defensive she's getting. By the look of it, neither can Harry or Ron. Her mouth still movies without her consent, however, and she's dragged along in its wake. "I have Head Girl duties and, and—"
"—making babies?" Ron offers.
She collapses against her pillows, groaning. There is silence. Then, finally, "Yes," she groans. "Merlin, where has my head been this year? I can't believe I let this happen."
"They do say the smartest people have the worst accidents," Ron says, nodding sagely. "I always thought you'd blow yourself up in some mad Arithmancy/Charms/Potions experiment, or maybe transfigure yourself into a rock, but getting up the duff was a close third."
"Thank you," Hermione tells him in all seriousness. "I would rather have been transfigured into a rock. At least I wouldn't have to pee all the damn time!"
Harry's face scrunches up as he looks at her. "What are you going to do, then? Have you talked to Dumbledore?"
She fiddles with a loose thread on her tie. At least, she figures, we have the hard part out of the way, and now we can joke about it and figure out what happens next. Even if those questions are uncomfortable.
"Yes," she says, throwing caution to the four winds. "He's asked me to take a week to think about transferring to a different school. I don't think…" She pauses, twists her lips. "I don't think I could stand all the jokes. Perfect Hermione Granger, finally gets Head Girl and then up the duff!" Shame burns next to her indigestion.
"What?" Their response is simultaneous.
"They can't make you transfer!" Harry shouts. He looks like he's a second away from jumping up and running to the Headmaster's office to thump him.
"He's not," Hermione says. She sits up, taking care to keep a pillow in front of her stomach. "He wants me to stay," she says, watching as their faces distort with confusion. She sighs and closes her eyes. "I want to transfer. Can't you see it's for the best?"
"No." She glances at Ron and gets the same answer.
"Can you imagine Rita Skeeter when she gets a hold of this?" she asks, desperate for them to agree with her. "I'll be a laughingstock of the Wizarding world. My parents read the Prophet. My parents will read every single lie she writes about me! I can't put them through that—I can't. I can't, can't"—she pushes past the obstruction in her throat—"I can't put my baby through that." Harry and Ron's faces twist at that, and she tastes tears at the back of her throat. "I have to think of more than myself now," she whispers. "Can't you see that? Any other scandal, I would face it head on. But now"—she drops the pillow, and their eyes follow her hand where she cups her stomach—"I'm doing something for someone other than myself."
"Does the father know?"
She wonders if Harry had planned to echo Dumbledore so exactly. He even had the cadences right.
"He doesn't disagree," she says obliquely. Because I never gave him the chance to. Her hand falls away from her stomach.
Nor will I.
***