Lily: This is the product of waaaaaaaaaaaay too much classical music, um, and a lot of pregnancy fics as of late. Um…well, this one is a little confusing If I must tell you all the truth. But I quite like it, it's…not my usual I don't think. If you'd like, listen to classical music while you read. I wrote this listening to the Nodame Orchestra, the songs played in the drama Nodame Cantabile as well as the Ouran soundtrack. Mostly I listened to the first movement of Schubert's piano sonata no.16 and Rachmaninov's Piano concerto no.2 in C. Both extremely lovely. Oh! Before I forget (again) there's some INCREDIBLY mild slash hints (note, hints) in this one...so if the slight, miniscule hint of slash bothers you, then I suggest you don't read this. Anyway, enough of a rant, let's on with it.
She Still Had her Baby
It wasn't supposed to be like this. No matter what had happened in the past, no matter what she had faced with her friends, she hadn't thought that anything worse could happen short of them dying.
She had been wrong.
Her hands trembled, the liquid in the vial trembled with it. It glowed light blue and seemed to give off a glow in the darkened girls' bathroom where she had collapsed.
"Blue" she murmured, eyes fixated on the vial in her hands.
Blue, the color she wished most in the world would disappear. At that moment, blue to her didn't mean vast oceans, it didn't mean endless skies, no, it only meant one thing.
"I'm pregnant"
What had she done?
A year was what it had taken to unravel her calm. To break through the barrier she always had around a small part of herself, the part that kept on thinking even when the rest of her was given over to insanity.
A year of meeting in darkened corridors and abandoned rooms to make her go out of her mind and to forget everything she knew she must do. Whether she had been mindless with jealousy, with lust, with anger, she could not remember. All she knew was that in the flurry of lips and tongue and hands she had not remembered to do that which kept her safe.
How could she have let this happen? Where was the level headed girl she knew herself to be? Did she lose her when they had met in that classroom the day classes began? Did she lose her when he kissed her into silence? Or did she lose her even before that, not in the heat of his embrace but in the heat of anger? Her head hurt thinking of it, she felt ill, she felt tired.
He met her once more.
It had been too long and the feel of his body pressed against hers was like a wave of calm to soothe her chaotic mind.
He was the familiar. His image was ingrained firmly in her mind. His heat was branded into her skin. When he entered her, she felt as if something missing had just returned.
He said things as he took her. Meaningless mutterings of a man engulfed in passion.
She took these words as if they were the very air she breathed. She wanted to listen to his breathy oaths and gasped praises forever. She wanted to ingrain them in her mind, keep the memory of his touch, his taste, his smell, his feel inside her. She wanted to keep these like treasures because she knew that, soon, very soon, she could not hide any longer. He would have to know. She would have to tell him.
At that time, he would surely become lost to her.
He moaned her name as he reached completion inside her. She held him tight and tried hard not to cry.
She couldn't ignore it any more. In the beginning it only lurked at the edges of her consciousness. A thing too terrifying, too crushing, to contemplate, yet always there to eat at her nerves.
She was beginning to show.
He had noticed the last time they met. He didn't know what it was, perhaps it was a byproduct of the lack of sexual education in wizard schools that he couldn't identify signs of pregnancy.
"You've gained weight" he said.
'I'm going to have your baby' she thought.
"I don't mind this much, just don't let yourself get fat" he said
"I won't" she said.
Her time was coming to its end. She would need to end things soon, before she became too big for him not to notice it as what it was. She would leave him, then at least she could look back and remember him wanting her until the end.
"You're pregnant"
Harry Potter was brighter than people gave him credit for.
She froze, her eyes stilled on the page she was reading in her book. Panic swirled like a black cloud in her mind, ready to strangle her calm, ready to destroy the illusion she had so carefully built.
She smiled at him.
"What are you talking about, how could I be?" she said.
Harry Potter was brighter than she gave him credit for.
"You're pregnant" he repeated. Her smile slipped, stalled, and fell. She averted her eyes from his big green ones.
"I'm the only one that knows." She looked back up at him, he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were focused on a point outside the castle walls.
"I won't tell anyone. I won't tell…him…that I know" she jerked back, as if slapped but recovered after a moment of shock,
"So you know…about us" she asked.
No answer
"How long?" she asked. His fists were clenched; he was struggling to keep calm.
"I've known since the beginning of this year…but I suspect it's been going on longer" he said. He tried to hide it, but the pain in his voice was there. Sharp, raw, and enormous.
It was all because of her.
"Aren't you going to say anything to me?" she asked. He allowed himself a bitter little smile,
"What is there to say?" he replied. She felt the shame well up in her, he had never been hurt like this before, never sounded so much in pain, she had caused that in him.
"That I'm a terrible person. A backstabbing treacherous snake. A monster! A whore, a slut, a minx, a conniving two faced cow!" her voice rose as she went on, tears collected at the corners of her eyes. Harry sighed, he unclenched his hands and turned to her,
"I've already had my time to be angry. I'm just…just hurt I guess. I was always worried about someone coming and taking him away from me, I've worried so much these past two years, did you know? It's just so funny that it was someone I never thought would do it that finally did it." His eyes were over-bright with unshed tears.
Her heart ached.
"I'm going now…to tell him goodbye. I won't tell him I know about you, I won't tell him about the baby. So then you'll have no excuse to not go to him. You have to protect it, the baby." Harry turned to go, she called out to him,
"Why?" she asked. He turned around,
"Because you're going to have his baby. Because he obviously loves you more than he loved me, if he ever loved me, that is. If I can't give it my all loving him, then at least I can try to protect that baby inside you that's also a part of him…"
He walked away then. His slender shoulders were shaking and she knew he was crying those tears that he could no longer allow himself to shed before her.
She told Ron.
She told him everything.
He had been shocked, repulsed, angered.
How could she do this to Harry? How could she let it happen? Where had the thoughtful, caring, good friend Hermione gone?
She, too, would like to know.
Harry had convinced Ron to speak to her, to try and keep up the act of friendship so as not to stress her or excite the interest of the nosy student body. They talked, they sat together, they walked to classes, but beneath the bright sheen of their camaraderie was a cold, dull layer of anger and betrayal that turned the space between herself and the other two into miles.
Her body began to ripen.
The child within her grew.
She used a glamour to hide the evidence of her unfaithfulness. To hide the mark of her sin from the eyes of the world.
But no glamour could fool the one who knew her body the best, and it was time that he knew.
She was in her sixth month, growing heavier as the weeks passed by. Her symptoms were thankfully minimal, no teachers or students had noticed. But he had noticed she refused to let him touch her, he had noticed her recent moodiness, he had noticed the chill that lurked between the once familial "Golden Trio"
"It's time to tell him" Harry told her one day.
"Since you've already ruined everything, why not just tell him, it's not as if any of it will affect us or you anymore. He rejects you and you get to feel what Harry's been living with this whole time, he takes you and you two live happily ever after together with your baby" Ron agreed.
She nodded miserably.
They were right. She couldn't avoid his touch much longer, she would tell him.
The darkened entry hall of Hogwarts was a frightening place to be alone at night. The high domed ceiling was an endless black void in the darkness of the night. Moonlight slanted in through the high windows and bathed portions of the marble floor in cold milky white light and threw the rest of the hall in darkness. She sat at the foot of a statue and waited.
She had given him a note telling him to meet her there. Their scheduled meeting time grew near. The icy grip of panic fell upon her and tightened with each passing minute. What would he say? What would they do?
The hostile shadowed hall offered no answers. The blackness of the ceiling seemed as if it would swallow her into its depths.
She pressed her hand against the firm outward curve of her stomach, she felt her baby there, a warmth within her that helped erase her panic.
Because, no matter what, she still had her baby.
The great castle clock struck twelve. On the twelfth ring a figure stepped out of the shadows.
They stared at each other for a moment, one that seemed to stretch on for a lifetime.
He spoke first.
"Granger." He said. His familiar blue-gray eyes met hers, a question in them.
She took a deep breath and stood up.
Even if everything came to an end tonight
Their eyes held each other, a certain understanding passed between them
Even if she never felt those lips on hers ever again
He opened his mouth to speak, she took a step forward and slowly slid her robe off
If those beloved eyes turned away from her in hatred or in anger
The question died on his lips as she stepped into a shaft of moonlight. The glamour she had tried so hard to hold slipped from her body, his eyes grew wider
If their love came to an end that very moment, and everything she had of him was tainted by hatred
"Draco" she said.
She still had her baby.
-FIN
Lily: Aaaaah, I don't know wtf I was thinking when I just kinda…schtuck Harry in there. I think it turned out well though, added drama to the situation.
Well…drama aside from the fact that she's preggers in school. Um, for anyone who is confused, I have for ye a sort of timeline.
5th year(HP/DM hook up)-----6th year (beginning of term HG/DM hook up)---7th year (this fic time period)(September, HG gets preg)(few weeks later, Hermione finds out. Beg. Of the fic)(December, Harry confronts Hermione, she's about 4 months along)(February or March, she tells Draco)
If that makes any sort of sense to anyone but me then congratulations are in order. Anyway I hope someone liked this, it was great fun (and distraction) to write.
Now I should start on TLAV chapter 23…or maybe play around with photoshop some more.