"This can't be happening!" Hermione cried. Tears ran down her face fast as she looked at the Healer in disbelief. "You've got magic, and yet he can't be saved? There has to be a way to help him somehow breathe on his own, to stop organ failure!" she begged the Healer, the world. Exasperated, she grabbed her own bushy hair tightly. How would she ever be all right again, when hers and Minerva's son was, no matter how hard he fought, not going to live? How would she ever be able to deal with it?
Minerva's let her tears run freely as well as she held her wife against her tightly. She held her to stop her from going down to her knees or doing something that she might regret, but most of all she held her because she needed to. She needed to hold onto her to stop herself from sinking down to her knees, too. Christian wouldn't make it.
It had only been two days now since she had brought Hermione in with hellish contractions, much too early. It had only been two days now since she and Hermione had first seen him and had been able to touch his tiny fingers, tinier toes. Minerva didn't see it as 'meeting him', though. How could she not have met him yet when he had, so often, kicked back at her when she had spoken to Hermione's swollen belly? Little Christian had reacted to her every touch or word from when Hermione had been six months along. Maybe their son had been as excited to meet his parents as they had to meet him?
One could always argue that a two-day-old baby wasn't as much of a loss as an adult with his own, obvious personality. The Headmistress, however, would gladly curse into oblivion any person who dared to speak that way, who had obviously never been through it and spoke without knowledge. She couldn't believe that any person who had been in their shoes could say insensitive things like that at all.
Indeed, Christian might have only been born two days ago, and he hadn't had a chance to really live yet, to become someone... but that made it harder, Minerva thought. Hermione and she would never even see their baby boy grow up to become a man, and there was nothing or no one who could possibly stop it from happening.
When the Healer stepped from the room to give them time to themselves, the brunette turned in her wife's arms and began to just sob uncontrollably. Minerva just held her. It was hard being the 'stronger one', but that's how it happened. Today, that was her. Yesterday, it had been Hermione when she had brought her a small sandwich and she had wordlessly sat in her lap and held her when Minerva had only been able to stare at him in his incubator, wordlessly herself.
Minerva and Hermione had been so eager for his arrival for months now, had been so very happy when Hermione took the positive test and a Healer confirmed that, after a year of no luck conceiving, there was a tiny baby developing inside Hermione's womb. All that they could say, the other knew and felt as well.
Minerva's eyes travelled to the incubator and the tiny baby in it, and she at last dared to look at their son again. Oh, Christian, she thought.
The Healer hadn't been able to say why Hermione had gone into early labor. Hermione had been a careful expecting mother, and Minerva had been a doting wife in every which way she could have been. It had just happened. As a consequence of his early birth, Christian hadn't breathed initially, and it had lead to heart failure mere hours after he had at last begun to breathe as well... and that was resulting in his organs beginning to fail now, one by one. He couldn't be saved. If anything, it was best to let him go now, instead of forcing him to go on and fight a fight that he couldn't win anyway, that would only lead to a lot of pain as he moved on to his next adventure.
Minerva and Hermione didn't see options. There was no way that all four NICU Healers at Saint Mungo's were mistaken. If they had to let go of him either way, it was best he didn't suffer. How could the best option still hurt so much, though? Shouldn't it be so that the selfless option hurt less, as a strange kind of... 'emotional compensation', for being strong and making that hard, unbearable decision? The heartache she felt didn't convince her that it was the best option, and Minerva McGonagall suddenly understood that people could go insane from grief.
Author's Note: For Christian. For Tiger.