Disclaimer: Still not mine. The more is the pity…

February 1990…

Chapter 2

Molly missed her children, she really missed them, but she had to admit that five of them being at Hogwarts provided her with something that she had almost forgotten existed – a little free time. And since their financial status was slightly better than usual, she decided that after having finished her shopping earlier than expected, she could afford to have a coffee at one of these little cozy places at Diagon Alley that were just as popular in the winter as Florian Fortescue's was in the summer.

What she hadn't expected was the woman she saw in one corner. "Emma!" she exclaimed and hurriedly went to her former classmate, momentarily forgetting that she no more wanted to socialize with women like her.

Emma Saint Claire, nee Potter, looked up from the newspaper she had been reading and her face was lit by an immediate smile. "Hi, Molly," she said. "You want to have a coffee?"

"Gladly."

While Molly was sitting down, she caught sight of Emma's extended stomach and suddenly remembered why she had stopped liking and respecting her one time best friend. But it was too late to step back now. Besides, the idea of a baby could always melt her down.

Emma recognized Molly's look and took it for what it meant. "Yes," she said, smiling with irony that was soon revealed as being addressed not at Molly, but Emma herself, "here I am, thirty five-year-old and finally with a second child on its way." But she did not say it angrily. Probably, she was used to worse. Not that she did not deserve such an attitude, of course.

"What are you having?" Molly asked and Emma made a face.

"I'll tell you if you don't laugh at me."

"I won't."

"I'll kill you if you laugh."

"I won't, I promise."

"Chocolate with whipped cream," Emma informed her and true to her word, Molly did not laugh. Instead, she opted for the same drink out of loyalty. Besides, she liked chocolate with whipped cream. Emma was the only person she knew who hated chocolate, but strange things were known to happen to pregnant women.

"What are you doing here?" Molly asked. "I didn't know you were back in England."

"I am not. Philip had to come on business here and I decided to accompany him. I almost wish I hadn't," she added under her breath.

Molly did not comment. It was a well known and discussed fact that Emma's parents had been less than thrilled when she had left her husband for her lover years ago. Molly could not approve such a thing either and she had been shocked to hear about her friend's affair, but as much as she condemned it, she could not help but be a little curious. David West was a strong and handsome man, while Philippe was so ill. Where was the attraction? Why had Emma chosen the Frenchman? Yet, ten years later and already married to him, she looked happy and content. Molly could not understand how her friend's mind worked any more, but it was obvious that Emma was not sorry. At all. For a moment, Molly asked herself what would have happened if all those years ago she had followed her suspicions and had reported Philippe to be a Death Eater. She could only be grateful that her good sense had prevailed, since the man hadn't been one. Only now could she realize how mistrustful the war had made all of them. If it had lasted longer, they would have surely lost themselves in the grip of paranoia.

For a moment the two women were silent, watching the passers-by who hurried in the snowy street. When Molly's chocolate arrived, Emma started asking her questions about her family and their former classmates. Suddenly, Molly felt a little sad. Emma had obviously been snubbed by her friends, judged by everyone. No matter how awful her deed had been, it was still awful to be rejected by the people you'd grown up with. Emma even did not look like a lusty adulteress – she looked just like an ordinary pregnant woman.

"Are you happy?" Molly asked.

"Yes," Emma answered without hesitation. "Yes, I am."

Molly hesitated before asking the next question. "And how are things with Raymond?"

She felt awkward asking this, but at the time, everyone at Hogwarts had known that Emma and Raymond were an item. Their friends, Molly included, knew how hard it had been for the two of them when Emma's parents had pressured her to break it off with him.

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Oh not this again!" She sounded bored. "For Merlin's sake, Molly, it was just a school crush! If my parents hadn't stamped their foot so suddenly, it would have probably faded on its own. But since they did it, we accepted it as a great tragedy. Raymond was happy in his marriage; I was not in mine, so I obsessed over him and what could have been. Now we're both happy with other people who just happen to be siblings. Are we supposed to avoid each other forever because of a crush gone awry twenty years ago?"

She sounded so reasonable that Molly felt stupid for ever thinking otherwise. But well, the gossiping magazines had had their field day with the whole story and people had read it hungrily because it was a distraction from the reality of the raging war. Could they be blamed for making their minds from what they had read?

Suddenly, she stood up. "I'll Firecall Helen," she said. "She'll be thrilled to join us." Helen was another classmate and friend of theirs who lived in the same village as Molly.

Emma shook her head. "There is no need – "

"Enough of this nonsense," Molly said firmly, suddenly wanting to atone for cutting Emma off all those years ago. What had gotten into her? Why had she accepted that her friend had suddenly turned into an awful person? Yes, what she had done was wrong, but was it so unforgivable? And really, was it for Molly to forgive? She hadn't been the one abandoned, that had been David. Why shouldn't the three of them – Molly, Emma and Helen – spend a nice afternoon together?

Oh but – "Err, maybe we'd better make an appointment for another day," she said.

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Maybe we shouldn't make one at all," she suggested dryly.

"No!" Molly exclaimed, terrified that she'd been misunderstood. Emma thought that Helen would not want to see her. "I mean only that – Helen has a small child and she is probably not free right now – "

"Tell her bring the child along," Emma suggested, "I'd love to see both of them. Is it a boy or a girl?"

Molly asked the waitress to let her make a Firecall and came back with the news that Helen had agreed gladly. For a few minutes, the two of them fell silent, thinking about the past. Some women on the table next to them were holding a joyous conversation, but Emma barely heard them – she was consumed by memories of the time when she and Helen had gone to one Healer after another, trying to find a treatment that would let them bear a child. Emma was always told that she had no fertility problem; Helen was told that no matter what she did, she would never be able to give birth. Having finally become a mother, Emma could only be glad for Helen who had found a way to have a child, although it was not the same as Emma's.

Helen and her daughter arrived in a few minutes. Emma immediately noticed the lack of any physical resemblance between the two of them – Helen was a dark-haired witch with round face, while Bliss was silvery-blond and blue-eyed. Her face was finely chiseled, her complexion very fair and she looked like a kitten that everyone would like to pet. "Are you Mummy's friend?" she asked.

"Yes, I am," Emma nodded.

"Then why haven't I seen you before?"

Emma did not answer. Instead, she smiled at her and asked, "How old are you?"

Helen gave her a sharp glance, but Emma pretended not to notice. Helen knew that Emma knew, of course. Maybe Molly also knew. The child was so different from her parents that only a blind man would not notice. Helen was afraid that Emma might drop a hint, that she might say something that would upset Bliss. Emma smiled at her soothingly, while the girl answered, "My birthday is on April 14. I'll be eight-year-old."

"That's very nice," Emma said and stroked her hair. Bliss yelped.

"I'm sorry," Emma apologized, releasing the silvery lock that had entangled between her fingers. Her mind was reeling, frantically calculating the dates and cringing back terrified at the complications that would inevitably arise.

Five days later…

"Mum, why are these people watching us?"

Molly sighed, irritated. "No one is watching, Ginny, say what you want and let's go."

"But, Mum, they are – "

"Shut up and go!" Molly snapped. She was already sorry that she had agreed to take Ginny and Bliss with her while shopping. They had insisted on going everywhere! She was tired and she wanted to go home, so she didn't notice Emma and the elderly man who was watching Bliss very intently. Emma gave him a questioning look. He slowly nodded.

March 1990…

Helen was weeping.

Molly could make little sense of her friend's muffled sobs, but what she understood was enough to make her hair stand on end. Helen was telling of being suddenly summoned to the Wizengamot, of being accused of falsifying Bliss' birth certificate, of being told that several studies had been done – one in Britain, another in France, and a third one in the United States – that conclusively showed that Bliss' genes matched those of Dominic Montresorre, a former dueling champion, and his Veela wife, that they claimed that she was their grandchild, a daughter of their own daughter, and that they insisted on taking her with them.

"They say that she isn't human," Helen wept. "They say that we have abducted her!"

Molly handed her a tissue, then made her a cup of tea. Helen started drinking, but choked with her sobs and had to stop.

"Is that why gold hurts her?" a girl's voice asked from the door. "Is that why it burns her skin? Because she is a Veela?"

Helen wept harder. Molly impatiently waved Ginny off and silently mouthed, 'Out', which Ginny did, although quite grudgingly.

"But how is it possible?" Molly asked when her friend had calmed down a little. "Why did they do it all of a sudden?"

Helen laughed bitterly. "Emma betrayed me," she said.

"What?!"

"She did," Helen insisted. "She knew that I couldn't have children of my own. It seems that she's related to this family. They are her husband's cousins or something, so when she saw Bliss, she noticed a resemblance between her and Christine Lasall, the woman they allege is Bliss' mother. Do you remember how Bliss yelped when Emma tore at her hair? It wasn't an accident, she intentionally plucked a few hairs that she presented for the tests."

Molly could not believe that Emma would do such a thing. She had fought infertility for so long – would she do such a thing to a friend?

"But what exactly do they claim?" Molly asked and waved Arthur off the kitchen when he tried to enter after coming back from work. "How do they say Bliss ended up with you and Paul?"

Helen sipped cautiously at her tea and when she saw that she wouldn't choke again, started sipping nervously. "They say that her real parents were abducted by the Death Eaters. That her mother gave birth in captivity. That the baby was taken from her and her husband was killed the very same day." She laughed hysterically. "Molly, this is supposed to have happened in April 1982. By then, You-Know-Who had long ago been defeated! There weren't any Death Eaters roaming free!"

"Yes," Molly agreed. It was ridiculous. Helen and Paul being involved in the kidnapping of a newborn? Please! "What are you going to do?"

Helen looked at her. "What can we do? They want us to make tests to prove that we are Bliss' natural parents. We either make the tests and it comes out that we and her don't match, or refuse, which this shitty judges will accept as an admission of guilt. Either way, she goes with those people she had never seen in her life. She will be handed over to the parents of a mother who doesn't care enough to come here and claim her personally. The woman who left her in the street!"

Molly hugged her and tried to soothe her – and banish the sudden thought that sprung to her mind uninvited. The man who had found the abandoned infant had been Helen's brother – a man who had once been accused of having been a Death Eater. He had been able to prove that he had acted under the Imperius Curse – or had he really proved it? Suddenly, Molly wasn't so sure. But that didn't matter anyway. The Montresorres' story was clearly transparent. And if this Christine was really Bliss' mother, looking desperately for her abducted baby, she would have come here to fight the kidnappers in person. That was enough proof for Molly to know that they were lying.