Chapter 4: A doctor's appointment
Three days later, I fall sick. I feel nauseous like never before in my life.
After two days of vomiting every half hour, it gets worse. I can't even hold my pumpkin juice anymore.
That night, I go see the College healer.
I've never done that before.
The College healer has the power to have people sent to St. Mungo's. The place where they got those torture theatres with the monster lamps under the ceiling.
But then this can't be anything worse than an especially vicious gastritis. Probably triggered by Guillaume's disgusting striped drink.
People don't get surgery for having gastritis.
The healer lady will give me a stomach potion and send me home.
She's double the size I expected, got freakishly bushy grey eyebrows, and she has seen a tad too many sick students in her time, judging from the way she doesn't even look up from her parchments when I walk in.
She just gives me a random wave with her wand. Apparently it is a standard request to lose whatever garment is in the way of an examination of the area in question.
I lift my shirt and point at my belly.
"I think I upset my stomach, I had a drink the other night that tasted really weird, and…"
She gets up with quite a bit of puffing. I'm still talking about that drink when she puts her wand to my stomach. She bends to peer through the wand like through a telescope for two seconds, then stands and says, "Congratulations, dear. You are expecting."
Okay.
What?
What was that?
Expecting?
Like in, I'm pregnant?!
"Men don't get pregnant," I say. Because they don't.
Only it seems that they do.
The healer lady gets all worked up at my ignorance, at least to the extent of her capacities. She has laboriously sat down again and scribbles away on a parchment, grumbling to herself.
"Those professors at Hogwarts," she says, making the word professor sound like the worst of expletives. "They teach all kinds of crap, Divination, Astronomy and what not, and what's the result? Kids getting themselves into trouble because they don't know the basic facts of life." She shakes her head, working her eyebrows. "Stuffy hypocrites. Stuffy professors."
Then she seems to be getting aware that I'm about to fall apart like a third hand tournament broom.
She gets up from her chair again, this time surprisingly swiftly, stuffs a Petri dish in my hand and pushes me down on the cot by the wall. And then she starts talking. Really slowly, and pausing after every other word, like she thinks I was mentally challenged and needed the extra time to follow.
I do, actually.
"Right, dear, now listen. Men do get pregnant, at least wizards do. A wizard can get pregnant by another wizard. All it needs is semen being deposited in the anal canal. In the butt. Okay? Male pregnancy is rather rare though, because it only happens when the birth father has chosen the sperm father as his ultimate mate."
His ultimate…
"But he isn't," I stutter. "I haven't... He's no such thing. We aren't anything like… ultimate mates."
"Oh," she mouths, her thick brows wrinkling up. It makes her look like a character from the Magical Muppet Show. "The sperm father isn't committed to you? I'm sorry."
She's kind of nice really, but I'm not in a place where I could appreciate it. I'm kind of preoccupied with words like sperm father, and my life coming crashing down on me.
"But how can I be pregnant from … from …"
"It's reproductive wizard biomagic, dear. Complicated field. The fact is, a pregnancy can occur in a wizard if, and only if, he feels bonded to his sex partner."
"Bonded," I parrot.
"Bonded, like in marriage? Wedlock? Lifelong monogamy? Simply put, the emotion activates hormones in the wizard's body that make it receptive to the partner's sperm. It's not required that the other wizard is on the same page, so to speak, for his sperm to take root in the birth father's body. Your body. I'm really sorry, dear."
My head is spinning, and I can't talk to this lady about what really happened.
I can't talk about polyjuicing into Draco and using his body to jerk off, and putting a finger in my butt. A finger covered in Draco's sperm.
She rummages in her healer's kit that seems to be as spacious inside as Hermione's beaded handbag, and digs up a pile of leaflets.
Fast facts for single parent wizards. Male pregnancy, your baby's magical first year, Ministry support and everything you need to know.
Oh my God.
I'm going to be a single parent wizard.
I must have turned even greener than I was when I first came in here. The healer lady looks at me, brows twitching, then does some more rummaging in her kit.
Handing me a vial with a clear liquid, she tells me to down it.
"I'm afraid you'll suffer from nausea for the whole course of the pregnancy. That would be for another ten to twelve weeks."
What, ten to twelve weeks? She can't be serious. Nobody can be expected to deal with regular vomiting for that amount of time.
She doesn't seem to realize that though. She's all breezy now, all positive.
"See? It's not that bad. You'll be done in less than three months' time, that's a third of what women go through. It's going to put a strain on your body, I won't lie about that, but you'll deal." She grins serenely, then says, "The kid will be delivered with a small operation, nothing worse than an appendix operation. It has proven to do much less damage than natural childbirth with males. Just make sure you come to the hospital as soon as you experience the first contractions. That'll leave the healers a couple of hours to prepare you for the operation. Don't worry, dear. You'll be fine."
I'll be fine?
I almost scoff.
Now I'm going to have an operation, too?
Like having the world as I know it go to shit and holding a leaflet about single parenthood in my hand wasn't enough, I'm expected to walk into St. Mungo's and let them cut me up all over again?
"Don't forget to enrol him at Hogwarts. You can do it before the birth. You'll want to secure him a place."
Him.
It's a son.
"It's a popular school."
I nod. At least that, I know.
I walked in here expecting to leave with a prescription for a stomach potion.
Now I'm going to enrol a kid at Hogwarts.
My son.
Draco Malfoy's son.
Draco.
Merlin, he can never know.
Author's note: This chapter is a little bit on the short side, but I'll post the next one in two or three days...
Thanks for reading! As always, feedback is appreciated!
