"I think I've found a solution for the baby thing," Alice announces. It's their Saturday; they've finished in bed - for now - and are raking out the fanged geraniums.
Pomona glances across the table. Alice has taken to dropping 'the baby thing' into the conversation like a small grenade, as if seeing what it will do. Pomona will not fuss; she will not push. So she waits, until Alice continues: "You remember Frank Longbottom?"
Pomona frowns and then she has him: Alice's year, large, gentle, unassuming. Now she comes to think of it, Alice has mentioned him before, hasn't she? Is he perhaps on her course?
"Yes," she answers. "A nice boy, if I remember rightly."
Alice edges around the table to grasp Pomona's hand. "How would you feel if I had a baby with Frank?"
The world is falling away, all around her. "If that's what you want," she says.
Alice squeezes her hand, hard. "Pomona," she says, "oh, my dear."
"I understand." She forces a smile. "I wanted a child once, you know. I never had the opportunity, but I won't stand in your way."
Alice is shaking her head. "I didn't mean it like that. God, Pomona, if I was going to break up with you and fall in love with a man, I wouldn't spring it on you like this."
Pomona turns and aims her wand at a weed beneath the nearest geranium, which snaps at her with infant fangs. "Then what exactly do you mean?"
"I want a child," Alice says, her gaze flickering away and back. "Maybe more than one. But I don't want to change anything with you, either."
This isn't quite true. As the seasons have turned, she has dropped hints about moving into Pomona's cottage in Hogsmeade. Plenty of women share accommodation and nobody thinks anything of it. But there's the baby thing.
"Frank isn't...isn't interested in women." Considering what she was doing to Pomona not half an hour ago, it's amazing that Alice blushes, but she does. "He likes - well, you know. But his mother's a bit of a Tartar, and she's starting to get onto Frank about carrying on his lineage. A well-respected family, and all that."
"So..." Pomona prompts.
"So...Frank and I get married. Give Mrs Longbottom an heir to dote on. And we carry on as we are. Frank carries on as he is."
"But you'll have a child."
"Yes." Alice makes no attempt to veil the joyous light in her eyes. "I know it won't be quite as simple as that. I know what children do to people - I've seen enough of my friends, the way they become consumed by the whole thing." She squeezes Pomona's hand again. "But please, Pomona, this seems like the perfect chance for everyone to get what they want. We can Apparate between our homes, and it'll almost be easier than it is now, because there'll be Frank and the baby."
Only Alice could think of a baby as being 'easy'. But Pomona will not be the one to destroy her dreams.
