"Are you sure this is a good idea, Hermione?" she asked as Mr. Granger loaded the car up with her bags.
Hermione nodded. "Of course it is Emma. You need to do something before you… you know, get too far along and don't have the energy to do much of anything.
Emma was glad her friend had so much faith in her to not completely lose her mind in the later stages of pregnancy, but she was worried about how she would be when everything seemed to be imploding in on her with the baby's imminent arrival.
Of course, the only ones that would be panicking would be herself and her parents and brother because… Neal had no idea. He'd disappeared after their last meeting – the one that had led to the conception of the baby growing inside of her. Not that she regretted that night, but even so… it would be nice if she could know the whereabouts of her child's father.
But, she didn't need him really. She just wanted to know that he was at least still alive. That was all.
"Alright…" Emma said with a small smile, glancing back at her parents. "We'll be back in a few days."
"Have fun Emma," her mother said with a slight smile. "But be careful."
"I will, Mum. Don't worry," Emma replied. "I'll see you in a few days."
"Just be safe…"
Emma kissed her mother's cheek and smiled as she went to the Granger's car, a trailer being pulled behind it for them to sleep in when they got to the forest. Muggle camping at its finest, she supposed.
She'd never been camping before, and the thought made her nervous – and not just because she was pregnant.
"You girls all set?" Mrs. Granger asked.
"Yes Mum, I think so," Hermione replied as they shut the door.
Emma nodded and smiled as they drove off to the campgrounds, the girls chatting all the way, mostly about the baby.
"Have you thought of names?" Hermione asked as they walked through the forest, hours later.
"A little," Emma replied with a slight nod. "If it's a girl, I like Eva, or Ruth… or Diana."
"What if you have a boy?"
Emma shrugged. "I'm having a harder time with boy names. I like David, or Henry… but I'm not that sure… it's just a lot to think of"
"I think all of the names you told me are lovely…" Hermione replied. "If you need help narrowing it down you know where you can find me. I don't start training for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures department at the Ministry for a couple of weeks."
Emma nodded, stepping over an overgrown root. "I know Hermione… but I think my Mum would kill me if she wasn't fully involved."
Hermione laughed a little. "You have a good – "
She stopped talking suddenly as they reached a cliff, and Emma frowned in confusion. It wasn't like Hermione to stop in mid-sentence like this. "Hermione? Is everything okay?" she asked, moving up next to her friend.
"Emma… what is that?" she asked, pointing in the distance.
The blonde squinted, trying to see. "It… looks like a clock tower. Why?" They had been walking for a while – why would it be so weird that they managed to find a small town?
"We need to go back," Hermione said, tugging at her hand and leading her back into the forest.
"Hermione!" she said as her friend tugged her back through the forest to their campsite. "Hermione, what's the rush?!"
"We're back!" Hermione announced to her parents as they arrived back at their campsite, Emma dropping back into a chair next to where the fire pit was going to be.
"Hermione seems frantic," Adam Granger said, staring at his daughter's retreating back as the other woman disappeared into the camper. "Did you girls see something?"
"Nothing bad…" Emma replied. "I don't think, anyway." Hermione's reaction was just so strange.
"Emma! Come here quick!"
Speak of the devil.
Standing up once again as she slowly felt the blood return to her feet properly, Emma made her way inside as the Granger parents began focusing on building the fire.
"What's the emergency Hermione? You've been acting jumpy since we were on our walk…" Emma said softly as she leaned against the small sink.
"That town we found… I think it's Ravenclaw Cove!"
Emma stared at her. "What?! But no one can get into Ravenclaw Cove… how is that possible?" Okay, she lived in a world of magic and things that might have been crazy to the rest of her family, but even this was crazy.
"I know it might seem weird Emma but, I really do think we found it!" her friend replied, shoving a book in her arms.
Leave it to Hermione to bring textbooks on a vacation.
"Look at the map. We're about here…" Hermione pointed at a general spot on the page. "And we walked through this part of the forest, to these cliffs here…"
Emma nodded, following along with what Hermione was saying.
"The clock tower we saw was right here, wasn't it?" she said, pointing at the marker that indicated where Ravenclaw Cove had been the last time it was seen.
Emma nodded slowly. "Hermione… if we did find Ravenclaw Cove… what do we do?" she asked. "Do we alert the Ministry?"
Hermione shook her head. "I don't think we should tell the Ministry yet… let's figure out if it really is Ravenclaw Cove first, and then we'll… go from there. We might need back up from the Ministry, who knows?"
The thought of blindly going into the strange town made Emma uneasy. She was four, almost five months pregnant right now. If they ran into trouble, it wouldn't just be her that was at risk – her baby was at risk too.
"Don't worry about it Emma, if you don't want to go, I'll go by myself."
Emma scoffed and gave her a grin. "Since when do you know me to back down from something?"
Her friend grinned. "So, tomorrow. After breakfast. We go to that town and explore."
The next day, Emma and Hermione woke up early, careful not to disturb her parents. Hermione left a note on the door that led outside, so her parents didn't panic and go running into the woods to try to find them.
Emma took a deep breath, the thought that they'd found Ravenclaw Cove bothering her for some reason. She wasn't sure why, but she thought that there was something… there for her in the town that she'd never been to. It confused, scared, and yet… made her excited at the same time. As she and Hermione made their way closer to the town than they'd been to the night before, Emma glanced at the brunette.
"What are we going to do when we get there and it is Ravenclaw Cove?" she asked.
Hermione chewed her lip, which made Emma even more nervous. Obviously, her friend hadn't thought that far ahead – which was strange to Emma considering Hermione was normally the one who thought very carefully about things.
"I guess we'll see what's going on there and figure it out later…" Hermione said. "I'm sorry Emma, I should have thought about it…"
Emma chuckled. "Don't worry about it. We'll be fine…" She wasn't sure why she felt that everything was going to be okay, but… most of the time, when she had feelings, they were right.
Except for that one time, with Neal. Then, she'd just been a hormone-driven teenager who wanted to know what it was like to be loved on more than a platonic level. That hadn't ended well at all.
In a way, she supposed it did. She would be getting a child – something she'd always wanted… just a little bit earlier than she'd planned. No one was perfect after all.
Emma and Hermione made their way through the boundaries, and the young woman frowned. "I thought the Aurors said there was something blocking them from getting into the boundaries to rescue people."
Hermione nodded grimly. "They did…"
"So… why could we get in?"
