Chapter Ten: St. Mungo's Hospital

"Think about it," Harry said. "We don't know what's happened to Audrey, but we're pretty sure she's taken this potion. I was talking to Percy at work the other day and he was telling me about the baby. All the tests and check-ups they've been to have said she's perfectly okay and so's the baby – and then she just collapses out of the blue. Fleur's been really, really sick and tired and just generally ill with her pregnancy – but the last two times she's been pregnant, nothing like this has happened. And you miscarried, too, Hermione! We don't know if the potion is behind all this, but it seems pretty likely that it is. And we don't know what impact it has on pregnant women, or their unborn children."

"So what do you suggest we do?" asked Ron. "Tell them this at the hospital? We don't have any proof at the moment, and we don't want to stress Audrey or Percy more than they already are—it sound like that could be quite dangerous to Audrey's health."

"No, here's what we're going to do," Harry said. "Do either of you know where Fleur or Angelina are?"

"It's Friday: that's one of the days Angelina works, so she'll be in Falmouth," Hermione said. "I'm pretty sure Fleur's at Shell Cottage."

"Right," said Harry. "Hermione, go to the Falcons' training ground and tell Angelina she's got to go to The Burrow now. Find Fleur, tell her the same thing, then go to the Daily Prophet offices and find Ginny – make her go to The Burrow, too. It sounds like she already knows a bit about what's going on; fill her in on the rest, and get her to explain it to the others once she's there. I know your Mum will want to go to St. Mungo's to see Percy," he added, with a glance at Ron, "but I think there's something very dodgy going on with this potion. She's been pregnant herself six times; if there's anyone who can tell if something's just normal hormonal related stuff or if it's something more serious, it's her."

"That's a good point," Ron said. "If they all stay there, should one of them get ill, there's plenty of people to help out until a proper Healer could get there. But do you think something's likely to happen to them?"

"I don't know," replied Harry. "But until we do know what's gone on, I want them all under your mother's supervision. When you've done that, Hermione, find Audrey's parents and bring them to the hospital. I know they're Muggles, but they will be able to get in if you take them through the Visitors' Entrance."

"Okay," Hermione nodded. "What about Lavender, though? Should I let her know what's happened?"

"She's at St. Mungo's, you say?" asked Harry.

"Yes, she was hoping to speak to Padma Patil—she's a midwife, so she's likely to know about the potion and its effects, and she used to be in the DA, so we can trust her," replied Hermione.

"Right, Ron: find Bill and George, explain the situation to them and see if they can clock off work early," Harry said. "Percy'll need some support. When you've done that, get to Lavender. Any extra information she's got about this potion, get her to send it over to the Auror Office right away. You take a copy of it over to the Healers treating Audrey – if there's even any slight indication that what's happened to her isn't completely natural and they suspect something's up, give them the info."

"But what if they don't listen to me?" Ron said. "It's not like I know anything about Healing. I'm a just an Auror, for Merlin's sake!"

"Exactly, you're an Auror," Harry said. "Tell them that Audrey's the subject of an investigation by the Auror Department if you have to; say you're the lead investigator and they need to take the information into account – whatever you have to do, do it."

"Okay," nodded Ron. "What're you going to do?"

"I'm going to go straight to Robards and tell him we need to be focussing on this," Harry said. "It might be nothing—but it might be a potential breach of security at the Ministry with disastrous health consequences. And whilst that's a possibility, I won't rest until I know Ginny's going to be okay. If I have to, I'll bring out the whole Chosen One card, tell him he needs to make this a triple-A...it's one time where I wouldn't mind doing it, actually."

"If this turns out to all just be a massive coincidence, and you've persuaded him to put out an All-Auror Alert, you're going to look pretty stupid," Ron said.

"Then we'd better hope I end up looking like a fool," said Harry grimly.

"So what you're saying is, we're only pregnant because of this weird fertility potion thing?" Angelina asked, frowning at Ginny across the kitchen table at The Burrow. They were anxiously crowded round it, together with Fleur and Mrs. Weasley, whilst the five girls played in the yard. All of them tried to pretend that they weren't looking at the Weasley clock every few seconds—which had been magically expanded over the years as the family grew—where Audrey's hand pointed to the words 'Mortal Peril', and the other Weasleys' at 'Hospital'.

"Yes and no," Ginny answered. "From what I understand, the potion basically forces you to conceive, but you have to actually, you know, be having sex for conception to happen. You wouldn't get pregnant if you weren't having sex with a person capable of producing viable sperm."

"You know, that does make sense," Angelina said slowly. "George and I had been trying for a while now—you know, getting pregnant with Roxanne was a bit of a shock, really. We hadn't planned it at all, but having her helped both of us to heal so much. I know, it sounds ridiculously cheesy – I want to tell myself to shut up just saying it! – but it's true. So we'd been trying for a second baby for quite a few months now—we didn't want her to be an only child, after all. But, nothing. Until this month..."

"I mean, it could just be a coincidence," said Ginny doubtfully. "But Hermione's previous hunches have had a habit of being true. And Harry's very worried."

"So we are in danger, zhen?" Fleur asked weakly.

Privately, Ginny thought that Fleur was probably in the most danger of them all—she looked, to put it bluntly, awful. Of course, being part-Veela meant that she hadn't lost her looks, but there was no doubt that she looked ill. Angelina, in contrast, was practically glowing, and Ginny herself felt very well. Apart from some minor morning sickness, which had now stopped, and a few odd cravings, she was sailing through her pregnancy, though she thought it best if she didn't mention this to Fleur.

"Well, now the hospital know what's going on, we're probably better off than we have been up until now," Ginny said encouragingly, and Angelina nodded.

"I think it could be that what's happening with Audrey is just a coincidence," she said. "I mean, it's awful, of course, but it isn't necessarily related to this potion."

"I think it isn't," Mrs Weasley said, speaking up for the first time. All three women turned to look at her, and she continued. "When the potion was first invented, a friend of my mother's used it. It was prescribed to her by someone at St. Mungo's; she'd been desperate for a child for ages and this was her last chance. It worked, and she had her baby, who was perfectly healthy. The potion itself was designed for that use—it'd be no use Healers doling out a potion that actually makes you and your baby worse now, would it?"

Her mother had raised a good point, Ginny thought. "I think you're right," she said. "Hermione said that it's something Healers use in cases like that—sort of a last ditch option for people who have no other choice. They're not going to use it to raise your hopes then dash them again by forcing you to miscarry, are they?"

"That's all very true," allowed Angelina, "but we don't know for sure that this is the potion that's been forced on us. It could be a potion that forces women to miscarry or whatever..."

All of the women pondered this, but before anyone could respond, the Floo kicked into life and Hermione stepped out of it. "No news," she said immediately, and Molly, who had half-risen in her chair, sank back down. "Audrey's still in emergency surgery; Bill, George and Mr. Weasley are there with Percy and so are Audrey's parents, but there's not been any news yet."

Ginny was pressing her lips together so hard that they had pretty much disappeared, and Angelina let out a long, unsteady breath on hearing this. "Is zhere anything we can do to 'elp?" asked Fleur.

Hermione shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I've been sent to bring you all into the hospital." There was an immediate anxious chorus of questioning, and Hermione held up her hands. "It's not just you, it's everyone we think has been affected by this potion. The Auror Office has been sent out to bring everyone in—you guys, Susan, Hannah, Pavarti...the whole old DA lot. I volunteered to come and collect you, as they want you there as soon as possible to run some blood tests. They don't know what's going on, but if the Healers think that everything's as it should be in terms of where you are in your pregnancies, you should be allowed to go home."

Her unspoken 'and if it isn't...' seemed to hang in the air.

"I'm coming with you all," Molly said decidedly. Ginny looked relieved, but Angelina and Fleur seemed anxious.

"What about the girls?" the former asked, gesturing to the backyard where Victoire, Molly, Roxanne, Dominique and Lucy were playing together.

"We'll take them to Andromeda Tonks's," her mother-in-law replied. "She won't mind watching them for a few hours. And if...things...look like they'll take longer, I'll come back."

The tension in the room was palpable. Hermione and the woman from the Auror Office—Lavender, she thought—had just finished explaining the situation, and the women there had responded with anxiety—not so much for themselves, but for the children they were carrying. Most of the women there looked to be about three or four months pregnant; with some, it was possible to see a slight bump forming, but others kept it hidden.

Fleur sighed and looked down at her own stomach. Her baby bump was particularly pronounced because she had lost so much weight during her pregnancy: though she was not normally, by any stretch of the imagination, a large person, she had lost enough weight that her protruding stomach looked huge in comparison to the rest of her. She looked—for the first time in her life—awful.

She wasn't bothered by this so much as she was bothered by what it represented: when she had been pregnant with Victoire and with Dominique, she had felt wonderful, and she had looked it, too. Of course, being part-Veela meant that she always looked wonderful, but in the past when she had been pregnant, she had glowed. It may have been a cliché, but it was true—even Bill, who was practically immune to her charms, had been knocked back on occasion by how marvellous she appeared. And despite a little bit of morning sickness when she had been pregnant with Victoire for a couple of weeks; and some very bizarre food cravings when she was pregnant with Dominique (Bill still spoke in awed tones of the time she had devoured a chicken, anchovy and chocolate frog sandwich), she had hardly had any symptoms of pregnancy at all.

This time, of course, things had been different: sickness morning, noon and night; horrible dizziness giving way to actual fainting; debilitating tiredness to the point where, some mornings, she could not bring herself to get out of bed; and, perhaps worst of all, being so generally exhausted and ill she was no longer able to look after her daughters. The Healers at St. Mungo's who came daily to check on her were worried, she knew: even with their many years of experience, they had rarely seen someone react so badly to a pregnancy before now.

Until now, she had been seriously contemplating termination: both she and Bill were worried about the effects her illness was having on her two daughters, and she herself felt so bad that she wondered if her body was trying to tell her something—maybe there was something wrong with the baby, and it was trying to force a miscarriage? She certainly was yet to feel the overwhelming sense of joy she had felt when she was pregnant the previous two times. Sure, there had been anxieties—especially the first time, with Victoire—but those sorts of worries were normal, and most first-or-second-time mothers. It was beginning to seem like a termination might be the best outcome for Fleur, before the thing inside her made her even more ill, or worse, left her two daughters motherless.

And yet, sat on the uncomfortable plastic chair in St Mungo's Hospital, surrounded by many other women of around her age who were all murmuring worriedly, stroking their own burgeoning bumps with varying degrees of anxiety, Fleur found herself overwhelmed with love for the baby inside her, even if it was making her feel, on many occasions, close to death. Yes, she was ill, but this wasn't the child's fault! She had been angry at getting pregnant—she had wanted to return to work, and a third child had been something she and Bill had come to a sort of unspoken agreement wouldn't be happening for a good few years, if at all—but this was not the baby's fault. It was not even her fault!

As she had listened to what Ginny had said about this potion that somehow caused a woman to be pregnant; listened to the same talk from Hermione, this time to a room full of women in the same position as her, Fleur had found herself feeling oddly (or, then again, perhaps not) as if she wanted to protect this child. Its beginning had been...tumultuous, perhaps, but it was still a baby—her baby.

And Audrey! Poor Audrey! She was very ill, it seemed; her hand on the Weasley clock had been pointing towards 'Mortal Peril'. She might die; her baby might die. And all because of this potion—who knew what affect it might have on her own baby?

Her heart began to beat faster. Hermione and another woman had already miscarried; Audrey was seriously ill and in danger of losing both her life and her baby's, and she could be next...

"Hello, Fleur." She was glad of the distraction which arrived in the form of someone sitting down next to her, before that particular thought could be completed. A second glance told her it was Hestia Jones, Hermione's boss, whom she knew from the Order days of old. She managed a weak smile.

"Hestia," she replied. "'Ow are you?"

"Not so bad," said the older woman. "Yourself? I take it you have been affected by all this, too?"

"I 'ave," said Fleur, trying to look at Hestia's naval without being too obvious about it. "Are you also...?"

"No, not me," Hestia said, shaking her head. "I have not been with anyone since my husband passed away." Peter Jones, Fleur knew, had been one of those killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, and she made a sympathetic noise in response to this. "No, it's my daughter, Megan. She was in the same school year as a lot of these ladies."

"She is 'ere?" enquired Fleur.

Hestia nodded. "Yes, over there talking to Hannah," she said. Fleur looked in the direction in which she was pointing and quickly identified Megan, despite having never met her before. Even if she hadn't known who Hannah was, it would have been easy to identify the young woman who looked almost exactly the same as Hestia, but for her hair—where Hestia's was dark and flecked with grey, her daughter's was auburn, a few shades darker than the Weasleys'. She was speaking reassuringly to Hannah, seeming calmer than most other women in the room and somehow different to them, too.

It took Fleur a moment to work out what the difference was, but then she saw—Megan was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were pressed flat against her stomach. "Er," said Fleur, trying to find a polite way of asking the question, "she is not...with child?"

"No," said Hestia, a glimpse of sadness appearing in her eyes. "She lost the baby a few weeks ago."

Fleur felt her eyes fill with tears. "I am so sorry," she managed to say.

Hestia gave a gentle smile. "She will be better; there will be other children, later." She patted Fleur's arm. "Now, please excuse me. I must talk to Hermione."

She got up, leaving Fleur alone in her little corner, trying not to cry. The logical part of her brain knew that it was only her pregnancy hormones that were making her well up at the news of the miscarriage of a woman she didn't know at all.

But the logical part of her brain was also thinking about what had happened to Hermione, and what was happening to Audrey. And what might happen to her, next...

"George!"

Angelina's cry brought him over to where the three Weasley women were clustered. A Healer from St. Mungo's had just arrived to tell all the women in the room that they needed to stay in the hospital overnight—just as a precaution before their test results came back—and most of the room's current residents were making plans to go home and collect an overnight bag. The extended Weasley clan, however, had refused to leave until they had had word on Audrey's prognosis.

"Audrey will survive," George said simply, once he was within earshot. "She lost the baby, and she's probably not going to be able to have any more children—Percy'll explain when they know more—but she is alive."

The next few minutes were spent in relief and sadness for Audrey, before the arrival of Harry and Bill sent Ginny and Fleur off towards their husbands, leaving George and Angelina with a precious few moments of alone time.

"I have to stay," Angelina said. "They're running—"

"Tests to see if the baby's been affected by something it shouldn't have," George nodded. "I know. Harry told me."

"Good," said Angelina shortly. "So you need to go home and get my overnight bag—I cannot apparate at the moment. But I had the exact same difficulty when I was pregnant with Roxanne, you know? It's probably just hormones again, nothing to worry about." Her voice was high and tight.

"I know," George said reassuringly. "You know—"

"So anyway, once you've done that, you'll need to go pick Roxanne up. She's at—"

"Andromeda Tonks's, with the others. I know, Mum told me," George cut in. "You know, everything will be okay. We'll get through this."

Angelina acted as though she hadn't heard him. "There's some things for dinner at home," she continued. "I was going to make a Shepherd's Pie, so you might want to do that once you've brought my stuff across. And make sure Roxanne eats all her vegetables—you're too lenient with her sometimes, and you know she tries to get away with hiding them under the tablecloth. There's a bag of toiletries on the dresser in our room; can you make sure that gets thrown into my bag with a change of clothes, please? Oh, and you'll need to send an owl down to Cornwall to tell work that—"

"Ange," he said, taking both of her hands in his. And somehow, this worked to slow down her heart rate; to make her feel like this wasn't the end of the world. "This will be okay. Fred will be okay. You will be okay."

But though she loved him more than words could possibly say, and though she reciprocated his hug when he drew her in close, she could not believe that. Not after everything that had happened, and might happen to her baby...

Hello lovelies! I know it's not Wednesday, but I got back from my holiday today (which was lovely, thank you for all your nice wishes!) and I thought I'd update this now, rather than making you wait another week. Plus, this way you only have to wait 6 days, rather than 7, until the next update. I spoil you, obvs. Also, I know I said that this chapter you'd get to see who's behind the potion...well, I lied. But next chapter, you honestly and truly do. Or at least, you get to see a suspect...any guesses as to who? Leave a review and let me know!

Many magnificent thank-yous to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I don't have time to write in all your names right now, but know that I read and savoured every single one of your reviews.