Chapter 25

Several hours later Nicolette was lying on the bed in the hospital wing trying not to cry. Oliver and Ben would be in shortly. Madame Pomfrey was going to perform a test that she already knew the answer to, but no one believed her. This was not how she saw her wedding day going.

"Nicolette," her mother said as she stood from the chair she had been sitting in next to the bed. "Oliver and Ben are here. Are you ready?"

"I don't need the test," she whispered to her mother, looking up at her through red rimmed eyes. "I know without a doubt who the father is." She laid there a moment before she leaned over the bed and threw up in the pot Madame Pomfrey had put by the bed. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth and rolled over looking at the wall behind her bed. Madame Pomfrey had put her in the corner at the back of the hospital wing to try and give her a little more privacy.

"Miss Deloncre," Madame Pomfrey said as she came around a curtain. "Are you ready?"

Nicolette didn't respond, she just laid there staring at the wall.

"Baby girl," her father said as he tried to get her to roll over. "Nikki dear, Madame P-"

"Don't call me that."

"What," her father asked.

"My name is Nicolette."

"Okay, but you need to roll over and lie on your back."

Nicolette rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She could feel the tears rolling down from the corner of her eyes and around the back of her neck. She was so embarrassed and hurt, but she knew that it was all her fault.

"This won't hurt," Madame Pomfrey whispered before she started waving her wand over Nicolette's stomach. Which didn't even have a noticeable bump, but she was only 8 weeks along. "Okay, all done."

Nicolette rolled back over to look at the wall.

"Well," she heard her mother ask Madame Pomfrey.

"It's Mr. Wood's. She was right," Madame Pomfrey said quietly. "I need to go speak with him and Mr. Applebright."

"Nicolette dear," her mother said sometime later. "Your father and I need to leave, will you be okay."

"Oliver hates me, Anne and Becs won't talk to me," she said without any emotion. "I'm a ball of sunshine."

"It will be okay dear," Katherine told her daughter with conviction. "I know that it doesn't seem like it right now, but you'll get through this."

"Mrs. Deloncre?"

"Brandon," Katherine said to the young man. "Luc and I have to leave," she looked back at her daughter who was devastated by what she lost today. "Will you take care of her?"

"Of course," Brandon replied. "I actually came to get her, the feast is about to start."

"I'm not going," Nicolette said.

"Yes you are," Brandon said as he put his hand on her shoulder and forced her to roll on her back. "Sit up and tell your parents goodbye."

Nicolette looked at her friend and rolled her eyes before trying to roll over to face the wall again.

"NO," he said forcefully. "Sit up and tell your parents goodbye."

Nicolette looked at him and saw the determination in his eyes.

"You are not going to pull away from me again," he told her vehemently. "I let you do it once because I didn't know what was going on, but you WILL NOT do it again. Do you understand me? You are more important to me than anyone else is here and you know that. You aren't getting rid of me. I don't care if Flint is the father. You are stuck with me."

Nicolette couldn't hold it in anymore; she sat up and threw her arms around Brandon crying. Brandon wouldn't leave her because of this. He was her brother, maybe not by blood, but since they started Hogwarts 6 years ago, he was the one person she knew she could go to about anything. She told him things that she didn't even tell Anne and Rebecca, and he in turn told her all of his secrets too. How his father beat him and his mother. How his mother would just watch as his father would hit him with a strap of leather that had a small piece of metal attached to the end.

"Come on," he whispered in her ear as he pushed her away so he could look in her eyes. "Your parents need to go, but you need to tell them bye first."

Nicolette nodded and looked at her mother who was trying not to cry.

"I'm sorry," Nicolette whispered as she stood from the bed and went to her mum. "I know I disappointed you."

"It's not alright but I love you anyways," Katherine said as she took her daughter in her arms. "I don't know what has happened over the last couple of months, but you use to tell me things. I wish you would trust me and talk to me again."

Nicolette nodded into her mother's shoulder, before pulling back and looking at her father. She didn't say anything to him as she walked to him and put her arms around him. He pulled her closer to him, trying to protect his baby girl.

"Can I come home for Christmas break still," she asked him quietly.

"Of course you can," he told her. "We will always love you." He kissed her on the top of the head before taking Katherine's hand and walking to the opening in the curtain. "We'll see you in a couple of weeks, and baby girl… keep your chin up."

Nicolette nodded in acknowledgment of her father's comment.

"Come on," Brandon said as he took her hand and started pulling her with him out of the curtained area. "We're going to the feast."

"I don't want to," she told him as she followed into the open wing. She saw Oliver standing by the doors talking with both his parents and hers. Her mother waved at her as the four adults left. Oliver turned around and saw her and Brandon before leaving. "Please Brandon," she whispered as Brandon pulled her into his arms giving her a hug. "Don't make me go."

"You have to Nic," he whispered back. "Oliver and Anne will get over this. But you can't hide away."

"Why not, in one day I lost my best friend and the man I love and the father of my child. I just want to be alone."

"Later," he told her rubbing her back. "Remember you still need to eat. That baby needs you to eat."

"That's not fair," she said trying to hold in the sobs as tears leaked down her face. "Using my unborn child to make me do something I don't want to do."

"Sorry," he said as he let her go and took her hand, pulling her out of the hospital wing and down the stairs to the great hall. "Come on," he said as the entered the hall and made their way to the Gryffindor table. "We'll sit down here by ourselves."

"What about Lacey," Nicolette asked trying not to look down the table to find Oliver.

"She knows you come first," he told her while piling food on a plate for her. "Family always comes first."

"Thanks Brandon," she whispered picking up a fork. "Why couldn't I have fallen for you? You would have believed me, wouldn't you?"

"Honestly," he said as he started filling his plate. "I think that the shock of finding out that way would make me unsure of everything. But I won't leave you either way."

Nicolette kept her head down focused on her food, ignoring the laughter and chatter in the hall around her.

"Nic," Brandon said after a few minutes. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Nicolette looked up at him before nodding and looking back down at her plate while she pushed her food around.

"I was sad and was walking around Dublin by myself. Dad was on a business trip and I tagged along since I didn't have anything else to do before school started back. I ran into Ben, who was there visiting his aunt or grandmother or someone. I didn't mean for it to happen, I don't think that you could really call it sex, he um…" she looked up at Brandon blushing.

"Jumped the gun?"

She smirked at his muggle reference and nodded.

"Yeah, I didn't enjoy it. I don't even like him. I was just sad."

"Why were you sad?"

"Because I spent six years of life in love with someone who I thought would never love me, and Ben comes around and tells me that he loves me and… It doesn't matter now does it? I had him and lost him, so I'm kind of in the same place only now I am going to have his baby. Even though he wishes I was dead," she was trying valiantly to keep the tears that had pooled in the corner of her eyes from falling.

"I don't wish you were dead."

"Oliver," she said turning around.

"I wish you weren't carrying my child, but I don't wish you were dead," he told her before walking off and out of the hall. Anne, Rebecca, and Stewart followed him out of the hall.

Nicolette's head dropped down on the table in front of her and she tried to stifle her sobs. She felt Brandon sit down next to her and pull her into his arms. She cried into his shoulder for what seemed like hours.

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