'Kay, so this is a shawty-shawty chapter. But the next bajillion will be superlong, I promises :)
Chapter Twenty-Five: Positively Negative… or Negatively Positive. Both?
Oh, negative. What wonders that little word held for me. Negative, negative, negative! I'd make it into a banner for my room. I'd tattoo it on my butt. I'd name my first-born after it. Actually, strike that last one, after the news I'd just got. I skipped – yes, actually skipped – over to a window which showed the lake I'd instructed Severus to go and inspect. I pushed it open with gay abandon and looked out. Severus was standing by the frozen lake with my father, who was smoking a pipe. Since when did he smoke pipes? He was wearing a striped cardigan, too. Since when did my father turn into a grandfather? Oh, right, he still didn't know of the wonderful negativity.
"Hey!" I yelled from the window, ignoring the cold on my bare arms. Severus turned around and saw me half hanging out the window, waving at him. "Hey stink-head! I love you!" He looked supremely confused, but still sent a half-smile and a small inclination of the head my way before turning back to the frozen lake. My father muttered something in Severus' ear, and before I had time to process what it might have been, Severus turned his head back my way, looking horrified. Well, now I had a pretty good idea of what it might have been. Damn my father! Severus never had to know about it! And now I'd have to explain to him that I wasn't really pregnant before he left me for someone who wouldn't do something as silly as think she was pregnant when she wasn't really. I ran down the stairs and thankfully had the presence of mind to put on a pair of shoes before running into the snow. I met Severus halfway to the back of the house, where he was still looking horrified.
"Okay," I said, trying to collect my thoughts. No need to scare him, Dad mightn't have said anything about that particular subject. He might have just told Severus that it gets really cold here in the winter. That was pretty horrifying in itself, and my bare arms were feeling horrified enough for all of me. A shiver went through me and I held my upper arms with the opposing hands. "What did my dad just say to you?"
He stared at me piercingly. "What is it that got you to run outside?" Damn. He'd got me on that one.
"I asked first." Ah yes, first-year rules worked every time.
"He is under the impression that you are with child."
"I'm not," I said quickly, and saw the look of horror fade away. That was always a good sign, right?
"Then why, may I ask, does he think you are?"
"Because… because…" I started, trying to make it sound as good as possible. "Because I kind of thought I was?" Well, now the horror-struck look was being replaced by one of slight horror, slight bewilderment.
"And why did you not inform me of this?"
"Because I only realised this morning," I said. "Mum kept talking about ovulation and menstruation and I realised that I hadn't in a while and I thought maybe I was but I just peed on a stick thingy and it says I'm not."
"Breathe, Rapha," he said. Okay, why was he adopting my mother's stupid nickname that made me feel like an elephant? I'd have to put a stop to it as soon as this whole mess was behind us. "So why didn't you tell me just now, before you made me look at ice for twenty minutes? There is only so much entertainment to be gained from ice."
"Because you wouldn't want me to be pregnant and you'd leave me and I'd be all alone and my child would grow up without any male influence and it'd end up all weird and it's not going to have any ears and I'll have to learn sign language all by myself and you'd leave me," I said, still ignoring his advice to breathe. Well, it was silly advice. I breathed all the time, and a fat lot of good it did me.
"You're going to have to learn to separate your words from each other when you talk," he said in a gentler tone, putting his cloak around my shoulders before walking me back to the front door.
"More like you're going to have to understand the things that I say without me having to alter my entire speech patterns just to suit you," I gabbled. "What do you think I am, some kind of… um… well, I didn't really think that one through. But the important thing is that… uh… okay, let's just pretend I've been saying very clever and poignant things and you're very impressed."
"Consider it done," Severus muttered, looking down at me with a weird expression on his face. I hadn't really seen it before, it was some kind of beatific benevolence, like I sometimes assumed. It was incredibly weird on him and I really wished he'd go back to being grumpy. Oh well, though. That was the price you pay for marrying someone like him.