A/N: Again, this is essentially a new story, and it's pretty rough right now. If you are looking for a finished story, do not read this chapter or any following. I might be able to fix this up later, but right now I'm just barreling through blindly.

Un-beta-ed, so all mistakes are mine.

"I'm going to come." It was a whisper, almost apologetic. Hermione was hovering above Lew, their hips just inches apart, trembling. Her eyes were dark, but she had been quieter than usual, almost solemn.

Lew hadn't needed the warning. Hermione's body was already tensing. "Yes, baby. Come for me." Lew followed the rippling deeper, rotating her wrist to allow her third finger to brush Hermione's clit. "I want to feel you squeeze me." An unexpected moan escaped Lew's lips, and Hermione echoed it. And then Hermione tightened around Lew's fingers, and Lew's body shook with release. Hermione watched her face, eyes dancing, with a mysterious smile.

Lew hissed, "Come," and pumped harder. But she had lost Hermione completely. When her body stopped shocking, Hermione pushed her hand away and straddled her hips.

"I lost track," Hermione said by way of explanation. She rested her forehead on Lew's, the solemnity coming back over their naked bodies like a heavy blanket.

"What's wrong?" Lew asked, sneaking a kiss.

"I have been thinking." Lew nodded and kissed her again, encouragingly. "I want - I do want your baby. Our baby. But… I don't know if I can carry again. I'm - I would be too - afraid."

Lew frowned, and then she understood. "Are you asking me?"

Hermione pushed up and examined Lew's face. "It's been four years and I'm still not ready. And Michael asked me… why I was avoiding him." Michael had asked Lew the same question last year. She was surprised that he had finally asked Hermione. Maybe he didn't trust Lew's answer, and for good reason - it wasn't the whole truth. Lew didn't know the whole truth.

"What did you tell him?" Maybe Lew should have asked Hermione directly. Maybe Hermione would answer the question for both of them.

Hermione looked pained. "I'm not avoiding you, Lew," she said instead.

"I didn't say that," Lew protested. "But I know why." We aren't the family you wanted. "You're busy. There's too much to do, running a department. You're always distracted when you're here, anyway."

Hermione's lip twisted. "It doesn't have to be that way. I'm here for both of you, still."

Maybe you don't want to be. The thought provoked an icy spike of panic in Lew's chest.

But Hermione was on an entirely different train of thought. "Every time I think about coming here, I remember that baby in the tree, Lew." She was crying. "I can hold you…" she trailed off, and then lowered herself onto Lew's body, clinging hard, almost hysterical.

Lew murmured, "I'm yours," and rubbed her back. "You can hold me, but I'm not enough?"

"I want a baby. I never thought I did, but after Michael, I - it's driving me crazy. You're so good with James." It sounded like a change of topic, but maybe it wasn't. "Ginny's actually pregnant again. Did she tell you?"

Lew bit the inside of her cheek and shook her head. Weasley breeders, she thought unfairly. She didn't like Ginny. She was controlling, and it had only gotten worse since she married Harry. "OK," she said to Hermione, and kissed her face. "Let me think about it." Hermione nodded and kissed her, hard, her breath shallow. It was easy to mistake the emotion for desire, and although Lew knew better her heart still blossomed under the attention. With Hermione kissing her, Lew could pretend that Hermione wanted to be there. Maybe she did want to be there. The eagerness of her kiss should have been indication enough.

"Let's try something," Lew said. She was still wet. The slickness was cold between her thighs, seeping out of her. "Would you - can you put a finger inside me?" Hermione pushed off the bed and looked at Lew, surprised. "You would need to, you know," Lew explained. "I just want to know what it would be like."

Hermione nodded. "I didn't think of that. We really don't have to."

"I want to," Lew said, and Hermione's hand went between her legs, hasty. Lew shuddered under the attention, grinding down on Hermione's fingers. She pulled Hermione down to straddle one of her thighs, wrapping her arms around her and thinking of the perfect shape of Hermione's fingers, her gentle feminine desire. Lew wanted to be bound to Hermione in every possible way. She wanted their bodies to know each other so intimately that they melded. "Inside," Lew said, and Hermione pushed into her, watching her face.

Lew watched her, too, waiting for her emotions to settle enough that she could distinguish them. "Oh," Hermione gasped, panting. "You're perfect. I've wanted this for so long." Her finger moved a little, deeper, exploring. "I want you like this. I want you." It was a plea. Lew watched her as her body buckled and her eyelids fluttered. This was what Lew should be feeling. Hermione was ecstatic. Just one finger shouldn't be enough to hurt Lew. Hermione's need should take her over. But it didn't.

Instead, oddly, she remembered the ring, the diamond heavy on her newly washed fingers. Confusing. It's my grandmother's ring, he'd said. I want to marry you. Will you?

She had thrown it into the corner. And then he had told her what was happening in her, something she already knew but had managed to repress. I don't want it, she told him. I don't want you, and I don't want it.

He had smiled gleefully. If you won't marry me, I will give you back those chains. But there is nothing you can do to get rid of me, or the baby. Of course he had been wrong about the baby.

Lew shook her head. "No," she said. "I can't." Hermione pulled out of her and kissed her face, and Lew flipped their positions. "I'm sorry."

Hermione nodded and pulled Lew into her body. Her wetness was slick on Lew's stomach as she grasped Lew. The need came off her in waves. She kissed her, Lew put her hand on the inside of Hermione's thigh, and Hermione said, "Come on, please."

She was wetter than before, already close. Lew considered a third finger, but Hermione didn't seem to need more. Lew felt her body relax into the motion, following Hermione. Finding that deep soft spot with such a fast rhythm was almost difficult, but when Lew did Hermione slowed and let Lew deeper. Her hands shook and she kissed Lew. "Do it." Lew frowned at her. "Give me your soul. Please."

Lew shook her head. Hadn't Hermione just said she would be too afraid?

"I want it. Please. I want your baby. I do." Hermione was rippling under her fingers. She wasn't thinking clearly. If she came, they could talk about it. Lew brushed her clit, and Hermione shuddered. "I won't come until you say yes."

She stilled her hips, and Lew slowed unconsciously. "You said you weren't ready."

"I'm ready now. I want it. Please, Lew." Lew rolled her nipple with her tongue, and Hermione shocked into her hand, a small victory. "I love you. I want to hold your baby. I - I want to start again. Please. Please." Hermione hissed her name and then stilled her hips again. Damn. "Tell me you will do it."

"You want to raise a child? Here, with me?"

Hermione nodded and moaned. "Lew, let me come now. Please."

"You want to feel a part of me growing in you?"

"I want all of you," Hermione said. "I love you."

"I will do it," Lew said. Hermione's body started moving again, and then they were on the precipice. The spell was unfamiliar now, but Lew remembered it. "Will you take me?" The same words as before.

"Yes," Hermione said. The magic warmed Lew's fingers and then she was gone, riding the waves of Hermione's orgasm and trying to imagine what Hermione felt at this moment. Was Lew's soul heavy and harsh, or did it feel right? Was it liberating, or did it bind her? There was nothing Lew wanted more than for Hermione to be free.

Finally it was over, and Lew took back her soul. Feeling came back in a rush. "Was that long enough?" Hermione was asking.

Lew nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.

"Are you OK, Lew?"

"Yeah, yes," Lew said. "Are you OK? How are you?"

"Good. Happy." She was smiling. "Are you happy?"

Lew smiled back at her. "Of course." She kissed Hermione's stomach. "You are going to have the nicest life. I promise."

"What about the Statute of Secrecy?"

"I don't know." Hermione was pacing in front of the fireplace, and her parents were sitting on the couch, holding each other's hands. "Someone must have worked with them."

"I'd guess we will soon find out who," Lew said quietly.

"It just seems so impossible."

"I felt it," Hermione said. "During the demonstration. It affected everyone in the room. It really does stop magic."

"Can't you track it down? Destroy the technology?"

Hermione shook her head. "We're trying. Harry is - but it's too dangerous not to comply right now. We're stronger united than we would be if we hid."

"I am working with Harry," Lew told the Grangers. "I'm not going to register. There are a few of us that can stay - secret. Mostly Muggleborn. People without families. The Minister stepped down and he's joined us." She had decided not to directly argue against Hermione, at least while explaining the situation to her parents. Their approval of their relationship was tenuous already.

She could see the look that passed between Hermione's parents. But you do have a family, the look said. Lew kept her eyes from falling on the swell of Hermione's belly.

"Hermione?" Ms. Granger said finally. "What about you? Are you registered?"

"Of course," Hermione said grimly. "We can't all step down. The Ministry has to stay intact. We need to appear complacent, or the Muggle government will use more coercive methods. For now it's just talk, but with the disparity in technology even the talk feels like a threat. It's - I'm sure that it will get worse. The Prime Minister has already asked for volunteers to join the army. They're talking about dissolving the Aurors, absorbing them into either the police or the army, too. Hopefully the Ministry can slow the pace down enough that Harry and Lew can find a counter to the weapon."

"I don't understand. How can the weapon be powerful enough to coerce wizards? Don't you have - I mean - magic is more powerful than that."

"It's not the weapon that coerces us," Lew said. "It's the guns. With magic we can resist domination, enforce the Statute, stay separate. But with the weapon on their sides, suddenly the technology trumps magic. I mean, at this point it's not dangerous, exactly, not with the Brits at least. But once Muggles start wars with wizards on both sides - and nuclear warheads involved - that's what I'm worried about."

"It's unfair." Mr. Granger was indignant. "The wizards have been so - you have left us alone. We should have left you alone. Didn't you say that the last time the wizards interfered with Muggle affairs was the Second World War?"

"Whoever worked with them must have known that the weapon would help them, too," Hermione explained. It was an unnecessary explanation. "But if you can imagine one wizard controlling a Muggle army - the amount of destruction that caused? With Muggles controlling units of wizards…"

It couldn't be worse. This, at least, Lew and Hermione agreed on. There was no alternative. They had to destroy the technology before the Muggles lost their heads and destroyed the world with it.

Lew and Hermione spent that night in the cabin, not knowing it would be their last in that place. The Trace was expanded to all registered witches and wizards the next day.

The first three "delegates" from the Prime Minister hadn't been difficult to abduct. Kingsley's Imperius charms effectively revealed something that Lew had always suspected: the Muggles would never fully inform a person they sent directly into the lion's den. The third had provided false information, and after that the Resistance began wearing combat vests and carrying handguns.

The non-Muggleborn wizards in the Resistance were virtually useless when it came to strategy or combat. Some refused to practice shooting, or maintained accuracy charms while they practiced. Only five of the Resistance members even knew how to drive Muggle vehicles. The idea that the weapon was an American technology was also very offensive to them. Many refused to believe it, even after repeatedly dosing the British Prime Minister with Veritaserium and questioning him.

On the assumption that creating the weapon - they hadn't come up with a better name than that - was an expensive or time-consuming endeavor, the Resistance stole every model that they reasonably could. The second one they stole they took apart, which made it self-destruct. Luckily, Lew was the only one near enough to get caught by the explosion, and the anti-magic field deactivated at the same moment as the explosion. It wouldn't have been enough time to put up a rudimentary shielding charm, but it was enough that Lew's fire affinity was able to absorb the damage.

But their progress wasn't fast enough. They still didn't know where the device was manufactured, or where it was developed. It was 2006, and Muggle computers were everywhere. How could they destroy even just the blueprint of the device itself, let alone the knowledge of how to create it? It didn't seem possible.

Gradually, Lew began accepting that they couldn't. The game changed. What went into the manufacture of the device? Could they remotely detonate the devices before they were in range? Or - more difficult to do, but ultimately more effective - could they cast through it? Some spells seemed to penetrate deeper into the field than others. Imperius, unfortunately for Lew, was one of the spells that seemed to resist the field's effects the most. If the field differed in its power depending on the class of magic, it was reasonable to attempt to use magic against it.

Most frustrating to Lew was that Hermione had insisted that it was too dangerous for her to know all the details of the Resistance operations. This meant that while Hermione did practice using magic against the devices, she refused to allow Lew to inform her on any progress that the rest of the team made. Hermione had been the one that realized first that the classes of magic penetrated the field differently, but since it was just her and Lew practicing, she never tried Imperius against the field and so was missing that potentially crucial detail.

After the work, they drove the device to a new, "safe" location, and then drove together to one of their cabins or Lew's tent. Apparition, even side-long, activated the Trace, so spending time with Hermione often involved long transit times.

Hermione took the indignity of being denied magic during their visits with inconceivable grace and tolerance, but no wizard was capable of restraining their magic fully and every visit to a safe location was a risk not to be taken lightly. The first mistake was just a pot of ink, caught midair. The second was an extension spell on Lew's fingers, alarming on a few different levels. The distance that the danger imposed made Lew ever more a slave to her, which seemed to equally irritate and mollify Hermione.

The biggest breakthrough for Lew didn't happen because of any of their direct efforts, though. It happened by accident. Lew was transporting one of the devices and had accidentally left one of Michael's saplings in the back seat. Halfway through the drive, Michael had shaken the tree to get Lew's attention. Of course she couldn't cast the communication spell, as he had wanted. But Michael's magic, or whatever it was that he employed, was immune to the field's effects.

Lew had not considered asking Michael to help the Resistance, and still she hesitated to do so. But slowly, their activities together shifted intention, away from play, and toward warfare.

He was sitting on the windowsill watching. The Grangers were there, and they knew him, but they didn't speak to him and never had. Ginny Weasley and an infant circled in and out of the room. And Harry Potter was always wherever Hermione was. Usually outside of the room, walking. This was good, because it meant that Lew stayed close. She never left the room.

They were playing a game. Michael would show her what one of his trees saw and heard. And she would guess what country the tree was in. She had laminated a map of the world and hung it up where he could see it, and they had practiced for months before he understood the dark spaces. She would tell him what number tree she was at on the map, and he could see the space on the map in between where she had been and where she was now, but the space wasn't real to him and he was constantly confused. Finally she suggested memorizing the locations on the map of particular trees. This wasn't so difficult. And then the dark spaces spread out, and he could see the distance.

After that, it was he that taught her where he was, what he could see. He always showed her things he didn't understand, and she would explain, words and images intermixed. Usually his questions were about things he heard people saying. The words ran into sentences, and the sentences collided with each other in arguments, impossible to piece together. But Lew always knew what they were talking about.

Now he could understand what the Grangers said, although he still couldn't speak. Lew was as frustrated as he was about it. She tried a million things, but the articulation continued to elude him.

But he could hear himself, and practiced anyway. This time, when Hermione came into the room and Lew left him, he tried the speakers. These were the most difficult, but the speakers were obviously capable of rendering the sounds, unlike the rest of the instruments they had tried. It was delicate. First he listened to the rhythms of the audio recorder that Lew had interfaced with one of his trunks, and then he just tried to replicate them into the speaker input. He had never produced anything more illuminating than static noise.

Hermione was lying down now, and Lew was leaning over the back of the bed, with their faces close. Lew was whispering, but this sapling self could not distinguish such soft sounds. And Hermione was gripping Lew's hand, so tightly that it would leave red marks when she released her.

A nurse entered the room, and Lew stood up and moved away from the bed. Lew was wearing strange clothes today. Muggle clothes, she had told him. Her hair was back and she was quiet. He had asked her if she was sad, but she said she was happy. She was beautiful to him, and when she was sad he ached to make her smile.

He listened to another set of speakers Lew had set up. It was reading a story to him. He had lost his spot in the story, but he had stored the memory of the story and fast-forwarded through it, skipping spots the tree had found uninteresting, until he reached the right spot again and listened. Half of what he heard was the roundness of the words. Not creaking or snapping or rustling. How could he make these sounds?

Another person entered the room. Ron Weasley. Michael did not know him well, but he knew at least his name. He stood by the bed as the nurse spoke, and Hermione reached up and held his hand, lightly. When the nurse left, Hermione released him and he stomped over to the corner of the room near Michael and sat heavily. The abrupt motion made Michael's leaves tremble, but Ron did not notice him.

He saw Hermione's head turn back to Lew, and Lew walked back to her, pressing their foreheads together, still whispering. Lew Lew Lew Lew, Michael said to himself. He wished that he was there, too.

Hermione didn't get up from that bed for a long time, though, and Lew never left her side. He became bored, listening to the recording and watching them whisper, so he skipped between houses instead, looking for a conversation to listen to. Looking also for a baby. Lew had told him that they were having a baby. Sister.

The nurse finally reappeared, and then left and returned with three more people. They bustled, and Hermione screamed. The sound made him shudder. Ron finally looked at him. He raised an eyebrow and looked back at Hermione, facing away from them. Would he stand again, go over to her?

No. Ron was forgotten. Hermione hadn't released Lew's hand this time, and Lew stayed close to her. There was another bustle and then a squall, unseen. A few long moments after that and the baby was placed in Hermione's arms.

Harry nudged Ron, and Ron finally stood and approached the bed. "Rose Granger," Lew said over the bustle. "Hello." She was crying and smiling, and Michael couldn't see Hermione's face, but he could hear her crying, too. Hermione was turned completely away from Ron, and didn't respond to his approach.

"You are going to need to push again," one of the nurses said. "It might be easier if you give her to her father."

Ron shifted his feet, and Lew picked up the baby, who squalled again. Lew bounced the baby and looked up at Michael. And then the Grangers approached Lew, and she turned away again. It was enough that he wasn't entirely forgotten. The Grangers held the baby and Hermione stood up to let the nurses replace the bedsheets. Lew helped her out of her gown and into a new one, and her hands stilled on Hermione's hips as she wrapped the cords around her. Hermione put her arms around Lew's neck and leaned into her, and they stood there for a few long moments. It was easy to forget that Hermione, too, loved Lew. They pressed their cheeks together and then kissed.

"Memory charm," Harry murmured to Ron. The nurses were watching Hermione and Lew. "And we thought we could get through this without one."

Ron twisted his lip and nodded. They paired off and took the nurses out of the room.

Hermione lay back down and took the baby into her arms. Lew lay in the bed with her, and Michael could barely stand to stay in that room. Why should he even be there at all? They were three, complete. And he was on the windowsill.

He strained at his roots. Lew had warned him not to uproot himself. It was a useless warning, anyway - he couldn't. This sapling was too weak.

"Just a second," Lew said to Hermione. And then she got up and walked to Michael. She touched his trunk.

Mother, he said to her.

'Son. Michael. I love you.'

I wish I could be there with you. When I learn to walk, she will love me, too.

'She loves you, Michael,' Lew said.

Then she will love me more. I will do it.

Lew shook her head, but just said, 'Do you want to meet your sister?'

Yes. She speaks?

Lew released his trunk and picked him up. "She doesn't speak," she said out loud. "Not yet."

Michael was back on the windowsill when the registry official came. "Mother's name? Hermione Granger, I know that one. Alright. And father's name?"

It was a long moment. Hermione opened her mouth and then closed it. It was Lew who spoke. "Ronald Weasley."