'Go Teddy!' shouted Ginny as Teddy sprinted past her and flung himself on the ground, scoring a try. They were in the park along with many of the Weasleys, and the men were playing rugby. Bill, Harry and Teddy on one team, Ron, George and Percy (they had three adults because Percy was rubbish) on the other. At the moment the score was 14-7 to Teddy's team.
Ginny was on a park bench with most of the Weasley women she knew, and their kids. Fleur, with nearly six-year-old Victoire, three year old Dominique and she was pregnant with her third. Audrey Weasley, who had two-year-old Molly. Angelina with the twins of terror, Fred and Roxanne, who were two and a half, and Hermione, who had no kids and was writing the final volume of her Complete Wizarding History, which was on the bestseller list.
'Mummy!' cried Dom. 'I want to play rugby!' Dom had more Weasley in her than Victoire: she had shoulder length red hair, brown eyes and a mischievous tomboyish character.
'Sweetie, it's too rough for you to play,' said Fleur, leaning forward to gently touch her daughter's hair. Dom sighed and started making mud pies on the ground. Victoire was a couple of metres away, making daisy chains, her curly pale blonde hair curling down her back.
Teddy and Harry tackled Percy, and ran down the field throwing the ball to each other. Ten feet from the line, Teddy slipped and fell into a muddy puddle. He stood up covered in muck and soaking wet. Harry ran over to him to check he was okay.
'I'd better go, looking at the state of Teddy,' sighed Ginny, standing up and heading over to them. 'Come on you two, let's start walking home.'
'Mu-um, I don't wanna walk home like this,' moaned Teddy.
'Teddy, it's only a five minute walk,' said Ginny. 'And as it's so hot, I'll buy you an icecream on the way.' Teddy immediately perked up and waved goodbye to everyone before racing Harry to the park gate.
The day was a Sunday, but Harry had to go into the office to look over some paperwork that had been dropped in. Teddy slouched into the kitchen after he had left, his hair a dull mousy colour.
'Ginny, I've got no one to play with,' he said.
'What about Victoire and Dom?' asked Ginny.
'They're busy,' replied Teddy.
'Or Xen and Fiona?'
'Busy too.'
'I'm sorry sweetie, but I've got to sort out this Quidditch problem, Transilvania has two players injured and so can't play in the next game against us, but-'
'It's okay,' Teddy sighed and walked off. Ginny watched him go, feeling like someone was twisting her heart.
That evening, after Teddy had gone to bed, she set up the dining table for two people, with candles and the silverware. She also put on a little red silk dress that just reached half way down her thighs. Harry looked surprised but pleased when he sat down. Ginny had also cooked their favourite foods.
'Ginny, what's this all about?' asked Harry when they were finishing their dessert. Ginny sighed and set down her spoon.
'Teddy didn't have anyone to play with today because all his friends were busy. We were busy too. And it's happened too many times. I think we should try and have kids,' she said. Harry nodded.
'I agree. I think he's getting too old for us to wait any longer, and it's very quiet in the Auror department. But what about you? Isn't your Quidditch career at an important point?'
'Harry, I don't care about Quidditch compared to having children. I'd give it up in a second! Elson has a few more years left on him, and I don't care if I'm made Captain or not. If I am, great, if not, I'll just stay as a Chaser and become Coach when I stop. I don't mind,' Harry smiled and swept her up in his arms, blowing out the candles and carrying her upstairs. That night they showed each other how to have a baby.
Elson was sick the next morning so Ginny had the day off. After dropping off Teddy at nursery, she flooed straight to Ron and Hermione's house. Hermione was sitting at the kitchen table eating some toast; she looked up in surprise when Ginny appeared.
'Is somethin wrong? Is it Teddy?' she asked.
'No, no nothing's wrong, I just need to tell you something,' said Ginny. 'Is Ron here?'
'No he left about an hour ago, why?'
'It's something he wouldn't want to know just yet. You see, me and Harry decided to try and have kids last night, and I was wondering if you knew when I could find out if I'm pregnant.'
'Of course, go to Dr Philangie's Pharmacy in Diagon Alley, they have these pregnancy tests which tell you from about twelve hours after, and they're almost always accurate.'
Ginny nodded. 'Thanks!' she rushed back into the fire.
Harry started laughing when he saw Ginny surrounded by about a dozen tests that night.
'Do we really need that many?' he asked. She scowled and stuck her tongue out at him, before grabbing them and heading into the bathroom, locking it behind her. He paced the room nervously until she came out again. His heart fell when he saw the look on her face.
'It's negative, I'm sorry.' He gathered her up in his arms and hugged her.
'There's nothing to feel sorry about,' he replied. 'We'll get a baby, you'll see.'
'Ginny, it'll only be a few days, I promise, and if you have any problems, just send me a message on my watch and I'll come straight back, no questions,' Harry told her, folding up a thick jumper and putting it in the case.
'Harry, please can we try, one last time before you go,' pleaded Ginny.
'Gin, I'll be late, I can't-' the look on her face stopped him. He took her hand and pulled her into bed.
'Hermione! Hermione!' Ron nearly leapt out of his skin when his sister apeared next to him, not bothering to floo.
'Christ almighty, she's in the shower!' he said. 'What do you want?'
'You really don't want to know bro,' replied Ginny. 'Hermione!'
Hermione ran down the stairs in a big white towl. 'Ginny? What is it?'
'Ron, get out of here,' Ron nodded and scarpered off outside. 'Okay, Hermione, me and Harry just tried again, but now Harry's off on a mission and I don't know what to do!'
'Don't worry Ginny, just let me get dressed and we'll go out to get a test and you can try again, okay?'
Half an hour later Ginny stepped out of Hermione's bathroom. 'I'm…'
Harry looked up at the towering pile of grey stone, windowless and forboding. Theo and Sally were on either side of him, he could feel them thinking the same thing as him: what an awful place. Sinyew came up to them with a beefy BWA man.
'Hello you three, this is Mr Obzervon, the head guard of Azkerban after the Dementors left. Mr Obzervon, meet Sally Cairwell, Theo Carthell and Harry Potter.'
Mr Obzervon looked over the three young Aurors calculatingly before shaking their hands. 'So you will be on my team for this mission, will you?' They nodded. 'Good, good. Now, come to my office so that we can talk over the mission in peace. The other Aurors are there as well.'
Mr Obzervon's office was on the ground floor of the prison. BWA guards were walking around armed with wands, tazers and stun guns. They all wore grey jackets and trousers with BWA guards embroidered on the pockets. The Deputy guard, Mr Splinton, and Obzervon's assitant Miss Intrictan were also in the office. The other Aurors who had been called up on the mission was already there: Sofya, Elissa, Jesse, Emily, a senior Auror named Gary and another called Karen. With all of them in here, it was very cramped.
'Okay everybody, gather round,' said Obzervon, unfolding a map on his desk. It was a map of Azkerban, with all twenty-one floors and passages and rooms. It was like the Marauder's Map, showing the guards and prisoners, and also damages in the prison. Obzervon pointed to the fourteenth floor, where the doors of two of the prisons had been broken open. 'Two days ago, two inmates overpowered their guards when they were being given food. We have been having two inmates in each cell since the Second War, so that they have company. The guard was young and inexperienced, and the prisoners managed to take his taser, gun and wand. They then broke out two inmates next door, and disappeared into Azkerban. They haven't been found yet. The Aurors are here to help us find them. Harry, Theo, and Sally will go with me and another guard, Jesse, Emily and Gary with Mr Splinton and another, and Karen, Elissa and Sofya with Miss Intrictan and a fifth person. We will search the Azkerban. Remember, the prisoners are armed and dangerous. Anyone who finds them, call for backup using these,' he handed a kind of walkie-talkie to everyone. 'The inmates are called Twist, Lint, Sallow and Mauvaise.'
'Hold on a minute,' said Jesse. 'How do we know that the prisoners are still on the island?'
Splinton leant forward. 'There are anti-Apparation Charms everywhere, including the lake surounding us. In fact in the lake you cannot use magic at all, say if you used a wand to fly over it or summon some brooms, the spell would dissolve as soon as you reached the waters. It is too far for anyone to swim, especially in the weakened state they are in. The prisoners are definitely still here.'
Everyone nodded, satisfied. Obzervon clapped his hands together and smiled: 'Let's go find some baddies!'
Group A, Harry's group, went straight to the floor where they were on. A couple of young BWA guards were outside the broken cells. One bounced up to Obzervon, his round face pale and sweaty.
'Nothing happened sir. No findings sir,' he said. 'The other inmates have been making trouble sir.'
'Have they now,' Obzervon frowned to the next cell along. There were five cells, two broken, one empty, one with two surly looking guys and a final one which held a woman, who was thoroughly made. She pressed her face up against the bars, grinning with rotten teeth and sticking out her tongue. Her hair was a tangled grey mess, her dress torn and ragged.
'Helloo-o,' she called, pressing herself against the bars, licking them, her eyes wild. 'Gonna let me out, eh? How 'bout a kissy?'
'Is she a Death Eater?' asked Theo incredulously.
'Death Eaters aren't the only bad guys,' said Obzervon. 'Put her with the other mad prisoners, on level nineteen. Now, we need to inspect these cells. As untouched as possible, yes?'
This time the other guard, a skinny beige haired blonde, bobbed and answered. 'Yes sir, of course sir, as you wished sir.'
'Enough with the sirs. Right, let's see, which way did they go. Jordan, what do you think?' Jordan, a woman in her early thirties with short brown hair, paced towards the large hole in the cells.
'Well, if they climbed out here,' she started to act it out. 'Blew their friends out here – they scarpered after that, right? They wouldn't go by the stairs or elevator, but where else is there? Wait a second – they had a wand, didn't they? So maybe they transfigured their clothes into BWA guard unform, took the stairs, but couldn't go across the lake because the boat transport checks your retina, and they would have been discovered. So they went down the stairs, but then where?'
'How about the kitchens?' suggested Harry. 'They'd have to get food.'
'Might as well try,' said Obzervon. 'They probably took the stairs, less likely to be recognised there.'
The problem was, the stairs meant they had to go down fifteen flights of stairs (the kitchen was in the basement). By the time they reached the bottom, they weren't very tired, but the winding spiral staircase made them all dizzy.
'We might need to fix that,' said Obzervon, rubbing his head. 'Come on, must keep going!' The workers in the kitchen said that they had seen some suspicious looking guards had taken four meals for the prisoners, but it wasn't their place to question them, but they had seen them go out the second side door, one hardly ever used, and Debbie the assistant to the junior chopping cook had seen them go to the storerooms.
The storerooms were all along a corridor, dark musty rooms filled with barrels and boxes. In the third one, they found that a couple of loaves of bread and some ham and cooked beef had been stolen, as well as a leaking leather bottle of alcohol. The trail of drips had been mopped up, but they could see the stains, leading up to where the food was taken to be distributed. They met Group B on the trail.
'We have no more progress than you,' said Splinton. 'It's starting to get late as well; the Aurors should be shown to their accomadation.'
'Good plan – Jordan, could you show them? Yes, twenty-first floor, take the elevator of course,' Obzervon smiled jovially. 'We have made some progress though. I must say, the rooms aren't five star.'
And they weren't. Harry was sharing with Theo, in a small dingy room with twin beds and a chest of draws full of dust and mothballs. There were only two windows with no glass that were just a foot squared, and the only bathroom was down the corridor.
'Nice,' said Theo, slumping down on the bed.
'I've had worse. At least it's only for a couple of nights,' Harry replied, dropping his bag and heading over to the window. 'Wow! Look at that view!' It was a sheer drop down to the ground, the patrolling guards just dots. They could see miles away.
'Come on, let's call for room service, there's a hatch next door that they use to send food up from the kitchens,' suggested Theo. Harry nodded and picked up the ancient looking phone between the beds and dialled the number that had been scrawled on the bedside table.
'Er, hello? It's guest room eight here, could we have todays supper up to the hatch please? No, not vegetarian thank you. Bangers and mash is fine, yes, for two, okay thanks!'
'I don't think it will be gourmet,' laughed Theo.
After burnt sausages and watery mashed potatoes, they washed in the miniscule bathroom and headed to bed. Harry was having trouble sleeping though, and finally stood up to go get a drink. He headed silently down the corridor, but as he was going back, stopped. He had heard voices, and not those of the other Aurors.
' 'Ow are we supposed to get out zen?' a heavy french accent asked. 'We cannot stay 'ere forezzer.'
'Shut up!' a gruff voice said. 'There are Aurors all around us!'
'Oh go boil your head Lint.'
Harry nearly jumped for joy. The escapee prisoners were right next door! He stepped forward to go inside, but then realised he had left his wand in the bedroom, and the criminals were armed. He tiptoed back to his room and shook Theo awake.
'Theo!' he hissed. 'I've found the prisoners!'
'What?' mumbled Theo, rolling over to go back to sleep. Harry slapped him a couple of times. 'Ouch! Prisoners?'
'I've found the prisoners!' repeated Harry, grabbing his wand. 'We need to get some other Aurors though.'
'I'll get Sally and Emily,' said Theo, grinning. 'And Gary and Jesse.'
'They'll be good for the actual attack. I think the others should alert the guards,' replied Harry. They crept off to wake the fellow Aurors. Soon there were six Aurors in a semi-circle around the door, and the others were off waking Obzervon, Splinton, etc.
Jesse leant forward and opened the door. Instantly two jets of light shot out the door, they ducked and fired their own back. Crashes and yelps could be heard inside. They stepped through the doorway, wands raised.
'Come out with your hands up!' shouted Gary. 'Relinquish all your weapons!'
The dust was clearing, and they could see four people in BWA uniform, all dirty and unshaven. The one closest to the door was unconcious, frozen in the act of raising his stolen wand. Another was trapped underneath the fallen chest of drawers, wincing in pain. A third had been trussed up by magical rope, and was straining to reach the gun a few centimetres out of his reach. Emily grabbed it and threw it out the window. The final man was cowering against the wall, he suddenly seemed to find some courage and ran at them, yelling and screaming. Harry and Jesse automatically grabbed an arm each, twisted them round into a painful lock and kicked him to the floor. Elissa flicked her wand and his wrists and legs were suddenly bound together.
'Well, that looked impressive,' they spun round to see Obzervon smiling jovially. 'I heard it all up the stairs! Very well done to all of you, these four will be put in escape risk cells. I suggest you all go back to bed, one thirty is far to early to be going home.'
Harry fell onto his bed and was asleep in a second.
Ginny nervously fiddled with her hands as she perched on the edge of the bed. Harry looked down at her, confused. 'What's wrong?'
'Harry, I'm pregnant,' she blurted out. Harry's mouth dropped open.
'You're, you're sure?' Ginny nodded. He broke into a huge smile and spun her round. 'We're getting a baby!'
'We're getting a baby!'
I wrote this on a really old laptop that doesn't tell you if you've made a spelling mistake, so sorry if you find a typo! Hope you enjoyed it, please read and review! I'm going back to school next week, so probably no chapter till the weekend or further.
