All characters belong to JKR
Chapter 49 – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Picture yourself in a boat on the river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies,
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes,
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
Towering over your head,
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she's gone.
Part I - A Trio Not Talking –
Three friends – friends since childhood – were all sitting around Hermione Granger's small kitchen table. It was after eleven o'clock at night, and in one hour, it would be September. With the coming of midnight, and the changing of the month, came the realization that something terrible, or something wonderful, might soon happen to one of them.
Ron stopped by around eight in the evening, Harry around twenty minutes after that. Since that time, the three friends made small talk, told jokes, played with her cat, looked at recent pictures of Harry's new daughter, had tea and biscuits, and reminisced about younger days. They also helped Hermione get ready for her wedding tomorrow, for the next day she was getting married to Theodore Nott, and Ron and Harry were going to walk her down the aisle.
However, when the hour grew later, the day almost done, the three friends grew quieter and quieter, until they were soon not speaking or making any noises at all. At that very moment, the three of them were sitting silently around her table, not talking, not even clinking a spoon against a teacup.
When the hushed vista before her could no longer be endured, Hermione turned her head toward her best friends since childhood, Ron and Harry, and asked, "Why do people say that silence is deafening? Not only is that an oxymoron, but its plain stupid as well. There's nothing poetic about it at all. I've been sitting here for the last hour, listening to nothing but the sounds of our collective breathing, and I can tell you something – silence is not deafening – silence is bloody overrated and about to get on my last, effing nerve."
Ron looked at Harry first, raised one eyebrow (silently telling his mate to say something to her, answer her question, say anything at all) before he turned to Hermione, wordlessly shrugging his reply to her. Harry merely smiled at her and shook his head to signal mutely that he didn't know why, either. Promptly ten seconds after Hermione Granger posed her rhetorical question to her mute friends, she stood in the middle of her flat and she screamed as loudly as she could.
Harry, shocked by her outburst, dropped the tin of nuts he was snacking from, and Ron, well, Ron was so stunned that he gasped, pushed away from the table, and then fell right out of his chair.
Both men went up to her, demanded to know what was wrong, and she said, "I wish everyone would stop acting as if everything was normal! It's almost September! It will soon be my birthday! We don't even know if the curse is lifted yet! I could be dead in a little more than three weeks, and no one seems to care!" Then she fell in a heap on the floor and began to cry.
Ron fell down beside her, patted her back and said, "Of course we care, Hermione. Blimey. Of course, we care!"
"You never want to talk about it!" she pressed, holding her hand on her ever-expanding stomach. Looking at Harry, who was now on the floor with them, she said, "Nor you."
"I didn't know you wanted to talk about it," Harry admitted.
"That's not true," she leveled. "I've tried and tried to open up conversations about it with both of you, ever since you came back months ago, and neither of you want to be confronted with it." She sniffled, then lifted Ron's sleeve, wiped her nose on it, then lowered it back to his lap.
Placing a hand on her stomach, she asked, "And why won't anyone talk to me about the baby? I might die before this little one even gets to live, and yet I can't even voice my cares or concerns about it to anyone." She sobbed harder.
"Voice them now," Harry told her. "What concerns?"
She took her fists, and with each word, hit him on the chest, as she said, "I … Don't … Want … To … Have … To … Tell … You … To … Be … Sensitive!"
Harry grabbed both her fists in his hands, pushed them away from him, and then rubbed his chest with a pained look on his face. "Gor, Hermione, for goodness sakes! Did you have to state such a long sentence to me as you hit me?"
"I'll hit you again, Harry James Potter, if you don't shut up and listen to me!" she said between sniffles. She pushed up from the floor to sit on the couch. "I don't have a mother any longer, so I can't ask her any questions about babies, and I could use you guys right now."
"Why, we aren't mothers?" Ron remarked, moving from the floor to sit on her right side.
She turned to him so swiftly, hand up, that he covered his head, fearing her wrath. Harry climbed on her left side and grabbed her hand before she could strike Ron. "No, but we're both fathers, Ron, and she could have talked to us or to our wives, right, Hermione?" Harry turned Hermione to face him as she nodded.
"I can't talk to Theo or Blaise about this baby," she whispered low, her head on Harry's shoulder. Ron lifted a hand and began to rub her back.
"Why?" Ron asked.
"Neither of them wants to talk about it, either," she said with a shaky voice. "Believe it or not, the only one who will talk about it is Malfoy. He's been the one to take me to most of my Healer appointments, along with Adrian, and he's the only one who wanted to know what sex the baby is."
"What is it?" Harry asked, ashamed that he hadn't inquired sooner.
"It's a boy," she said proudly. "A baby boy. I'm going to name him William Theodore. Blaise's father's name was William." She stood, leaving her friends on the couch, turned, faced them, and added, "And I'll probably die before I give birth to it, and it won't have a chance at life, or only I'll die and it will live, or I don't know what will happen to him. I mean, I'm so scared for him, even though the Healers say that with magic he'll probably survive, though he'll be small, even if I don't … still, what does that mean for his future. I have no one to talk to about this."
"You say you haven't talked to Blaise or Theo?" Ron said, suddenly angry. He stood. "Theo should be there for you. He's supposed to love you, and I thought Blaise was the father. Isn't he 'involved' somehow with Theo, too? Seems to me he has a funny way of showing it!"
Hermione walked up to Ron, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and barked, "Seems to me you have a funny way of showing me that you're my best friend, too, Ronald Weasley, so don't you dare condemn them! This is a lot for Theo Nott to go through, you know! He's a fragile person, and Blaise is trying to figure out where he fits into everything, especially given the way we're completing the second part of the list, so don't you dare say a bad word about them!"
"But you can say we're bad friends!" Ron argued.
She pushed him hard enough that he fell on the couch. Pointing at him, she said, "I can say it, but I wouldn't let any of them say it!"
Frowning, she walked over to the kitchen table, picked up the chair that Ron had knocked over earlier, and then used her wand to clean up all the nuts from the floor where Harry had spilled them. Suddenly, she felt Harry's hands on her shoulders.
"Hermione?" he asked.
She didn't answer. She remained, quiet, silent, and still.
"You could be worrying about it all for naught. Perhaps you'll survive past your birthday, not deliver this child until you're nine months pregnant, and everything will be fine.
Lifting her head, she said, "You don't really believe that, Harry, or you wouldn't have gotten special permission from the Ministry of Magic to use that Time Turner spell on me."
His mouth dropped open.
Ron came to stand behind Hermione. "What's she talking about, mate?"
Hermione didn't face Ron. Her eyes remained locked on Harry's green eyes as she said, "Didn't he tell you, Ron? He, Blaise and Marcus Flint got special permission to use a Time Turner spell on me. It's very rare; supposedly, it's only been done twice. McGonagall told them about it, isn't that right, Harry?"
"How did you find out?"
She pushed Harry so hard that he fell into the table, knocking the tin of nuts back off the table, spilling nuts all over the floor again.
"Draco Malfoy told me!" she shouted. "How dare you decide to do such a spell without consulting me? Did you even think about whether or not I'd want such a spell done to me?"
"No, I didn't," he answered honestly. "I was thinking about what I thought was best, in other words, I was thinking like Hermione Granger."
"What is this spell? How would you use a Time Turner to save her?" Ron asked. He approached Harry. "I mean, surely you can't suggest that she go all the way back to last year, before she went into the cave, and then change things from there! You'd be changing so many lives if you did that, Harry! The Ministry would never agree to that!"
Harry merely stared silently at his friends, admitting nothing, but saying SO much.
Before Hermione could argue, Ron did it for her. "But would you even save the other two people's lives? The two who went in the cave before her?"
Harry shook his head no.
"What about her baby? I mean, if she didn't go in the cave, she wouldn't have made her list, or quit or job, or left her old flat. She wouldn't have become tangled up with the Slytherins! She wouldn't have fallen in love with Theo, or gotten pregnant with Blaise's baby!"
Finally, Harry spoke. "No, but she'd be alive."
"And who are you to play God like that, Harry Potter?" Hermione asked.
"I'm the man who saved the Wizarding world from destruction, and I've never asked anything in return, so they owe me. They owe me, Hermione, so they're going to do this for me. It wasn't even my idea in the first place. It was Marcus Flint's."
She suddenly gasped. "You'll be changing the course of his life, too. What of him and Daphne?"
"He's aware of that. He said he'll marry her," Harry answered.
She grasped Ron's hand. "And Blaise? You said Blaise knew about this?" she asked Harry.
"Marcus felt he had to consult Zabini, seeing you were carrying his baby, and Zabini was okay with everything," Harry said softly, suddenly sounding embarrassed.
"HE WAS OKAY!" Hermione shouted. "IT'S MY BABY, TOO!" She turned to the table, where she left her wand, but Ron was quicker. "Give me my wand, Ronald! I want to hex Harry Potter so badly I can taste it!"
Ron held Hermione's wand over his head, but said to Harry, "You had no right to make these kinds of decisions for people, Harry. What about Theo Nott? Hermione would have forgotten that she was in love with him, and she's finally happy. She's happier with him than I've seen her in ages."
Hermione's anger ebbed away slowly as she thought of Theo. "Yes, what about Theo? Did you think of Theo?"
Harry sighed, long and for a change, loudly. "We were all thinking of Theo Nott. He arranged with Professor Slughorn to perform a spell that would give up his life for yours, if 'the list cure' didn't work in the end. That's why Blaise wanted to do this. He was doing it to save Theo, so was Marcus."
Harry sat back on the sofa, pulling the cat up on his lap. Stroking Boo's fur, he said, "Someone has to sacrifice something here, Hermione. Who should it be? Who will it be? I don't know, I just don't know. And you're right. I'm not God. I shouldn't be making these decisions, but neither should Theo. He's planning to do his spell not even knowing if 'the list cure' works or not, because he claims he can't risk that. Do you want to risk losing him? Tell me what to do, Hermione. What do you want me to do?"
Pushing the cat off his lap, he held out his hand for her.
She placed her hand in his, sat down next to him, and placed her cheek upon his shoulder. "No wonder none of you wanted to talk about the baby with me. You, Blaise, and Marcus thought the baby wasn't going to be here much longer, and that I wasn't going to remember it anyway. Likewise, I'm sure you felt some guilt about everything. And Theo, well, he's probably anxious about his spell. He thinks he's on borrowed time, and if anyone can relate to that feeling, it's me."
She looked at Ron. "And I suppose you didn't talk about the baby with me because you're an insensitive git."
"Right you are, Hermione," Ron said with a smile, planting his arse next to hers on the couch. "Wait a moment, how is it that Malfoy told you all about what Harry had planned, when he just revealed that it was only Marcus and Blaise who were helping him?"
Harry thought a second, and waited for her to divulge that as well.
"Draco's sneaky," Hermione said with a shrug. "He said that he could tell something was off, and everyone was acting strangely, so he started following people, snooping into their things, and listening to private conversations. Finally, he went to his father, and Lucius confirmed it somehow. You know, it does affect him, too, because he's engaged to Daphne now, and happy about it in the end. Therefore, he told me everything, and he called an emergency Viper meeting to confront all of the other Vipers about it this very night."
"I wonder if any of them got physically assaulted tonight," Harry pondered, while rubbing his chest.
Hermione merely glared at him, ruefully. She held out her hand to Ron, fingers twitching. "My wand, Ron."
"Careful, chum," Ron laughed, "or I'll give her back her wand. You could use a good hex or two about now, in my opinion, so take care."
"And I thought you both were my best friends," Harry sighed, frowning, as he pulled out his own wand to clean up the nuts that had spilled. Then he decided to keep his wand in his hand … just in case, just in case.
A/N I still think she should hex him!
