Chapter 144: A Carefree Future

Ten to eleven weeks was the benchmark, by reduced risk to the baby, for Hermione's appointments to become fortnightly. She met the last weekly appointment feeling strong and only a little nervous. Though she applied the gel herself, she did it with Poppy sitting next to her, and, the moment she handed the spatula back, it was as though a switch flipped: this was normal, and easy. And that, Hermione liked to think, would be it. Her old terror had upped and left.

Not long after that, Hermione, Harry, and Sirius Portkeyed together into the Weasley's orchard. Walking up to the house, Hermione was sure there was a change in the air. The late morning was sunny, the light wind without a frosty bite to it. Though there weren't any green buds on the bare branches yet, the grass of the slope up to the Weasley's back garden looked ready to stretch its blades to a coming spring. For all, it being early February, it was a false spring, it made Hermione feel fresh and bright.

They were greeted by a distracted 'Wotcher!' from Tonks, the pink-haired witch having squatted down to wrestle a chunk of bark out of Teddy's resisting mouth. She contemplated the dirt escaping Teddy's lips in a line of drool, sighed, and let the baby yank away from her to turn onto all fours with a very grubby dragon toy, gripped in one fist, that Teddy head-planted into the soil. Teddy wriggled away from Tonks, turned onto his bum, and stuck the sandy dragon's head into his mouth.

'Well,' Tonks said, thumping onto her bottom as well, 'at least you won't choke on dirt.' She took aim and tossed the slobbery piece of bark down the hill.

Behind Tonks, set up like it had been for Hermione's birthday, was a very long table, with another set up to the side nearer the house. There were enough chairs for at least two dozen people. On the other side of the table, Hermione could see Remus, Arthur, and Kingsley's heads over the drop of hill. They looked to be involved in quite a sober discussion.

'There'll be a lot of us,' Tonks was saying as Harry scooped Teddy up for a hello. 'If Rita Skeeter comes, it'll be twenty five.'

'Skeeter?' Harry said, dodging the dirty and slobbery dragon toy Teddy aimed at his face. 'Why's she coming?'

'Well the Lovegoods are coming,' said Tonks. 'S'pose it'd be rude not to invite her too. Don't reckon she'll come, though.'

Watching them over Tonks's head, Hermione revised the nature of Remus, Arthur, and Kingsley's conversation. All three wizards focused on it, a large, obviously-modified toy helicopter soared up into the sky, did a loop-de-loop, and flew off towards the field they'd used for Quidditch.

Tonks, turning around in her seat to watch as well, snickered.

'Molly set them to distracting Arthur,' she explained. 'So he wouldn't try to help out, you know.'

If that had been the task Remus and Kingsley had been set, they were achieving it well.

'What about Hagrid?' Harry asked, settling Teddy back down on the ground. 'Heard anything about him?'

'Deep in hiding with Grawp and Buckbeak,' Tonks supplied. 'Minerva hasn't seen him for a couple weeks – but don't worry,' she added, looking up at them, 'Minerva's not. Hagrid can look after himself.'

A kitchen window rattled open.

'Hey – Harry!' Ginny shouted through it. 'Get in here and give me a hand! I've got about a million peas to shell!'

Hermione and Sirius followed Harry into the kitchen. The bedlam Hermione had expected was present in the whirlwind that was Molly and the multiple hazards of knives, spoons, rolling pins, and whichever else chopping, stirring, scraping, and rolling all of their own accord. Andromeda was there, her hands busy with stuffing a chicken. She gave them a smile and a greeting over it.

'Oh – if you would?' Molly responded to the offer of a hand. 'Hermione – if you could fill that tart case?' She pointed to it, then to a bowl. 'The filling's there – and oh…' Molly surveyed the kitchen, dusting the flour off her hands on her apron. 'I wanted to get started last night, but I was just so tired after watch – if you could fetch the extra bucket of potatoes from the larder, Sirius? No,' she said, hustling to the fireplace and hauling out a cauldron to stir, 'Charlie's such a sweet boy,' she continued, presumably to Andromeda, 'I just wish he'd find a nice… someone – terrible luck in love, Charlie has.'

'He's not unlucky,' Ginny disagreed. 'He's just more interested in dragons and travelling – and whatever else. He hasn't tried to settle down.'

Dodging a flying roasting dish, Hermione found a place to work on the kitchen table that wasn't surrounded by dancing knives.

'But he would make any girl – or whoever,' Molly added, rather pointedly, 'so happy!' She tutted, spared Ginny a brief glance (who'd rolled her eyes), then went on, 'Oh, and the bag of onions too, Sirius, if you would.'

Sirius, who hadn't moved towards the larder, nodded. When Molly looked away he leant nearer Ron and whispered, 'Where's the larder?'

'I'll switch with you,' was Ron's answer. He held out the peeler. Sirius pulled a face, but took it and sat to the mountain of vegetables Ron had been lazily skinning.

Minerva turned up to join them a short while later, and not long after that they were dismissed from the kitchen with instructions to 'enjoy the nice day'. The back garden had filled a bit, the twins, Bill, Fleur, Leonora, and Angelina having arrived while they were in the kitchen.

'Lunch going to be a while yet?' Fred asked.

'Reckon so,' said Ginny as, above her, a window opened noisily.

'Ah, good,' said Ron, his head poking out the window. 'Bill – hold out your arms.'

Bill took a step back to see Ron better.

'Why?' he asked suspiciously.

''Cause otherwise I'm going to drop mum's nice tablecloths on your head,' Ron told him. 'And if you miss them, you get to clean them.'

'Very considerate of you,' remarked Bill, but he obligingly held out his arms.

It didn't take long for a game of Quidditch to be suggested. Neither Hermione, nor, it seemed, Leonora, had much interest. Hermione figured Tonks would, however, and, followed by Leonora, went to find the witch.

Tonks and Teddy were in the front garden, Teddy coated in mud and feathers, and Tonks sitting amongst the chickens with a bucket over her head. As they approached, Tonks leant forward, letting Teddy pull the bucket off her head. She emerged from under it with her hair in bright orange spikes, her nose a pointy beak, and a cross-eyed expression on her face. Teddy roared with laughter, dropping the bucket and landing hands-down in the mud.

Tonks met the news about a Quidditch game with enthusiasm

'You don't mind?' she said when Hermione offered to watch Teddy for her.

Hermione shook her head and Tonks hustled to her feet.

'That'd be excellent! Thanks – and how dirty's my backside?'

Tonks turned around to present it to them.

'Erm…' said Leonora.

'Caked with mud,' Hermione told her.

'Bugger,' Tonks said. 'Thought so.'

''Ere,' Leonora moved in with her wand. 'I weell fix eet for you.'

Hermione stepped around Teddy, caught his hands, and helped him rise to his feet. Standing, Teddy's head tilted right back, looking to see who it was. It took him a moment, staring up at Hermione, to break into a gorgeous smile.

Leonora moved back when she was done. Tonks twisted to see the seat of her artfully ripped jeans.

'Thanks! Okay, so,' Tonks turned and shot a meaningful look at Teddy. 'Be warned,' she went on, 'he crawls pretty fast now. And,' Tonks plonked the muddy bucket in Leonora's hands. 'Bucket game is his new favourite,' she advised. 'Thanks again!'

'I do not want to put zis on my 'ead,' Leonora said after Tonks had hurried off, looking down at the bucket. She raised her look to Hermione and pulled a face, showing Hermione the likewise mucky inside of the bucket.

They swapped heads, thus, for Teddy's dragon toy, dumping the bucket over it.

'You don't care much for Quidditch?' Hermione asked Leonora as Teddy crawled interestedly towards his hidden toy.

'I 'ave played eet very leetle,' said Leonora. 'I like ze flying, but not so much back and forward again across a field.'

Hermione nodded. The conversation, barely started, lulled there. Searching for something else to say to the person who was her unexpected companion in Teddy-minding, Hermione watched the baby try to topple the bucket. Behind him, a chicken was making either a blind or cautious approach towards them, its bok-ing and pecking on course for Teddy's backside.

Leonora got there first.

'Geenny told me you wanted to 'ave a – em… deefferent wedding when all zis is over.'

Hermione looked up, surprised that news had made its way to Leonora.

'I…' she said. 'Well, I… didn't wear a nice dress the first time –' she broke off as Teddy succeeded in revealing the hidden toy dragon. Grabbing it, Hermione made it roar (which startled the clucking hen, but not, thankfully, Teddy), bounced it onto Teddy's leg, and then hid it under the bucket again with an exuberant, 'Oh no! Where'd it go?' to the little boy.

'A party,' said Leonora, nodding, 'and a nice dress. 'Ave you ideas for eet?'

Not fully-formed ones, but Leonora didn't appear to expect Hermione to have planned out her wedding thoroughly. She had ideas to offer, talked Hermione through different dress styles, and just seemed to enjoy chatting about it. Not a subject Hermione had ever previously discussed at length, prattling on about a romantic wedding to be had sometime in a more carefree future was nice.

'I'm not sure I'd look good in a fishtail dress,' Hermione said. Or, she wasn't so sure anyone looked good in a fishtail dress, but she could imagine Leonora knew ones that were twenty times classier than any fishtail dress Hermione could call to mind.

'Ze beegger problem,' Leonora said sagely, 'ees looking good walking een a fishtail dress. Eet ees a skeell I tried to achieve for a month – heels and ze dress, with no one zair to see, walking all around my 'ome. Eet steell looked like I needed ze toilet.'

Now spinning the bucket around in the dirt as Teddy tried to chuck his toy into it, Hermione snickered. Her legs having long tired of squatting, she'd given up on being disinclined to sit in the cold mud. Leonora, her cloak wrapped up tight around her, likewise had sat down next to her.

'I'm sure I'd do no better,' Hermione said.

They both looked up at the sounds of hoots and shouts overhead. Appearing, at top speed, over the roof of the Burrow were five of the day's Quidditch players, lying flat to their brooms. Just in front of them was a black dot Hermione realised, with a grimace, was probably a haywire bludger.

'What ees eet?' Leonora called up to them.

A couple of the fliers spared her only a second's glance.

'Charm's getting old!' one of the twins shouted back.

'Watch it!' yelled Ron as the bludger suddenly changed course, rocketing away from Sirius and shooting towards where Harry had raced around to head it off.

'Careful your teeth, Harry!' shouted a twin.

Harry braced himself, pausing high above the ground, his arms ready for what would be a painful catch.

Hermione's teeth grit, waiting for the impact. It didn't come. With a holler, Ron dodged sideways, arms outstretched but his effort in vein, the bludger having changed direction once again. Two spells, aimed at the bludger but missing it by metres, went flying wild, Harry having to duck one. From below, Hermione could see the bludger was moving too quickly and erratically to be anything of a target.

'Put your wands away!' Sirius shouted, hauling his broom around as the bludger rocketed in the direction of the orchard. 'Before you hit someone!'

Sirius's instructions to fan out and surround the bludger got quieter as they all flattened themselves back to their brooms, racing after the escaping ball. Hermione pulled her eyes from the sky, no longer able to see them with the Weasleys' house in the way. Meeting her eye, Leonora pulled a grimace.

'Weell eet break zair bones eef zey catch eet?'

'Probably,' Hermione answered. The bucket was forgotten in her hand. Remembering it, she looked down.

And then looked to where Teddy had been a moment ago.

Hermione shot to her feet. There was nothing there but a pecking hen. The rogue bludger forgotten, she spun around in a circle, looking for the little boy. For all the minutes Hermione had been keeping an eye on him he hadn't looked even in the slightest interested in running off!

Icy dread sluiced from the top of her head to her toes. In one second, Hermione's mind went from thinking he was just so camouflaged by dirt she couldn't see him right before her, to thinking some evil person had snuck into the garden past the defences and stolen him. Had the bludger been jinxed to serve as a distraction?

But, no – with a wave of incredible relief, Hermione spotted the baby. Teddy, hands and knees pounding the dirt, was crawling madly for the door to Arthur's rickety-looking garage. A door that was hanging partially open and half-broken from its hinges.

'Shit!'

Hermione broke into a run, Leonora scrambling up after her. Ahead, Hermione could've sworn Teddy was crawling even faster – like he knew he was risking being caught and his mischief ended. Terrified of what live wires Arthur could have in his garage, Hermione sprinted for the door even as Teddy hurried his muddy little bum through the gap.

Reaching it just behind him, Hermione swung the door open – and was momentarily shell-shocked by the sheer variety of stuff Arthur had filled the place with; Leonora skidding to a stop beside her.

'Oh la vache!' Leonora exclaimed, surprised, looking over Hermione's shoulder.

No sign of Teddy. Just a packed landscape of things: Muggle tools, electronics, two incomplete bicycles hanging from the roof, what looked like the entire steering column of a very large lorry, industrial-sized gears, mechanical pulley-system things, hubcaps, a set of assembled train wheels, an entire crate of batteries, more than one bonnet hood – strings of chords like decorative streamers and even the fairy lights Hermione had missed at Christmas.

Hermione shook herself, dropped to hands and knees, and started searching at ankle-height for any sign of the disappeared Teddy.

Immediately to her left was the gap under a huge workbench. Several batteries and a hacksaw had made their way under it. Though the sight of the hacksaw wrapped a chill grip of terror around Hermione's heart, she couldn't see Teddy anywhere near it. Moving on, Hermione spotted springs she was pretty sure had once served as shock absorbers in the same very large lorry the steering apparatus had come from. Next to those was the basket and deconstructed casing of an old, wood-look veneer washing machine. And next to that, Leonora pointing it out, was the dirty dragon toy.

Hermione shoved to her feet and pushed her way through a hung tasselling of electric cables.

'Teddy?' she called loudly, ducking to look into an old and broken-looking dryer. Here, where you couldn't see the shed for the stuff in it, they'd be finding a baby in a rubbish tip. 'Teddy!' she called louder, rolling away a rack from a dishwasher.

Sounding far less terrified, and a lot more like she was treating it as a game, Leonora called a coaxing, 'Where's Teddy?'

Hermione shot a look at her, then heard the answering infant laugh. Leonora smiled.

Clever, Hermione thought. She nodded back. Creeping under a film-set studio lamp, complete with scrim and barn doors, she sung, 'Oh dear! We've lost Teddy!'

The gurgled laugh came from ahead and to her left.

'Where's 'ee gone?' Leonora continued the game.

Another giggle. Hanging onto a rusted old barbecue, Hermione clambered over an enormous coil of electric cable she was sure was a high-voltage power line, ceramic discs and all.

'He's disappeared!'

The laughter came louder and wilder now. There was the sound of tumbling somethings Hermione figured were probably more plastic hubcaps – they certainly didn't sound heavy – then the thump-thump-thump of a little boy crawling into the tipped-over wheelie bin she could see behind the barbecue's discarded propane cylinder.

Not daring to feel relief just yet, Hermione crept past a broken traffic light she hadn't the mind to wonder the acquisition story of, caught the mouth of the bin, and peeked inside. Teddy, his hair a fantastic array of bright pink and blue curls, grinned out at her. Sitting on his backside near the end of the empty bin, he clapped his hands gleefully, gurgling with amusement.

'You,' Hermione told him, getting onto hands and knees to crawl in after him, 'are going to be even more of a troublemaker than either of your parents managed to be. I feel for Minerva.'

This seemed to amuse Teddy even more, the baby shrieking with laughter as Hermione joined him in his plastic den. With zero grace, Hermione managed to hook him into one arm and crawl back out. Leonora helping clear a path and retrieving the dropped toy, they got back outside, the baby safe and sound. Hermione pushed the garage door as shut as it would go and breathed a much-needed sigh. She supposed she could cross that one off her list. She'd never crawled into a bin before.

The moment of relief had little time to be enjoyed. Teddy secure on one hip, Hermione and Leonora hurried around the house to see what had happened with the rogue bludger. They made it into the back garden to see the team of fliers, now swollen to include a few more members, bolting over the tops of the trees in the orchard, a couple racing around to try to overtake the bludger and head it off before it flew into Muggle territory.

It dodged the two, spun around as the rest hurtled towards it, and, just as Hermione was reaching the back gate, slammed straight into Ginny's chest.

Hermione skidded to a halt, a hand on the latch of the gate, staring.

To Ginny's credit, she kept hold of the bludger. She didn't maintain her seat on her broom. The mass of fliers racing to grab her was like a flock of mad birds. Hermione saw Ginny's hair, dangling into the branches, then Ginny's foot, hung onto by both Ron and Bill.

The bludger was contained and Ginny lowered gently down to the leaf-strewn ground of the orchard. She wasn't badly hurt, but thoroughly winded and sporting a pretty bruised and, in one spot, fractured ribcage Sirius fixed for her. She also, Ginny informed Hermione, likely now had sorer boobs than Hermione did.

All in all, it probably wasn't the best birthday Arthur had ever had, but when the excitement died down and Molly started looking a little less frazzled, it became a pleasant and companionably tired lunch.

'Did the bludger go past the wards at all?' Hermione asked as she, Harry, and Sirius passed the back gate to portkey home from the orchard.

'Nah,' said Sirius. 'Don't reckon so.'

'It's lucky for us,' said Harry dryly. 'According to Percy that would be a "Grade Two breach of the Statute of Secrecy", which sounds ominous.'

There was a lot that would be ominous about a bludger getting out unchecked into the world. From what the sentence for the persons responsible for it would be, to how many Muggles it would injure before the Ministry found the resources to handle it.

There was the hubbub of goodbyes and last birthday wishes behind them. Many had afternoon watches to get to, Harry, who was only heading home to put his broom away, included. The orchard ahead, no longer filled with bludger-chasers, now looked serene; an afternoon sun that was attempting to be warm above. They were descending the hill now in companionable silence, Sirius with his arm light around Hermione's back.

It chose that moment to hit her:

In six months' time, Hermione wasn't going to be just her anymore. There would be no future of a carefree young woman looking forward to her wedding. She was going to be a mother.

Hermione slipped. It felt like her entire world had turned, abruptly, upside-down.