Chapter Thirty-Eight: Secrets
There were exceedingly few places the Tylers could not spy on. St. Mungo's, fortunately, was not one of them.
"Twins?"
"Yep."
"Are you sure?"
"Two are twins, right? Triplets are three."
"Good point. What sort are they?"
"One of each."
"How big are they?"
John held his hands apart like he was holding a football.
"About so." Cass and Blaise sighed as one.
"You didn't listen for how much they weighed?"
"Eight pounds, four ounces and four pounds, two."
"What?"
"The boy one's bigger." John frowned. "Almost like he was trying to crowd his sister out. Sort of strange, eh?"
"To say the least." Cass had a stern look starting on her face. "I'll go and let the other professors know."
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The door of the hospital room suddenly banged open and shut. Maria looked up and squinted. She saw noone there.
"Twins?" a disembodied voice asked.
"Yes," Maria mumbled tiredly, before realizing she was talking to nobody. "Who's there?"
"Me."
"That's so helpful."
"Are they both okay?"
Maria suddenly sighed with relief.
"Professor Tyler."
The Invisibility charm suddenly dissolved and Cass appeared. She set her wand down on Maria's bed, perching on the end of it.
"How'd you know it was me?"
"Your voice." Maria sighed and sipped from her water glass. "Noone else talks like that."
"Thanks awfully. How are they?"
"Alive." Maria's expression and tone were a study in disconsolatude. "The one's in there." She gestured to a bassinet. Cass gave Maria a look of pity as she crossed the room to where the small baby lay. "That's the girl."
"Awwww!" Cass, it seemed, was one of those people who could find even baby flobberworms cute; not that Maria's daughter left anything to be desired in the cuteness department. "She has eyes!"
"Most babies do." Maria had almost laughed.
"I mean dark ones." Cass smiled and wiggled some fingers at the baby. "Most babies come with blue. They're your eyes."
"The boy has Milton's look. That's who he's with right now."
Cass stiffened at the mention of Milton's name.
"Why isn't he with his mother?"
"Because Milton's family is afraid I might hurt the heir."
"And they aren't afraid for the girl?"
"She's a girl. They don't give a damn."
"Bastards," Cass swore. Maria's expression didn't change and the professor spoke to her quietly. "You aren't supposed to let people swear in front of your kid, Maria."
"I don't know if I give a damn, either."
There was a long silence.
"May I hold her?" Cass inquired hopefully.
"Sure." With surprising care, Cass lifted up the tiny infant. "Watch her head!" Maria cautioned. Cass gave her a smirky grin.
"I think you give a damn." With the baby safely in the crook of her arm, Cass reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a folded object. "This was mine…I felt she'd like it." With a snap of the wrist, Cass let the pink blanket unfurl before she wrapped the little baby girl in it.
"Thank you."
"They weren't expecting twins, I figured, and they wanted a boy, so it didn't seem like she'd have many things in pink."
"No, she doesn't."
"You do now," Cass told the baby. "Your mad auntie Cass will make sure you have lots and lots of pink things to wear. And when you get bigger, you shall have flared bluejeans and a Penguins shirt to piss your…father off." Maria smiled faintly and Cass turned to her. "What's her name?"
"I haven't decided. It has to rhyme somehow with Jeremy…that's what they named the boy."
"Miserable -sacks of used Kotex…" Cass censored her language. "Jem's short for Jeremy. Why not Jen?"
"Jen?" A slow smile crept onto Maria's face. "It's a little short…Jennifer?"
"How 'bout it?" Cass asked the baby. "Are you a Jennifer?" The little infant made a sound and yawned. "I think she is. How 'bout a middle name or six?"
"Six?"
"Well, at least one."
"Blaise. She's my best friend, and they won't mind a pureblood name." A sudden idea occurred to Maria. "Jennifer Blaise Cassandra. They'll think it's after Cassandra Trelawney."
"Naw," Cass smiled. "This baby's too clever to be called that. Aren't you a clever girl? Yes, you're clever. You're going to do great things." Maria smiled sadly at her professor and daughter. She knew that Cassandra deserved a child more than she wanted this one.
"Take her with you."
"What?"
"Take her. The Blodgetts won't care about a girl. Raise her to be a mad liberal American and let her have friends from every house."
"Maria, I…" Cass glanced at the infant and for a split second Maria knew she wanted to obey. "Maria, she's yours. A pureblood father's bad, but a drunken werewolf who could get killed in the war is worse." Cass gave the young mother a crooked half-smile. "I'll just be her crazy aunt."
"How about her godmother?" Maria was beginning to look desperate. "Not on paper, they'd never allow it. But secretly, I'd pick you to look out for her."
"Maria, I'd look out for her if she belonged to a Tibetan yak." Cass smiled. "Thank you." With a look of pride, the American looked over her secret godchild. "You have such pretty eyelashes…why is her hair still wet?"
"She's only an hour old."
"Oh." With a corner of the pink blanket, Cass gently rubbed some of the moisture out, being careful of the soft spot on little Jennifer's head. "You'll be stylin' once your hair's dry… Maria!"
"What?"
"Have you looked at your daughter?"
"Why?"
Purposefully, with the infant still in her arms, Cass strode across the floor to Maria's bedside. She gestured to the newborn baby's downy thatch of hair and uttered a single word.
"Red."
Maria looked, and gasped in abject astonishment a second later when she realized the werewolf was right. Noone in her family, nor in Milton's, had red hair, whereas Bill Weasley's was almost notorious. Her daughter was a Weasley.
"But- -but it's impossible!"
"Considering the evidence, Maria, I think it is!" A broad, merry grin had suddenly darted onto Cass's face, making the calm smile of earlier look like a mere smirk by comparison. "The boy's Milton's, y'said? Fraternal twins have different fathers all the time in tabloid newspapers and medical journals…you're free, Maria! You don't have to stay with that great git Blodgett! I'll get you the best divorce lawyer in America and England, plus I can have the whole goddamn Aurory take him out of the picture for what he did! Little Jen, your dad's going to be so pleased!"
"Will he?" Maria cut in coldly. Cass stopped grinning as if she had been smacked.
"Maria, he…"
"Doesn't know and doesn't need to know." Maria had picked up Cass's wand from the bedspread. With a deft motion, she put a charm on the baby's hair. "Follicus rechromus!"
Baby Jen's tuft of red hair was now an obsidian shade of black.
"Maria!" Cass looked, horrified, at the baby in her arms. "You can't do that to her!"
"Oh, can't I? I can spring a bastard child on Bill, ruin his life with it, and drag him and her through the messiest divorce the Ministry can cook up! I can let the Blodgetts make attempts on her life and his until they succeed! I can force Jen into a life worse and more confusing than mine ever was!"
"More confusing, Maria, but you can't get much worse." Cass was angry now. "You at least have to tell him he has a child!"
"I sincerely doubt he would want one, Professor! The school rules about ratting your students out don't apply to dropouts and teen mothers!"
"The human rule of decency still applies!"
"Decency? This from you?" Maria's voice woke the newborn, but Jen didn't cry. "The professor who would happily have killed one of her students for a crime?" Cass didn't flinch at the mention of Milton's injury, nor did she protest. "Come to think of it, human rules don't apply to you! You're a werewolf and a Muggle-born! You have no idea how pureblood families work!"
"I am the bastard of a McLancey and a Malfoy, you ignorant twit!" Cass had at least the sense to put Jen in the bassinet before she yelled again in a loud, steely voice. "Cast a dispellment charm on me and watch! I fucking dare you!"
"Finite incantatem!"
Maria hadn't expected anything small, but the shock of her professor's burgundy hair going white-blond was larger than she was prepared to deal with. "Merlin's ghost…You really are, aren't you?"
"Yes, Maria, I'm as pureblooded as they come. I haven't told anyone but you." The Slytherin girl's eyes lit up and her voice grew more hysterical.
"So you have to keep my secret, or I'll tell yours!"
"And what if you do? Everyone's bound to find out anyway, and then Malfoy'll kill me and John'll kill him and the Death Eaters'll kill John and the rest of them, but not before we kill Voldemort! There is nothing but death in my future, Maria, no matter what I do or who I am! I have seen what is to come and it is my grave, but I'll be goddamned if I go to it alone!"
This tirade was cut off abruptly by a fit of coughing from the werewolf. Maria relaxed suddenly.
"Professor…?"
"Yeah?" Cass gasped.
"You can tell Bill if you want. I won't tell on you."
"Not that it would matter if you did."
"I just don't know if Bill…he didn't want her any more than I did."
Cass's cold blue eyes went soft.
"Maria, you did want her, and so did he." A single tear slid down the werewolf's cheek. "I don't know whether you know it yet, but there's no other way she could have been born at all."
"Honestly?" Maria asked.
"On my honor as…I haven't got honor."
"True." Maria's voice trembled as she raised the wand. "Me, neither. Obscurus minutus!"
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"So the girl's named Jennifer?" Blaise asked.
"Jennifer Blaise Blodgett," Cass agreed cheerfully. "She has the most pretty dark eyes."
"Was she healthy and everything?" Hermione asked.
"She's a little small, but yeah." Cass had returned from the hospital with a very cheery look on her face. It hadn't faded yet in the course of the evening, even when a crateload of books arrived wanting autographs. "Would you believe she didn't even wake up when I sneezed?"
"Sneezed? Was it cold?"
"Naw, I just sneezed really hard and Maria said 'bless you.' Little Jen didn't so much as bat an eye, the dear." Cass sneezed again, but not loudly. "There i'goes again. I might have that flu bug of yours, Hermione."
"Speaking of, is it any better?" Blaise inquired.
"The tea you made helped, but I miss the potion." Hermione frowned and lowered her voice. "I've got cramps you'd not believe since Madam Pomfrey took me off it."
"Can't Sevvy cook up one that's okay to take?" Cass asked.
"The flu potions all turn to cyanide with anti-menstrual stuff. It's pathetic. Something about the wormwood in one of them."
"Well, that leaves Muggle remedies, doesn't it?" Blaise asked, pulling a little box from her pocket. "I'm allergic to the one contraceptive, so there's no anti-menstruals I can take with the one I'm on. This is called Midol."
"Ugh, don't take that," Cass advised. "Makes your guts wambly."
"Advil, then?" Blaise suggested cheerfully. "I've got a small Muggle pharmacy in my trunk upstairs."
"Where do you get it?" Hermione inquired.
"I have an aunt who's a Squib and she sends me stuff."
"Can't she send any Muggle contraceptive things?" Cass asked. "Because then you'd…oh."
"Exactly. My aunt is only cool in some areas."
"Well, f'rchrissakes, what are Yankish professors for? I can take the whole sixth and seventh-year classes of girls on a great How Not To Get Knocked Up fieldtrip."
"Run that past the school governors," Ginny joked.
"Those old farts wouldn't know a sex drive if it ran them over," Cass remarked. "Professor McGonagall understands."
"Mental pictures!"
"You know," Hermione observed, holding up a copy of Cass and John's book. "I bet you could rework this for Muggles and they'd like it just as much."
"Have I –shit. I signed one twice." Cass tossed the offending book onto the pile of its' brothers. "Collectors' item, that."
"Why are you signing them all here?" Ginny asked. "You could do like Lockhart and have parties for it."
"Because John and I are the anonymous authors of this generations great smut classic. Conservative old biddies might picket a book signing."
"Right after they owl-ordered their own copies," Blaise jested. "Exactly how much money are you guys making on this thing?"
"Too much. John's given quite a bit to St. Mungo's research already, and I have a small surprise for the Quidditch teams coming up."
"What?" Ginny's eyes were wide. "Firebolts for all?"
"What a great idea!" Cass got a piece of paper. "I'll order twenty Firebolts. Actually, I'm going to have the pitch renovated and named after someone Umbridge really hates."
"Like who?" Hermione smiled.
"I don't know. Anyone controversial. The goal is to piss her off." Cass made an errantly arrogant gesture. "Money's no fun except for spending it on being offensive."
"Fred and George would heartily agree with you," Ginny remarked.
"Especially since I've bankrolled a second Weasley's Wizard Wheezes shop in Hogsmeade?" Cass grinned. "That was the other surprise. Would a statue of somebody for the school be fun?"
"One of Harry?" Ginny suggested. "Have him sitting around with a comic book, looking really ordinary."
"Or Fred and George flying off and Peeves saluting."
"One of Umbridge nude?" Cass mused.
"Ewww!" Hermione had gone ashen. "Scare the first-years, wot?"
"I've a better idea." Blaise grinned. "A statue of Umbridge in the girls' room, with her mouth open. We could use a good rubbish can in there."
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A/N: Warning. Next chapter contains a wee bit of a certain tangy citrus fruit. Reviews?