"I'd rather you not, Ronald." Hermione says, crouching against the cinderblock wall behind the coin laundry.
Evening hangs like a pink velvet blanket over the parking lot. Dinged-up 90s cars native to this neighborhood wheel lazily through shining, mirrored puddles.
"Oh, sorry…" Ron blots out his joint and gingerly sets it beside him on the pavement. "I wasn't thinking about… the… er…" He shoots a pained glance at her straining jacket.
"It's you and your filthy lungs deserving the pity," she mutters blackly.
He shuffles through his backpack and removes a curled stack of papers and folders, handing them to Hermione.
"Lupin sent this, too," he says, pulling out a small paperback book with yellowed pages.
Hermione cradles the spine, carefully leafing it open in her hands.
"Oh my God, it's a first edition," she says. "Bridges' Constructive Analysis. It went out of print for decades. "
A sticky note slides out,
Hermione, this is for the space between. Chin up. -Mr. L
"Only you would plan on coming out of two weeks' expulsion ahead in all your classes, 'Mione…" Ron chuffs.
She slaps the book shut.
"Hardly fair."
"I know," he says. "Maybe you can help Harry with his thing."
"The federal investigation thing?" She blinks. "Still going on about the petition?"
Ron shrugs.
"He's got a bunch of underclassmen canvassing for him now."
"My, you've been busy while I was excommunicated," she snorts.
"He's obsessed, 'Mione." His shaggy head sways. "You know Harry."
Hermione sighs.
"I suppose it would be difficult, growing up as the poster child for corporate negligence."
"Answering television hosts on live broadcasts about his dead parents," he adds. "And he was just a kid."
"It explains a lot, doesn't it?"
A tenth of a smile shadows Ron's pierced lips.
"Yeah," he says. "He won't stop until Riddle and his company are buried."
Discomfort wraps around her stomach at the mention.
Of course Harry has the right to be angry with her.
Of course.
Fuck.
Her eyes start to gloss. She hiccups, bringing the back of her hand to the corner of her eye.
Damn hormones.
"Hey…" Ron's gaze bleeds with softheartedness. "It's alright, 'Mione."
Timidly, he gathers her to him, a fingerless-gloved hand reaching toward her face.
Angel soft, he thumbs away a tear from her cheek.
There's a breathlessness in the way he cushions her against him, in the grip of his other arm around her shoulder. She knows what it means, but she can't mentally acknowledge it right now. She just needs someone.
"It's so…" she chokes, "w-wrong and backward."
Squeezing her eyes shut, she lets the warm trickle course down her cheekbones and dribble off her nose onto Ron's hoodie.
He doesn't answer, but pulls her head into the crook of his shoulder, whispering a drone of platitudes.
When her sniffling slows, her voice crackles,
"Is it terrible that I love it?"
She smooths her jacket around the swollen melon resting in her lap, her hands gently sliding from top, to bottom, to top as if to calm the torment precipitated by her uninvited guest.
They listen to the whshsh of her long strokes against the polyester, tracing the arc of her belly.
Ron watches without breathing.
Studying her from under the shade of his copper-white lashes. Caught up in the spell of her slow, rhythmic movement.
When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse with things unsaid.
"It's not terrible. I always thought you'd make a good mother."
Her chest squeezes and she looks up into his sad eyes.
Had she thought a moment more, she would have known her next move would gut him.
But the butterfly wings return and she reacts.
She grasps his hand and cups it around the side of her belly, pressing him into the little morse code tapping from inside her quiet womb.
"Oh God…" Ron breathes, his lips slanting and a breath of a laugh stirring her hair. "Hermione…"
It's the lilt in his voice that betrays the runny insides of his heart, sliding out through a massive crack. The very slightest shift of his hand around her moves from curious to protective. She can feel his pulse against her shoulder, pattering with hope. Besotted.
The truth thuds heavy in her chest. He'd take them both if she asked.
She sucks in a deep breath.
"Are you saying I'd be a good mother because I'm bossy?"
She smiles, gently reeling them back into old routines.
His lips perk upward but his eyes dim.
"Yeah," he shrugs boyishly and pulls his hand away.
Days.
Days of nothing.
The mountain stage is beginning to claim the living room, and her mother with it.
Mrs. Granger has lost her bedroom pathway to heaps of pizza boxes, all stacked with the labels facing outward. She sleeps propped up before the blinking television, in a cavern formed by where a listing stack of newspapers caught a falling tower of legal boxes. The physics of the disaster seems amenable to deferring acknowledgement. For now.
Hermione's not even sure where her mother is getting the materials for her additions.
"I'm headed to the store." Hermione stands before her mother. She pops out one hip, her belly stretching round and obvious through Harry's Secondhand Serenade tee.
A subtle confrontation.
Still, Monica Granger keeps her haggard eyes glued to the screen.
She's pale. Her shirt is stained, the couch flecked with a thousand little mishaps. Hermione understands that her mother can't handle those kinds of problems; not when she can't make peace with the one Big Problem seven years ago, when she was ten.
"Pick up those pork rinds. And spaghetti o's."
"'Kay."
The keys clink in Hermione's hand and she turns away, disappointed but unsurprised.
It's getting harder for her now, moving around in there. She maneuvers her belly around one thing, only to bump her ass into another. Damn it.
I can take care of you.
His car smelled like distilled money.
Buttery leather smooth against her thighs, heated seats. Power purring beneath the hood. Climate control like a pristine haven tailored to her precise needs.
She remembers his big hand curled around her thigh. He turned up his luxurant speaker system with the fluid tones of Death Cab and God, she wants to be where soul meets body.
What would that life be like?
"Betrayal," she whispers.
Cold air whips Hermione's coat against her skinny-jean stick legs. She pulls the lapels around her like a cocoon.
The sky is grey and tense, like it's on the edge of something. Her womb feels like that too, like it's about to ache or twinge or flutter even if minutes go by and she doesn't feel any of that.
She's about to climb into her Pinto when an unsettling figure approaches the drive.
It's a woman in a red pantsuit, clutching a black leather folder. Her head swirls with a medusa of salt and pepper curls.
An unhinged smile spreads across her big lips.
"Miss Granger, I take it?" Her heels clip up the driveway, hand extended.
"Yes." Hermione stiffens, clutching the door of her car like a shield.
The woman lets her attempted handshake drop to her side.
"I'm from social services, my name is Bellatrix Lestrange."
"What do you want?"
"There have been a series of complaints about your wellbeing, Miss Granger. Do you feel safe in your home?"
"Of course I do..." Rage climbs up her neck. "Who said that? Who told you I wasn't safe?"
"Oh, well…" Lestrange flicks her brows with a tsk tsk . "Let's see, I have letters dating back six months from your landlord, calls from your school, and even a friend of yours saying your mother is keeping extreme amounts of garbage inside your house, is that true?"
Electricity gathers around Hermione like the moment before a peal of thunder.
"Which friend of mine called you?"
"Miss Granger, I'm not allowed to disclose—"
"Who. Fucking. Called you."
Lestrange purses her lips.
"Harry Potter."
No.
Hermione's heart plunges down into her chucks.
He would never. Would he?
Lestrange swoops in for the kill.
"My dear, you were recently expelled from your school, were you not?"
"It… It wasn't like that." Her skin swelters with panic. "...I was defending myself from being harassed. Principal Dumbledore only expelled me for two weeks!"
The social worker coos with threatening sympathy,
"And you lost your job, oh poor dear!"
Sweat creeps down her back, her pregnant body itches.
"The manager heard about the… ugh. The school. She thought I needed time… time to figure out…"
Moisture starts to prism Hermione's vision.
"Oh, yes, dear." Lestrange steps closer, whisking out a package of tissues. "...And in your condition…"
The words take a perilous tone and a dart of true fear lances through Hermione's chest.
Lestrange isn't here for her.
She's going to take her baby.
A chest-rattling growl stirs inside her.
"We don't need you here!" she snarls.
Her hands spread protectively around the tiny person curled up under her skin.
Lestrange's bird eyes blink, blink.
"I couldn't find any record of a doctor visit, Miss Granger." She cocks her head. "I trust you'll be visiting an obstetrician soon?"
Hermione pauses.
"We can ensure you're both provided with excellent care, Miss Granger," Lestrange says, claiming more ground with another encroaching step.
Hermione's fingers linger at the hem of her back pocket.
This creepy bitch shouldn't be the first one to see.
It should be Ron or Harry.
But Harry. Harry! How could he rat her out? Shame thuds in her stomach. She did knowingly fuck his worst enemy, after all.
She reaches into her back pocket and takes out a folded piece of shiny paper. The image from this morning.
Her hand shakes.
Lestrange snatches the paper and unfolds it greedily.
"P-please, just go," Hermione says. "I've been seeing a doctor under a pseudonym. Everything's fine. Just go."
The woman squints at the grainy image and the side of her mouth curls. She folds it up with a brisk sigh and hands it back.
"Well, now, Miss Granger, you're in a precarious situation." Her brows lift. "I'll be monitoring you very closely, and if I find any additional warning signs, I'll be forced to go against your wishes and intervene."
Hermione sneers.
"I'm certain you won't."
Lestrange grasps her folder, her wild coils licking about her face as she nods. Her deranged smile sends pangs of revulsion through Hermione's body.
"Take care, Miss Granger," she says and clacks back down the driveway.
Hermione throws herself into her car and has a panic attack.
Forty minutes later, she backs her Pinto down the driveway and speeds off.
At the store, she buys two boxes of chocolate glazed Hostess Donuts. She sits in the parking lot and eats every last one, her fingertips tracing tender little circles matched by feather-kicks.
"Move it over there."
Tom Riddle stands in the middle of the bedroom, his bedroom. Or, at least, it was when he was a child. He occupies the balconied master suite now, but this room: this is the crèche of a prince.
Or princess, Tom doesn't care.
"I'd like it to face the bay window, but… no."
He strides across the room, long-legged and managerial. His crisp slacks shhhing.
"Here."
He points to the spot, an arbitrary point in a huge, vaulted room with gilded crown molding, swathed in calm greys and plush textures. Generous seating and bookshelves filled with titles like Make Way For Ducklings, and Blueberries for Sal. He hand selected every bamboo onesie and downy sweater that fills the drawers, every exquisite, tiny stocking.
His taste is elegantly restrained and minimalist, which does not downplay the fact that after of months reading reviews and magazine articles, he bought everything. Everything. Why the hell not?
"You mustn't put it in direct sunlight," he drawls.
The movers comply silently, shifting the new, designer furniture about with his every demand.
"There we are," he says.
He runs his palm across the powder-smooth white oak rim of the slatted crib.
Norwegian curves, Oslo made.
With aching kicks of his heart, he drapes a grey cashmere blanket over the side of it. White linen from Belgium covers the interior.
Only the best for his angel.
Darling stardust.
He glances at his Blackberry. Missed call from Malfoy. He chuckles like a spider, lazing in the corner of a tightly strung web.
Tom was pleased when he found the company also made a smaller, higher version of the crib designed to be a co-sleeping bassinet. It will fit flush against his master king.
How sweet, such a clever design.
She won't need to leave his bed for anything.