Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or its characters.

The morning after that first week of traveling, Ana had gone to breakfast in her pajamas to find both Remus and Bill in the kitchen. Remus was cooking breakfast and Bill was sitting next to Ginny with his arms around her while he spoke to an obviously less stressed Sirius.

She was still very drowsy so she could probably be forgiven for her less than cheerful greeting towards the two men. Actually she was pretty sure she had grunted at them sleepily while she curled into her godfather's side. She hadn't really been a morning person since they had begun traveling cross country on horseback.

Ana had practically inhaled her orange juice before she felt she could really acknowledge Remus and Bills presence that morning and while they had been amused they hadn't taken offense. Ginny was quite cheerful; she had her best friend and her favorite brother to help her through this new foreign territory and she couldn't help but feel so much better about having them with her.

After breakfast Sirius went outside the tent to pull two more horses from stasis; they would need to be fed and watered before they would be any use for traveling with a rider. If he was honest with himself, Sirius was extremely grateful that Remus and Bill had made it through the barrier to help him with protecting the girls. It was exhausting keeping an eye out for the girls as well as keeping watch for predators and other dangers. Dobby was decent help with protection detail but not much for conversation or moral. It would be good to have his brother watching his back again.

Remus had spent most of the morning before the girls had woken up reacquainting himself with his best friend, who had apparently slipped back into war footing during the week alone with the girls. At the moment, Sirius was all about protection and making sure the girls were healthy and happy, but he wasn't exactly doing anything more than what was essential for himself. He would most likely start doing better now that Bill and he were there to help out.

Remus had been glad to see that Ana and Ginny were in fact doing very well despite their situation. He had been told so but seeing it somehow made it more real.

"I'm glad you're here, Remus." Ana murmured, wrapping her arms around his waist.

He smiled, returning her hug, "I'm glad I am too."

After that they separated to go get ready for the day of riding. Ana and Ginny had been really happy to find out that Winky was a seamstress because neither of them actually had anything more appropriate to wear for horseback riding than jeans, t-shirt and tennis shoes. It was doable but the saddle and the inner thigh seams on the jeans were rubbing their thighs raw, the leather reins had started hurting their hands, and both she and Ginny had hurt their ankles on the stirrups several times.

Now that they had access to a seamstress (and why they didn't think of this sooner they didn't know), Ana and Ginny were determined to fix these issues. They'd looked through some of the clothing catalogs until they'd managed to find one on riding wear. They'd be getting a late start today due to Remus and Bill's arrival so Ginny and Ana had commandeered Winky and left for Ana's room.

Winky had taken their measurements and had immediately started to get to work on a pair of riding breeches, riding boots, and a pair of gloves for the both of them. She would continue to make enough for a week's wear while they were traveling but the first pair needed to be done before they could go anywhere.

Sirius was taking his cues from her and Ginny, so Ana knew he wouldn't mind the delay in traveling for them to get some appropriate riders wear. They usually managed to get going by seven or eight in the morning and would end up riding for a good twelve hours, with of course half hour breaks to rest the horses and get something to eat. They usually managed to get a good distance of forty to forty-five miles a day but so long as they made it past twenty-five miles nobody really complained. Not that they would.

When they finally did get going for the day, dressed in their new riding breeches, riding boots, tucked in elbow length sleeved blouses and riding gloves on, it was ten in the morning. Winky had even included wand holsters that were to be strapped to their thigh closest to their dominant hand. Tiki and Tati had cleared the girls for using light weight magic but they still weren't allowed to use anything heavy duty.

Their saddle bags and traveling packs were usually handled by Dobby, with Tiki and Tati adding healthy snacks or an extra water canteen for Ana and Ginny, but with the influx of extra house elves around, reassignments had been handed out.

Dobby still did some cooking and cleaning but the bulk of it was being done by Kreacher, while Dobby was assigned to scouting the surrounding area for threats and protecting the girls. Winky had taken over laying out clothing for Ana and Ginny, preparing baths or just providing herself as a handmaiden for the girls. It wasn't something that was especially needed but Ana suspected that it would come in more use the further along in they were in their pregnancy.

Maki and Noni weren't really needed for anything physical just yet but they would be providing their expertise when it came to building houses. They would be helping with the blueprints for both Ana and Ginny's homes; taking in their requests and desires for their homes and finding ways to bring it to life with in their homes. Sirius had given them free reign on the Black Library with orders to search it for anything that would help with constructing their homes, with baby proofing and pregnancy proofing them.

It was during Remus and Bill's second week in Atlantis that Ana asked a question that had been bothering her since they had been trapped there. They had already been traveling for a good seven hours before she finally brought up her question.

"Hey Bill, how far into the ground does a ward go?"

Bill's horse whinnied as he tugged him to a stop in the middle of a flower field and starred at Ana with a dazed look in his eyes, "At most a ward can go maybe a mile deep. That's the deepest a ward has ever gone and even that had only been done at Hogwarts by the founders. It takes a lot of magic to put up extensive wards in the first place. The wards on this place would've had to be extremely extensive especially as those wards are what are keeping an entire ocean from falling down on our heads. The Unspeakables couldn't have made the wards go any deeper than a mile."

"Would we be able to tunnel under the wards to escape?" Sirius asked, pulling his own horse to a stop next to Ana.

Ginny grinned next to her brother as Bill nodded, "Yeah, we'd have to get to the ward borders and we'd also have to find the best and safest place to start tunneling especially considering we are under the ocean but it's certainly doable."

Remus continued after him, "Once we tunnel under the wards, we should be able to use any other type of magical transport right?"

Bill nodded, "Once the ward ends it has no say in anything outside its borders."

Ginny was grinning broadly, clearly excited at the possibility of no longer being trapped, "Great so we have a plan. How long do you think it'll be until we reach the border of the wards?"

Sirius tilted his head in thought, "At our current pace? I'd say another four weeks would be a good estimate."

Ginny was excited now that there was a possibility of escape but it still needed to be asked, "How long could it take to tunnel a mile beneath the wards?"

Bill grimaced, "Usually it wouldn't take more than maybe a month with the help of goblins but considering we are beneath the pacific ocean, we have to be extremely careful to not accidentally dismantle the ward and send the entire ocean down on us. To create this island it took the help of a redirected volcano as well so we would have to be careful about stumbling into that as well while we tunnel beneath the wards. Even with the help of goblins, it could take us six months to two years to safely tunnel our way out. Without them, I would estimate 18 months to four years."

"We wouldn't be able to count on construction house elves for this would we?" Sirius frowned, as he led their group further north.

Bill shook his head, "The most they would be able to do is help relocate anything we dig up and make stairs and tunnel supports. We'd have to do everything ourselves because of how delicate the situation."

Ana snorted, indelicately, "Delicate. That's one way to put it I suppose. How would you like to go, Gin? By fire or flood?"

Ginny snickered, darkly, "Why bother asking at this rate we'll both go by childbirth!"

Ana started snickering as well, while Sirius, Remus and Bill all glowered at Ginny for putting that nightmare in their thoughts. She wasn't exactly wrong though and sometimes it was easier to laugh about it than dwell and overthink about it. British humor at its finest right there. Ana tilted her head back and looked up into the forest canopy, humming. They'd been stuck here for three weeks and with each day that passed Ana began to grow more tired. Tiki said that it was a symptom of her pregnancy; extreme fatigue and had recommended that they cut their travel time down to eight hours a day instead of their usual twelve. So they were only going to be managing at most twenty-five miles a day, if that.

Within the last week, Ana and Ginny had learned quite a bit about magical pregnancies and even more about the magical procedure that their bodies and magic had been forced through. Magical pregnancies were far more durable than normal pregnancies, due to potions, rune enchantments and the parents own magical cores protecting and nurturing the womb. It was also another reason that mixed relations between muggles and witches, or humanoid magical creatures and witches were so looked down upon. A magical pregnancy depended on the magical cores of both parents, for a witch to fall pregnant with the offspring of a muggle would put the full magical burden on the mother to provide and protect her child or children.

However the pure-blood lines had become too interconnected and these days it had become difficult to become pregnant easily and so they had been forced to develop a procedure in order to help carry on their lines. It had become the norm to use the magical procedure after the first year of marriage without conceiving a child and in fact it was considered the best option for producing healthy children, because the procedure didn't take blood into account the way a natural pregnancy did, the only thing that mattered was the strength of the parents magical cores.

In other words, with the magical population on the decline, if the magical world had depended on natural pregnancies then the magical world would have been extinct already. With the magical procedure they could intermarry all they wanted and so long as they used the magical procedure instead of going natural they would have perfectly healthy children.

Tiki and Tati had explained to them that the half of their magic that had been bound to their reproductive system only provided their half of the protection and nutrition, as well as kept them in a continuous loop of pregnancies. It did not provide the father's magical half, only the signature to impregnate. Which meant that by the fourth or if they were lucky, the fifth month of pregnancy they did not recognize the father's magical signature within the womb, the mother would have to provide the full magical burden. Doing so would lead to complications for the rest of the pregnancy, the birth, and the recovery. It was the reason why everyone was so worried.

Tiki had been further worried for Ana due to her past malnutrition, but she had determined that Ana was powerful enough that her magic was seeing to any issues it could have caused to her womb, which meant that her magic would be working overtime and she may be forced to deal with a magic ban later in her pregnancy and a longer than usual recovery time for a magical pregnancy.

Ginny had been irritated to learn that her body was perfectly suited for pregnancy even at her age, but she was too aware of how difficult Ana's pregnancy could be with her previous medical issues to kick up much of a fuss, something Ana had been thankful for.