New Resolutions

By Jon08

Chapter 3: Conceptionis, Corvus ex Centaurus.

After our tour of the Salem Academy, Gabrielle and I spent a few days playing tourist around Boston, Cape Cod, Lexington, places we had heard about. We enjoyed this period of quiet time just seeing the sights and enjoying each other's company.

It was on the sixth day of our honeymoon, when I woke to a sight that caused me some distress, as I slowly came around, I noticed Gabby lying in bed next to me, soaking in sweat with a smile on her face. However I tried I couldn't wake her from her sleep, and although she seemed to be sweating profusely she actually felt cold to the touch. What was wrong with her, I grabbed my mobile phone from the table beside my bed, the hotel phone was on the opposite side of the bed and I was too worried to get up and cross the room. I quickly dialled 999, this being the number for emergency services in Britain. For a few seconds my phone tried to connect and then said unknown number. I hit myself on the head with my phone and dialled 911, I was in the states and it was a different number, plonker.

The voice of the operator calmed me down somewhat, but I was still concerned as I told her what was happening, "right Mr. Dursley, you say your wife is unconscious, sweating and yet very cold to the touch, is there anything else you can tell me that may give the ambulance crew any idea what to expect when they arrive?"

I thought for a moment about what I had learned about magical America, "err! My wife is part veela," hoping I wouldn't have to explain this or be in trouble for breaching any laws by telling the operator this. In Britain telling a muggle this would be seen as breaching the Statute of Secrecy, veela were magical beings and you never talked to muggles about magic.

"Veela, Mr. Dursley, did I hear you correctly? Just let me check the database!" There was an agonising delay of several minutes which in all probability was just a few seconds, but in my panicked state felt like nearly an hour. "Mr. Dursley, do you know how to take a pulse?" I vaguely grunted something in the positive. "Very good, please take your wife's pulse!"

I took hold of Gabby's wrist and counted the beats watching the second hand of my watch. "It's very slow, about 30 beats a minute," I told the operator in a panic.

"Very good, Mr. Dursley, now please try to open her eyes and look at the pupils, what are they like?" I lifted her eyelids one by one and looked at each eye in turn. Her eyes were her usual pale blue, but there was no sign of pupil in either eye, indeed, her eyes seemed particularly vivid in colour, and I told this to the operator. "Very well, Mr. Dursley, from the information I have in front of me, your wife is in no danger, the emergency crew should be with you momentarily and will do some other tests but I don't believe they'll need to take her to a hospital!"

There was a knock on the door and a voice called out, "emergency technician, you called an ambulance." I called out to the person behind the door that I was coming and told the operator that the ambulance had arrived and got up to open the door.

There were two people outside the door in green overalls, one of those ambulance trolley things between them piled with several large bags; a hotel porter with them, I let the two ambulance people in, and the hotel porter gave me a nod and set off down the corridor to the lifts. I turned back the bed; one of the technicians was shining a penlight in Gabrielle's eyes, "hmm! Paradoxical papillary reaction," he said aloud and his partner noted this on a large form he had on a clipboard. "Pulse 30, strong; respiration, 30, shallow; temperature 35," he said as he pulled a thermometer from her armpit. He waved his hands in the air over Gabrielle and muttered something under his breath. He smiled at his colleague and stood back up from where he had been kneeling by the bedside. "Erm! Just enquiring Mr. Dursley, what time did you and your wife go to sleep last night?"

I blushed and admitted it had been sometime after two! He looked at his watch, "your wife should wake up in about an hour; she's perfectly fine. I'll leave it up to her to tell you! I would advise you to order breakfast via room service as she won't feel like getting up straight away, but that's perfectly normal." He grinned at his colleague, who grinned back and placed the clipboard back on top of the trolley and made his way to the door, and they both let themselves out. Now what the bloody hell had that all been about?

I looked at my watch, it was just after 9, what was all that grinning about between the two ambulance technicians; and what was this about Gabby waking up in an hour? On the other hand, they hadn't seemed concerned, in fact almost smirking about something with each other. I got up from the bed and started pacing back and forth in the room; damn those men, couldn't they have told me what was happening instead of being sp bloody cryptic. I gave a look at my watch again and thought I needed to relax for when she woke up; I hope they were right about her waking up in about an hour. I made my way to the shower and proceeded to try and get myself ready for the day, I had to do something or I'd go mad.

I was sitting nervously in one of the armchairs in the suite, after I'd showered and dressed for the day; the cup of coffee I'd made for myself slowly going cold on the table beside me, when I heard Gabrielle sigh and mutter something, then she slowly rolled herself onto her side and looked across at me, "you're up early! What time is it?"

I got up and almost ran to the bed and sat down beside her, taking her hand in mine, her skin felt perfectly normal now, dry and warm. I breathed a sigh of relief and gave her a quick kiss, "it's after ten, and I was up at a perfectly decent time, I had to call the paramedics about you this morning, you were sweating something terrible and felt so cold. They weren't very helpful, just said you were fine and they'd leave it up to you to tell me. I've been worried sick, I'm sure the hotel will charge us for wear and tear in the carpet where I've been pacing up and down."

Gabrielle looked at me wide eyed, "what other symptoms did I have? Please I need to know?"

"Slow, strong pulse; fast shallow breathing and almost hypothermic and something about paradoxical pupil reaction, whatever that means!"

"It means that for the next nine month's I'll be throwing up and getting fat, now is there any chance of breakfast, I feel like I could eat a hippogriff?"

I looked at her in alarm, what was that all about throwing up and getting fat for the next nine months... NINE MONTHS... "Gabby, are you pregnant?"

She looked at me through her eyelashes; then broke into a grin, "somewhere up to eight hours pregnant; so it's a bit early to be telling anyone yet, but I've definitely undergone conception. You'd better not tell me you didn't want children this early, because I'm afraid you've no voice in the matter!"

"I'm ecstatic, I wasn't expecting to get pregnant so quickly, but I couldn't be happier, me a dad, who'd believe it?"

"I would! Now please Dudley can I have something to eat, I'm positively famished, I feel like I haven't eaten for a week!" I dialled room service and as she told me what she wanted I relayed it over the phone; she wasn't joking when she said she was hungry, she'd ordered enough food to rival the type of meal the old me had put away when Harry was living with us at Privet Drive.

As she sat on the bed, slowly making her way through several eggs, sausages and enough bacon to feed a whole family, I asked what had occurred with her to make her look so ill.

"I told you that veela, require magic in order to conceive; well whilst magic is accomplishing this, the body basically shuts down, goes into autopilot mode. There is no energy to spare to allow normal interaction with society, so the veela is unconscious."

"Okay! But what was that paradoxical pupil reaction, the ambulance guy was talking about, sounded like gobbledegook to me?"

"I only understand some of why it occurs, but what it is I understand fully, it is one of the telltale symptoms of what is happening. Whilst conception is happening the pupils of the veela's eyes act oddly. Normally if you shine a light into someone's eyes, their pupils contract, get smaller; whilst a veela is conceiving, her pupils open up when a light is shone in them, the pupils get larger. A 'paradoxical' reaction, something that shouldn't happen."

"Ok! I understand that bit, but what was all this about what time we went to sleep last night?" I could feel my face heating up and I was sure I was blushing like an overripe tomato.

She looked me in the eye, blushing herself; "conception usually takes about eight hours, so he was checking when we went to sleep to see how long I had been unconscious." She broke off here and looked down through her eyelashes at the plate in front of her, obviously too embarrassed to say anymore. I could feel my own face getting hotter; I could probably fry an egg on my face the way it felt, as the implications of what that portion of the conversation had meant. A lot more than I had realised at the time.

Gabby was sat in bed still, drinking a cup of tea, when she yawned so widely that indeed if she hadn't just awoken, I would assume she hadn't slept for a week. "How come you're so tired you've only just woken up?"

"I wasn't asleep; I've just done the magical equivalent of running a marathon, that's why I'm so tired and hungry. I'm not going to be much company today, all I'm likely to do is eat and sleep. I'm happy this has happened, though I wasn't expect..." I looked down at her wondering why she'd stopped mid sentence; her eyes were closed and her breathing had slowed. She wasn't joking about tired! She'd fallen asleep again.

I gently put her head on the pillows and removed what little was left of the breakfast tray from the bed and tucked her in with a kiss on the forehead. Bloody hell, I was going to be a father, I knew it would have happened eventually and we'd both agreed that we wanted children, but this was all a bit quick, we'd been married less than a week and she was pregnant already. Granted it was still nine months until I became a father officially, but jeepers, this was going to take some getting used to.

Gabrielle looked so peaceful and contented just sleeping there in the bed, I sat and watched her for a while, trying to absorb the fact that my life had started to change in ways I hadn't really come to terms with yet, and wouldn't for nearly a year. After about half an hour of thinking about our future family, I decided that I couldn't just get my head round that yet, I needed something to occupy me whilst she slept. I went to our cases and took out one of the books I had purchased at the shop on the MIT campus; 'A Wizarding History of The Union', and started reading.

'The first colonists to the states on the Mayflower were unaware that a small party of wizards was amongst them; the initial wizard families that came across were one Jean Malfoi and his young bride and Simeon Slytherin who was running for his life having being affected by a werewolf bite. The Malfoi family were coming to the states to begin a new life, him being the third son and having no place in the family inheritance and wishing to make a new life in the new world. It is known that they owed a life debt to Slytherin as it was during saving the life of the young bride that he became infected with the curse of the wolf. During his first transformation on the voyage, they apparently caged and drugged him, so as to avoid his infection of any other passengers.

On arrival in the states, the Malfoi family began to settle in with the rest of the colonists and Slytherin left the colony in order to avoid any further complications for them. Jean and his young bride were able to make a living in the colony, due to his potion knowledge and magic as a healer; although at this point the European wizarding colony had not implemented their Statute of Secrecy, most wizards would not openly perform magic in front of muggles, but would make use of their abilities in private to be of use if they could. Muggle perceptions of magic at this time were supposedly one of superstition and suspicion. The European churches at the time were in a period of change and several groups of non-conformist groups were breaking away, the settlers on the Mayflower being such a group.

A lot of the misconceptions about magic on behalf of the Christian Church stem from an old corruption of words by the church forefathers. The main pre-Christian religion of Europe was Wicca and its worshipers called themselves witches and wizards, indeed at this time there was no 'pureblood' policy and most wizards lived happily in their local communities. The early Roman Catholic authorities in attempt to repress this religion proclaimed that all non Christians were wicked (a corruption of Wicca) witches and were evil. {A/N This is true, indeed what a lot of muggles perceive as witchcraft these days has no collection to Wicca, and is Satanism, i.e. Anti-Christianity; and has no connection to the wizard community in general}. Indeed most of the wizarding world had openly professed Christianity in an attempt to the only connection to the Ancient Wicca faith was in the naming and language of some spells...'

I looked up from my reading as Gabrielle muttered something as she again woke up, rubbing her eyes, "mmm! Dudley, what time is it?"

I looked at the clock on the wall, "err, about 5, how are you feeling now? Any better?"

"Well! I feel hungry again, and a bit more refreshed than the last time I awoke, Fleur or Mum mentioned to me that I'd feel so completely drained though. I feel like I could sleep for a week, although from what I understand, I'll be back to normal by tomorrow."

We sat together on the edge of the bed eating together from the trolley the room service guy had brought our meal up on, "what do you think we should call her?" she asked, her eyes not leaving the plate in front of her.

"Her? It has an equal chance of being a boy, you know!"

"Sorry to disappoint, but wizard / veela births are nearly always female, that's why most wizards think there are only female veela. I think I've heard of one male birth in the last 1000 years; so I hope you don't mind a girl?"

"I don't care! If we have a daughter, it's fine with me! I like the tradition in my mum's family of naming the girls after flowers; my aunt was a Lily; mum, Petunia; and if I remember my grandmother was called Rose, I never met her, she died in my aunt's 6th year! I have absolutely no idea what dad's mum was called, she was always referred to as Grandma Dursley."

"I would like to name her Marie, after my grandmother, and it is my middle name, but I've no objection to flower name as second name, after all my sister is called 'flower' in English; but we've got ages to think yet! Anyway, what have you been doing all day anyway to keep yourself occupied, I'm sure you must have been bored?"

"Reading, mainly, one of those books we picked up at the school, it's quite fascinating; there was only one wizard family on the Mayflower and the only purebloods available for their children to marry would have been their own siblings. One daughter married a local Indian Medicine Man, and the eldest son married a Dutch farmer's daughter. The youngest daughter was a squib who married a teacher, but all the grandchildren were magical and stronger magically than their parents; so they decided that they would not refer to them as half-bloods or muggle-borns. That seems to have been the start of the American attitude to blood status and indeed the tolerance and acceptance of other types of magic..." I was going to continue, but suddenly felt I had lost my audience and indeed Gabrielle was lying on the bed again, fast asleep. I cleared up the remainder of the food and put the trolley aside for later collection and settled down to try and read a little more.

I had been trying to read for about an hour, but my mind kept drifting to the image of Gabrielle holding a blonde blue eyed little girl; of a blonde toddler; our daughter going to Hogwarts or indeed Beauxbatons. I was totally engrossed in the imagery of our future daughter, when there was a tapping at the window of our suite. What could that be? We were seven floors up, who could have gotten up here?

I drew my wand from my sleeve and made my way to the window. There was a large bird with black feathers, a black beak and indeed even black legs. The really unusual thing about it was the roll of parchment or paper tied to its leg. Oh well it was different to an owl, but I suppose American wizards must use these birds to carry messages, not that I knew any American wizards that might wish to write to me. I went to open the window, only to unfortunately knock the poor bird from its temporary perch as the window opened outwards. It gave a high pitched screech that sounded if it was saying 'aaah' and flew into the room.

It settled on the handle of the room service trolley and gave me a look as if to say, 'why did you have to go and do that?'

"I'm sorry, it was an accident!" as I said this the bird's glare grew less and it gave a look at its leg with the note tied to it and then back at me. I cautiously made my way to the bird and untied the roll of parchment from its leg. The bird took a few pecks at the food on the trolley, gave me another dark look and flew back into the night; a quite different bird to what British wizards use, some sort of crow perhaps. It was fascinating observing things that were different over here, even if they were the same.

I looked at the letter in my hand, who knew me in the States to be writing to me?

Dear Mr. Dursley,

I received an interesting call from my son, Alexander, in regard to yourself that may have repercussions on our society. You believe and after some investigation of my own I also believe you may be the bewigged pig of prophecy.

I am therefore extending an invitation to you and your wife to visit me in the State of New Sparta. The letter you are currently reading has been set to act as a portkey. You should both be touching it and speak aloud the name of the Greek Goddess of Magic, this will activate the portkey. I will be awaiting you around 11.00 at your destination.

Yours in anticipation

Theseus Alexanderson.

Blimey! What had I started with my casual conversation with our customs official? And who was the Greek Goddess of Magic, how was I going to activate this portkey, if I didn't know the name?

Please review and let me know how I'm doing. The next chapter will see the fulfilment of one of Dudley's prophecies from The Start of Something New.