Chapter 21 Births and Dark Lords!
Christmas was going to be a slightly different experience in the Potter and Dursley households this year. On Christmas Eve, Ginny had been rushed into hospital with strong pains in her abdomen. The healers were worried, she was eight months pregnant and it was definitely not labour pains that she was experiencing. Harry and young James were round at mine and we would all be visiting St. Mungo's later. Mum was also present, she had more or less become a permanent part of my household since dad had died, the house in Privet Drive had been sold and although she talked of finding somewhere to move to, there had been no hurry to do so. Gabrielle and I welcomed her, she was a great help with Henri, absolutely doting on her grandson, and she treated Elrond like a member of the family as well, almost seeing him as some kind of adopted grandson. She seemed to have no prejudices about his elven heritage and just accepted him as he appeared a thirteen year old boy, not what I would have expected when I was growing up, but then again she had undergone lots of changes in her attitude since the year we had spent in exile in Tinworth.
We were currently all sitting at the table to a large, almost sinfully large Christmas dinner that had been cooked by Elrond and Dobson, although they were free members of our households, members of staff, or vassals in the case of Elrond, neither Harry or I treated them like servants or slaves as I understood some wizarding households had treated their house elves in the past, they still felt it was their job to see to the meals and general household chores that came up. Hey! Was I to complain, my student flat had been a pigsty, most of the time I was at university, only really getting a clean when mum and dad had announced one of their visits, really just an inspection and intimidation visit by dad to try and get me to give up this goody-goody version of my future I had settled on and trying to convince me to come and work for him at Grunnings. Like that had been going to happen.
As we all finished the main course of roast goose (i), with all the trimmings, Elrond descended from the table to begin clearing and preparing to set everything up for the next course there was a chime from the fireplace indicating a floo-call waiting to be accepted. Even though mobile phones had now made major inroads in the wizarding world and indeed even computers were in a lot of households, every magical household still had this connection open.
"Accept call," I said and made my way to the fireplace, only to see the face of Ginny's healer in the flames.
"I'm sorry to bother you Mr and Mrs Dursley, but are you aware of the whereabouts of Mr Potter, we have tried to floo his house and even to phone him, but there is no answer there."
Harry made his way quickly to the fireplace, "I'm here, we're spending Christmas Day with family, what's wrong?"
"Nothing exactly!" Said the healer although even I could sense this was not the whole truth. "We've managed to find out what is causing your wife to experience these abdominal pains. Its appendicitis, now there is nothing unusual in this, it can be cured with a simple potion, unfortunately this particular potion cannot be administered to a pregnant woman and your wife needs it urgently. On informing your wife of this, she said to call you as you wished to be present at the birth of your son. Once he has arrived, we'll administer some potions to heal her of any problems giving birth and then the potion for her appendicitis. Again sorry, for disturbing your Christmas, but the need is urgent, if the problem is not sorted out today there is the possibility of the appendix rupturing and then the prognosis is not good for either your son or wife."
"Right, I'll be there shortly; Dudley will you and Gabrielle look after James for me?" he looked at the healer again, I just need to step outside and I'll apparate from there."
"Go on Harry, James will be fine here, we'll wait for a call from you, being as things have changed, you can give us a call to welcome the new arrival and see how Ginny is doing after giving birth and recovering from the torture inflicted on her by the healers, it's the same with muggle medicine. Why do they always make medicines that taste so ruddy foul?"
"Did I never tell you that when you were younger Dudley, I'm sure I must have done? They make medicines taste horrible so people are eager to get well and stop having to taste the horrible medicines. If medicines actually tasted good, you might be tempted to stay ill so you can continue taking it."
"That's so stupid, it might actually be true."
Harry gave a quick smile, and looked at James, "you be a good boy for Uncle Dudley and Auntie Gabrielle and I'll call when you can come and see your baby brother and mummy at the hospital. Alright?" at a reassuring nod from his son, he muttered "thank you," to rest of us and gathered his cloak and went into the back garden, whereupon we heard the crack of his apparition a few seconds later
The mood for the rest of the day was slightly tense as we all waited for news of what was happening at St. Mungo's, James was the only one unconcerned and spent most of the day trying to make the small broom he had been given for Christmas go faster, fortunately it was spelled to only go high enough for his feet to leave the ground and no faster than a walking pace so he couldn't do much damage to himself or the house, although Elrond did catch him trying to fly up the stairs at one point and had to put a charm at the bottom to prevent this. The broom would have treated the stairs like a hill and flown up there, but then he could have had quite a fall from up there if he'd managed to climb the bannister, something he was likely to do, little scamp.
It was quite a few hours later, when the phone rang and I answered it to hear Harry on the other end. "Boy, 7½ pounds, mother and son both doing fine, although Ginny says she feels like she has a bad case of indigestion from the potion. She'll have to bottle feed for about a week, before the potion works its way out of her system, but otherwise everything is going fine. It's a bit late for you to visit and bring James over now and understandably Ginny is not up to receiving a rumbustious two year old, so I'll be coming back in a bit to take him home for the night and we can all visit tomorrow.
Boxing day saw, the whole of the Potter/Dursley clan making its way by floo to St. Mungo's to meet the newest member of the family for the first time and to find out what his name would be. Harry hadn't told us last night and I was hoping he wouldn't follow in the traditions of some of his Black family cousins and name him after some obscure constellation; I shuddered at the thought of a Bootes Potter, or Sagittarius, I suppose Leo or Perseus might not be too bad, but I remembered Phineus Nigellus trying to get Harry to name his second son as heir to the Black line, and although he had said it was Teddy who was the proper heir, there were still problems with that and I feared he might give in to the pressure and name his son after some obscure constellation and make him the heir.
Harry was already at the hospital when we arrived holding his newborn son in his arms, Ginny was sitting up in bed drinking a cup of tea. Little James seeing his parents with his new brother, let go of mum's hand and ran up to the bed. "Is that my brother? He's so little, what's his name? Can he play exploding snap with me?"
Ginny laughed, "yes James, that's your little brother, and you were even smaller when you were born, babies have to be small when they're born so the owls can deliver them, imagine an owl trying to carry you, I think we'd need a hippogriff."(ii) James laughed at this. "His name is Albus Severus, he's named after two of the headmasters of Hogwarts, and no I'm afraid he can't exploding snap with you, not till he's at least two."
I tried to stop the feelings I felt about my young nephew's name from showing on my face, but I think Harry might have seen something as he gave me a funny look and then reached down for James and reached down to show him his baby brother properly.
After a couple of hours of the women in the family making ridiculous noises at the new baby and having held him for a short while myself and answered several questions from young Henri, similar in nature to the ones that Harry had answered for James, we left Ginny with young Albus and made our way back to the floo to head back to Grimmauld Place, Harry assuring Ginny that he'd be back later that day after James had settled down.
After we had settled the children down, mum and Gabrielle were talking ten to the dozen between themselves about little Albus, Harry gave me a look and with a nod of his head indicated that I should follow him to the kitchen. "What is your problem with Albus' name, I noticed you weren't exactly thrilled when you heard it."
"Okay! Don't jump on me about this but I would have thought you wouldn't be too enamoured with Dumbledore being as he was the one who gave you into mum and dad's care all those years ago, and then there was the crap you dealt with at school because of him. I mean bringing in the Philosopher's stone when he knew Voldermort was after it; not saying something about the Parseltongue incident, to stop you being hounded that year. Then there's the Sirius thing, he was the chief warlock of the Wizengamot, the highest judicial authority in the wizarding world at the time, why didn't he see Sirius got a proper trial, you could have lived with him. Then that fiasco in your fourth year with the Tri-Wizard tournament, all three headmasters could have got together and declared the draw invalid and had it done again. Irrespective of that, the rules stated only wizards who were legally of age could compete; then you had a Ministry official state you had to compete along with the Headmaster, who was also the head of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the ICW. Surely that made you legally an adult, and still he treats you like an ignorant child, withholding important information from you regarding the prophecy and the link your scar gave you to Voldermort. The man was practically a Dark Lord in his dealings with you, manipulating you behind your back for his so called greater good."
"Blimey, Dudley, where did you find all that information out? I know I never told you all that and some of the stuff I didn't know myself, especially regarding the tournament."
"I read; I came across the rules of the Tri-Wizard tournament whilst at work, and I read that piece of literary crap 'The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore', now looking behind all that sensationalist crap and outright character bashing behind that book there is a kernel of truth, Dumbledore was the greatest manipulator in the wizarding world during his lifetime."
"Interesting, I've never read the book myself, and other than Hermione you're the only person I know who has, I don't think she came to the same conclusions she did!"
"Yeah! Well from what I know of Hermione she would have shown outrage that someone she held in such regard was having the dirt dished on them or outright lies told about them."
"True, I seem to remember that when she read the book; and your problems with Severus as a name?"
"I remember nightmares you used to have as a kid, about things at school and potions classes were among them, 'the greasy bat of the dungeons' was something I heard about from several people who now work for me. From what I heard that man should never have been allowed near a classroom, he had no patience with kids and didn't have the skills to teach potions. From what I've heard he's a better teacher dead than he was alive, but that's another matter."
"Bloody hell Dudley, you really have got something against those two people haven't you? I can understand where you are coming from, and in a way I can understand your problems with the men in question. I have a few issues with Dumbledore myself, but I can still see that despite his flaws he was a good man and it is that that I honour in naming my son after him. As for Severus as a name, I now the man was a bastard to me at school, but I saw his dying memories in a pensieve. The sheer rage he had at Dumbledore when he found out that he had been setting me up as a martyr all along. Then there's something else I saw in his memories which I didn't share with Ron and Hermione or anyone. Every point he took off students for breathing too loud, blinking too much or some other such crap was added back at the end of the day, the opposite being true for points given to Slytherin for some stupid reason, he would take then off at the end of the day; the punishments he handed out to the Slytherins at the end of the day in their common room were often far worse than he handed out to any other house, couched in someday about bringing Slytherin into dispute or some such, but he did take appropriate actions against them. He was in a tight spot at Hogwarts, he had to appear to be a right bastard to everyone but Slytherin, but he was fair in his way and he showed his bravery in still being a spy in Voldermort's camp. That's partly why I recommended him for the posthumous Order of Merlin; I honour him as well in naming my son after him, in a strange way after all if he hadn't made some mistakes in his youth, he might have been my father; he was best friends with my mum before and during most of their Hogwarts education. It was only a disparaging remark after he had been bullied by my dad and his friends that caused their friendship to end."
"Alright, I can see your logic and reasons behind the names for him and I will do my best not to allow my personal dislike of the two men from their personal history, it won't affect my dealings with my newest nephew in any way."
"Glad to hear it!"
"In some way, I'm relieved you didn't follow in the tradition of the Black family as you're now head of that as well, I was dreading having a nephew named Bootes, or some other such astrological connection, although Leo or Perseus wouldn't have been that bad, at least they could be construed as 'real' names."
"Hmm! Well, let me see, Leo is a lion and it would remind me of Rufus Scrimgeour, a previous head of the aurors and minister, all he seemed to want to do was to get me to suck up to the ministry and be their poster boy, something I adamantly refused to do, and the there's Perseus, not a bad name in itself, but it could be shortened to Percy, and the only Percy I know is Percival Ignatius Weasley a ministerial suck-up and toady for as long as I've known him and in no way am I going to give him the satisfaction of thinking I named one of my sons after him."
"Never thought of that, I agree with you about Percy Weasley though. I wonder how he's doing in his new job? (iii) Has he actually managed to achieve anything yet?"
"Don't think so, give him another five or six years and he may get the idea to put the records onto a computer, he should finish by the time he's a hundred. The idea of the whole department seems pointless to me really. I suppose if a wand turns up at a crime scene they can trace the owner, but priori incantatum can only show the last couple of spells cast on a wand and they can always say the wand had been stolen if an unforgivable is found to have been cast."
"I don't think the auror office has ever been to the wand registration office to check to see who's wand it was found at a crime scene! The only time that office has ever been involved in anything other than pointless paperwork was possibly during my fifth year when I was dragged before the entire Wizengamot on the charge of misuse of magic in the presence of muggles, you as it turns out when I saved you from the dementors."
"Thank God you did, that episode haunted me in nightmares for years and is partly responsible for all the changes that have happened since, for which I am exceedingly grateful. In a small way I wish it had happened sooner so we could have spent a better childhood with each other, though if it had, those bloody things would have got both you and I and then where would we be?"
"Good point, although I still would have tried to save you from the dementors, especially if we'd been better friends growing up. I think I would have done the same even if you were some complete stranger threatened by those god-awful things, Hermione would say the same of me; 'my saving people thing' as she put it. She always said that whenever I deliberately broke the rules it was in order to do the right thing and save someone and in principal I agree with her, not that I have a saving people thing but that I would break the rules if necessary to save someone!"
On the whole it had been quite a memorable Christmas in both the Potter and Dursley households, there had been a new addition to the family and although I wasn't completely happy with my new nephew's name I could understand the reasons why he had been named as he had and could live with it. I wonder what next year would bring up!
A/N Although I didn't originally plan this chapter for posting at this time of the year, it worked out quite well that way. I would like to take the opportunity to wish all my readers a slightly belated Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Hopefully the next chapter will be quicker, but then who knows what the future brings. Thank you for reading and please review.
(i) Although turkey is now traditional in most muggle households for Christmas, Goose is an older 'British' bird for the festive season and since Turkey was a 'muggle import from the colonies', I thought goose would be more traditional in a 'wizard' household for the festive season; and I can see Vernon and Petunia having goose as a 'status' symbol rather than the more common turkey
(ii) Everyone knows storks deliver muggle babies and sometimes leave them in cabbage patches right! But owls make deliveries in the wizarding world so…
(iii) See chapter 19.