2006

They fell apart like leaves falling in the autumn. Slowly but surely, they'd reach the ground.

She didn't realize it at first.

But it was when she came home from work, exhausted and looking forward to an evening of relaxing, and he wasn't home, that she had an inkling. Because him being gone was nothing new.

Maybe he's meeting that friend of his for a drink, her mind snaps harshly. Of course - an old family friend, he had told her when she asked whom he was meeting at the Leaky Cauldron. They'd been going out almost daily, him and Adam. He'd also casually mentioned Adam's hair as being black - since when, she wondered, did Oliver ever care about a bloke's hair? She knew his family as well as her own, but never had she heard them even mention an Adam.

She had asked his sister, Georgia.

Georgia had frowned. "I don't know any Adam's, Katie. I don't think my mum or my dad does either."

And it was in Katie's nature, after all, to be suspicious. She knew she should trust her husband... and she did, really... but the signs were so horribly cliched, it was like one of her mother's Muggle drama films. But she didn't want to cause any problems, because it wasn't true, right? He was just visiting a family friend that none of his family seemed to know.

It was eleven at night, and Katie was reading on the sofa, a mug of steaming tea on the coffee table and warm, fuzzy slippers on her feet. A crack sounded from behind her, and she turned around to see her husband slipping off his shoes, setting them neatly on the stand. There was a pink flush on his face, despite the relatively mild spring weather.

"Where were you?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"With Adam, love," he replied, sitting next to her on the sofa.

Katie sort of missed the fact that their flat didn't smell like him anymore.

She didn't know what she was doing wrong. Was it her? Was she suddenly so undesirable that he had to talk to Adam?

She'd been throwing herself into her work the last few months. Before he had started going out. But she came back usually only an hour later than normal. The over-time paid well, and they had amicably agreed to start saving up for their own house.

"When can I meet this Adam you've been talking about for so long?" Katie asked casually one night. He hadn't gone out that night, and consequently, they had eaten supper together for the first time in what she supposed was ages.

"Soon, love," he answered, smiling that smile she loved and kissing her on the cheek.

Katie was just in a really bad mood, and she couldn't place why. For the last few weeks, she had been sick, throwing up and feeling dizzy. She didn't really feel like cooking for one tonight (a habit, it was, now), and everything in her refrigerator looked... disgusting. She still had a Self-Diagnosis Potion stored in the back of her cupboard - maybe that would help. Anything to get rid of that unpleasant feeling in her stomach. Ugh.

The Leaky Cauldron had some wonderful potatoes... and she really felt like potatoes right now.

The Floo caused a sickening feeling to erupt in her stomach, but she landed. Something familiar caught the corner of her eye, but she shook it off. Katie was too hungry to be bothered by such nonsense.

After asking for the potatoes to-go, she had made her way to the Leaky Cauldron Floo. There was that feeling, though - the one that made you feel like something was a little bit off, there was something wrong. She surveyed the room, left to right, before shrugging... wait, what?

Oliver was sitting at a booth. That was actually quite normal; but he was with someone else. A female someone else, a younger woman with a short, blunt haircut and the petite, smooth womanly curves Katie had always wished for. That woman looked a little bit like a Slytherin she knew...

Katie paused, standing right in the middle of the Leaky Cauldron. The building was so packed that she knew he wouldn't be able to see her, even if she could hear him.

"Pansy," he said warmly, and Katie shuddered. Her! Out of all of the possible women he could be meeting behind her back, it had to be the girl who had almost killed her at Hogwarts? Bullied her to the extreme?

It was like expecting to eat a raisin but eating a worm instead.

"You know, Ol, I really do love this shirt," she said breathlessly, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Bile rose to her throat - his orange t-shirt, the one she wore with nothing underneath on their honeymoon. She could see a stain on the corner of the shirt, one she remembered accidentally making with her lipstick. His hand, the one with the gold ring around it, fiddled with the hem.

She could remember herself doing that.

"Let's go somewhere a bit less dull, love," he said, and Katie beelined for the Floo, tearful memories of his orange shirt and her red lipstick and their once-upon-a-time honeymoon flooding her brain, the forevers and pleases, the warm feeling that spread to her toes.

There was a child in there! A real, living, breathing baby. Wow. Katie held her hand to her stomach, feeling a little nostalgic. Where had her childhood days gone? Playing at the park turned into romancing at the park, and Hogwarts robes turned into work robes. And now she was going to be a mother.

Oliver was over the moon, of course. She knew he would be. He loved children, perhaps a bit less than Quidditch, but he did in fact want them. And so did Katie.

Adam was overjoyed for them, she was told, when he came home. It had taken all of her strength not to confront him - but she knew she couldn't. Katie was a Gryffindor, yes. She was brave and daring and chivalrous. But there was a baby in there, in her stomach, and she wanted it to have a life she didn't have - two parents.

She might not trust him, or maybe she might not love him anymore, either, but she had to be brave. For her baby, her little silver lining.

Her love.

a/n - I hope this counts as a split-up a pairing you enjoy. /sigh. Angsty KatieOliver is surprisingly easy to write. For the Quidditch Fanfiction League, prompts She Keeps Me Warm by Mary Lambert (I incorperated some of the lyrics into the fic) "Let's go somewhere a bit less dull." and every cloud has a silver lining. I actually finished something on time! Imagine that! :P