Disclaimer: Nothing in this story belongs to me...

Chapter Ten; Just a Kid

The insides of the house was not like she remembered, it was so untouched, like nobody had been inside for at least ten years. A small layer of dust laid on the floors and everything around.

Jessica felt like she had stepped into one of those haunted places you read about in mystery novels. All the furniture was covered with white sheets and everything looked lifeless, dead and empty. She could even smell the dust in the air.

This place had before been so full of life and colour, and dust was simply something you couldn't imagine in a place like this. She had so many memories of coming through these doors, but this time was the one she probably would remember the most, because this time she didn't feel like she was home, in a way did it feel like she was arriving to this place for the first time.

It pained her a little to see her home like this, so empty. But still at the same time it felt unreal, like she weren't home, like she was somewhere else.

When Jessica dropped her bag down into the floor, small puffs of dust flew out from under the bag. There was total silence in the house, not a sound at all. Jessica almost jumped out of her skin when she heard a small "Puff" sound from in front of her and something immediately hugged her legs giving out a squeaky noise.

Jessica looked down onto her legs and saw their house elf hugging her legs. "Tilde?" Jessica said choked to see that the house elf was still alive.

"Miss must forgive me for my inappropriatebehaviour." The house elf Tilde said and released Jessica's legs. "But Tilde is just so happy that Miss Jessica is alright."

"Oh..." Jessica said, still a bit chocked by the house elf. "Don't worry, I won't mind."

"If Tilde had known that Miss Jessica would come home Tilde would havecleaned up the house." The house elf said nervously and looked around. "Miss must forgive Tilde once again." Tilde looked up pleading at Jessica.

"Don't worry about the cleaning, I didn't even know that you were alive." Jeassica said smiling. "And I don't want you to do any cleaning until tomorrow. Alright Tilde?"

Tilde nodded and disappeared with that "puff" noise again.

Once the house-elf had left the scene Jessica picked up her bag and walked up the stairs to find someplace to sleep, preferably her own bedroom, if her mother hadn't done anything with it.

When you came up to the top of the main stairs, the corridor went into two directions, left and right. If you went right, the only thing you would find was the stairs to the attic, the painting room and three guest bedrooms. If you instead went left, you'd find the stairs down to the kitchen and dining room and the glass doors to the grand balcony of the second floor. And obviously would there also be the master bedroom and the two bedrooms that belonged to James and Jessica and two more bedrooms, which of one went to Sirius when he stayed over and in the second one had several different guests slept in during the years.

Jessica stopped for a second right in front of her own bedroom, she wondered if she could manage to open the door without breaking down, she had been on the edge of bursting into tears ever since she had entered the house. After several second of just staring at the door she carefully opened it and looked around.

The bed, the study table and all of the furniture was covered with a white sheet just like everything in the house. It looked so dead. She wondered if the bed was still unmade from when she and Sirius... She couldn't even bring herself to think about it. From when the baby was created sounded even worse, but all she knew was that she couldn't sleep there, not tonight anyway. She put down the bag onto the floor and turned around; she didn't close the door to her room as she continued down the hall for the door next to hers, the master bedroom.

Many times during her childhood had she slept in her parents bed, but once she had started Hogwarts she considered herself too much of an adult to do such a thing. But now she felt really sad to think of that she would never have that opportunity again, even though she'd probably never do it, she still liked to have the choice to. This bed was also covered with a white sheet. She walked closer to the bed and pulled of the sheet from the bed. With a slightly dramatic gesture she did so, but who was there to judge?

She took off her glasses, shoes and socks before crawling up to the centre of the bed. She didn't crawl under the covers; she took out one of the pillows and tears started to form in her eyes as she realized that it still had her mother's scent. Her mother's sweet and natural scent.

She felt so alone lying in this bed, her face buried deep into the pillow, trying to cling onto the scent forever. She wanted to believe that she would get up in the morning, go down into the kitchen and find her mother there, happily greeting her good morning. The tears which had already formed in Jessica's eyes started falling down her cheeks once she felt the staggering pain burst through her heart at the feeling of being alone. She felt scared, alone and abandoned. She felt as though there was no happiness out there in the world anymore. Like it was just a big black whole of nothingness, still crying she fell asleep right there.

XXX

Jessica's head felt dizzy when she woke up the next morning, it was hurting and pounding, pounding like hell. She lifted her head and looked around in the room, trying to figure out where she was. It was then she realized where she was and why. She sat up in the bed and pushed her hair out of her face. And judging by the fact that Jessica was now under the covers, she must have crawled under them in the middle of the night. She reached over for her glasses and put them on to take a better look around the room.

The room wasn't anything like she had expected it to be like; all the white sheets and dust seemed to simply have vanished. But that didn't make any sense. She guessed that somebody must have cleaned this room while she was sleeping, or her memory of last night must have been wrong.

She stood up from the bed and took on her socks, leaving her shoes behind, and walked out of the room. The door to her own room was still open and when Jessica looked into that room it was exactly like she had remembered it, still with the white sheets covering and a small layer of dust.

She continued through the room and over to her closet, her big and spacey walk-in-closet. She tore down the white sheets covering the shelves and hangers. The clothes were organized exactly like she had set up when she was fifteen. She picked out yet another summer dress, but this dress was yellow and more casual than the dark green one she had been wearing yesterday.

She wondered if there was any food in the house at all. Not that she was feeling particularly hungry, but it made sense to ask that question. But if there wasn't any food where could she go to get any? But the food question didn't seem to be an issue, because once Jessica had come down to the kitchen she was met with the same wonder as when she had when she woke up.

In both kitchen and dining room was there no white sheets anymore, neither did it have that cold and dead feeling as yesterday, instead it gave a sort of warm and homey feeling. The door out to the backyard in the kitchen was open and the sun was shining in from the windows and to Jessica's biggest amaze was there a fruit bowl in the middle of the kitchen table, and when she walked closer into the kitchen and looked into the cupboard they usually had food in, it was whole filled with food and other eatable things.

Jessica wondered first if she was dreaming, who had done all this, she wondered. But her question was immediately answered when the house-elf Tilde came in thought the doorway leading to the dining room.

"Good Morning Miss Jessica." Tilde said to Jessica with a smile on her small face. "Tilde would have started with breakfast, but didn't know how long miss be sleeping."

"Did you...?" Jessica started motioning toward the cleanness of the rooms.

"Yes Miss Jessica, Tilde did." Tilde continued, still smiling.

"I thought that I said we'd wait with cleaning up until tomorrow, didn't I?" Jessica said, not that she was angry, but she just wanted to check if she really said that.

"Yes Miss Jessica did. But Tilde recognized that yesterday, tomorrow is after midnight. So Tilde did what Miss Jessica asked." Tilde explained, but then her smile faded. "Unless that's not what Miss Jessica meant... Oh, stupid, stupid Tilde should have waited."

"No!" Jessica exclaimed. "That is exactly what I meant, tomorrow is actually after midnight." Jessica smiled and hoped that Tilde would believe it and not hurt herself.

Tilde's disastrous expression was wiped away and a neutral expression took its place. "Miss Jessica must be hungry, what do miss Jessica want?" Tilde asked and started to move over toward the kitchen.

"Tilde, I don't feel that hungry... maybe later." Jessica said and took an apple out of the bowl, not sure if she would eat it or not.

"Okay, if Miss Jessica changes her mind, tell Tilde, and Tilde do." Tilde said.

"Tilde, which rooms have you cleaned, because you don't have to do all of the rooms." Jessica continued.

"Just the kitchen, dining room and the room where you slept, Miss Jessica." Tilde said.

"Okay, you don't have to do all of the bedrooms; you just concentrate on the rest of the place okay?" Jessica said to the house-elf.

Tilde nodded and then disappeared from the room.

Jessica stood on the spot when Tilde had walked away, she considered whether she should eat the apple or not, but ended up putting it back into the bowl.

The next few hours Jessica spent in her own bedroom. She had torn off the white sheets off all of her stuff and folded them into neat and tidy pile. Being back in her room brought back a lot of memories. And they certainly didn't make her feel any better, the back hole she had inside of her just seemed to grow stronger and bigger. When she was a child she dreamed of the day that she would be all alone, but now that she was alone, she dreamed of everything else but loneliness.

Because when she was alone, she couldn't be sure of her own feelings, when she was with others she could easily tap into theirs and use their feelings to fill up the black space where she used to have hers.

She also thought about practising saying that she was pregnant on Tilde, but telling Tilde would make it so real. She wasn't even sure if she actually was pregnant, she couldn't see it on her. She was in the beginning of her third month of pregnancy, and according to the book was it supposed to start to show on her belly that she was pregnant, but only so that it was visible to her. But as much time that Jessica spent in front of the mirror looking on her belly area, she couldn't see anything, nothing at all. Not even a small bulge on her flat stomach.

Jessica felt pretty certain when he had told herself that she wasn't pregnant, but that she was dying and the symptoms of this was the same as for being pregnant. That is the only reasonable explanation for it all. She couldn't actually be pregnant, but when she told Tilde, it became real. Wow, she was pregnant, with a real baby, it wasn't just imaginary anymore, it was real.

Tilde's answer to Jessica's confession was kinda unexpected. Tilde looked up at her with big eyes, wondering if something was wrong with her ears... then she nodded and said that it was nice for her.

It didn't take a genius to see that Tilde was disappointed, just like her parents would have been. But to difference from her parents Tilde couldn't show it because it was a rule between House-elf's and their employer, they had to please their employer, and that was why Tilde didn't say anything else, just nodded her head.

When two days had passed and Monday arrived, two letters was waiting for Jessica when she came down to eat breakfast. The first one was from St Mungos and it said that Jessica had an appointment with this midwife named Cattermole two days from today and if that date did not work she should respond with the same owl.

The next one was from Remus, it said.

Hi Jessica

How are you, with all things considered? I hope that you are feeling good; I have heard that Pregnancies can be like shit the first few months. I'm currently in Valencia, which is in Spain, I have a few friends who live there, whom are like me with the furry little problem, if you know what I mean. I was also living down here before I got that job from Dumbledore about a year ago, and since I have decided to move back up to England I need to fix a few things down here and more boring stuff you don't need to hear about.

Have you told Harry about your pregnancy yet? If you have, how did he take it?

Anyway, I was just wondering how you were and such. I will be staying down here for at least one month and a half before I'll be returning to England.

The owls name is Hugin, and he'll be staying with you until you respond, and you don't have to respond right away, no pressure there just so you know. But do try to respond as soon as possible. I'd love to hear from you.

Till then... Mooney.

When Jessica first read the letter she was pleasantly surprised that Remus had signed it with Mooney and not Remus. Remus had never been the best one when it came to writing letters, his letters was often disoriented and you had to read them twice to fully understand them.

Jessica put away the letter and looked over at the little Tengmalm's owl, or it was mostly known as Boreal owl from where they originally came from. Hugin seemed like a fitting name, but though the name didn't have anything to do with owl.

In Norse mythology was Hugin and Munin the two ravens of the god Odin, Every morning they flew around Midgard and then returned to Odin every evening to tell him what they had seen. Remus had always shared Jessica's interest for mythology, especially ancient Egyptian Religion and Viking Mythology, and that was why it was such a fitting name.

Jessica returned to the first letter, Tomorrow at one thirty was they expecting her, she wondered who this Cattermole person was. She had thought that it must have been somebody that Jessica knew, or why had it been that twinkle in Dumbledore's eye? But as much as she thought about it, she couldn't remember ever meeting a person named Cattermole. Maybe Remus knew who this person was?

She also still had those papers she had received from Greg Watson; maybe she should give back those papers to him after she had been in St Mungos so that she didn't have to go to London twice. That sounded like a good plan.

So when the next day arrived Jessica got out of bed and into the shower just like every morning. After the shower she got dressed and went down to the kitchen. For breakfast she took the package of digestive biscuits in the kitchen.

"Don't forget that Miss Jessica have to be at St Mungos at one thirty." Tilde reminded her. "Will miss be eating lunch before or after the visit?"

"I think that I'll have lunch before I go, but you don't have to worry about that, I'll fix something myself." Jessica answered and opened one of the top drawers of the Kitchen Island to take out some parchment, a quill and ink.

"If that's the wish miss Jessica." Tilde answered and left the kitchen.

Since it was about three hours left until she was supposed to be at St Mungos, she thought of writing that response to Remus.

Digestive biscuits were the only thing that Jessica could manage to eat in the morning; she found that she couldn't keep anything else down. It didn't take long to respond to Remus's letter, but when she came to the end of the letter she decided not to send it today, but to wait with it until she had been to St Mungos in case they said something that he needed to know, or that she needed to share with him. This will say in case they told her that she wasn't pregnant, but just dying instead, of which she felt pretty confident they would tell her.

XXX

Jessica didn't eat lunch before she flooed over to St Mungos, there was nothing they had in the kitchen that looked appetizing enough. But she started to regret that decision when she had flooed over to St Mungos, her stomach growled as she had made it upstairs to the reception area.

"Hi, I have an appointment at one thirty with healer Cattermole." Jessica said to the witch behind the reception desk.

"And your name is?"

"Jessica Potter." She stated her name.

"Okay then Miss Potter, if you go down the hall and take the second to the left and there is a waiting area where you can wait." The witch said and motioned her hand toward the hallway leading away from here.

"Thank you." Jessica said and walked to the waiting area where the witch had told her to wait. In the waiting area was already two people sitting, both female, the first one was heavily pregnant and reading the Daily Prophet, whilst the second one was not so pregnant looking and reading a gossip magazine.

Jessica sat quietly down, hoping that nobody would notice her, because this was apparently the waiting area for the maternity ward. She had had this funny feeling that no matter where she went somebody recognized her, she now knew what Harry must feel like, he had told her that no matter where he went in the wizarding world somebody recognized him.

It didn't take long until a very young looking nurse called for Jessica. She took her to an examination room and told her to wait for the healer.

The room was pretty much exactly like the one where they had examined Jessica after she had woken up from her coma. But the Healer walking in through the door two minutes after Jessica had been alone was certainly not the same one, but that didn't mean that Jessica didn't recognize her.

"Mary?" Jessica asked chocked and stared wide eyed at the woman.

"Hi Jessica." The woman smiled to Jessica.

"Is it really you?" Jessica couldn't believe it, was it really the same Mary as the one in her class? Was it really Mary Macdonald? "You're married?" Jessica added completely chocked, like it was impossible for that to ever happen to Mary.

The smile faded off Mary's face and she looked at Jessica with a slight disbelief. "And you're Pregnant." She stated.

"Yes..." Jessica said. "So, who did you get married to?"

"A man named Reg Cattermole. I don't know if you know who that is." Mary answered Jessica.

"Nope, I don't know who that is?" Jessica answered. She was actually feeling happy to see Mary again, she couldn't quite explain it, but it felt as though Mary was a proof of that Jessica's past was true and not all make believe. "How long have you been married, have any kids?"

"I married Reg a bit over ten years ago." Mary told Jessica, still standing with the door closed behind her. "Have three kids. Oldest is Ellie and she's five, Alfred is three and Little Maisie just turned four months old."

"But if you just had a baby, shouldn't you be home with her?" Jessica asked.

Mary actually smiled at this. "I've just come back to work a week ago; taking care of the little baby is all up to Reg now."

"You're a mum..." Jessica said completely awed.

Mary nodded, and for the first time since entering the room she looked down at the chart she had in her hands. "What we are going to do today is simply doing some tests that will tell us if you need to take anything more than pre-natal vitamins to get through this pregnancy." She walked over to the bench in the room and put down the chart.

The next hour at least was filled with Mary taking different tests, asking her about her exorcise and eating habits. Jessica had never really realized how much your life would change and how much you had to take into consideration when you're pregnant.

"So you are going to be there the whole way?" Jessica asked.

"Yes, once you go back to school I will have a check up with you every other week and I will also be there when you actually have the baby." Mary explained.

"How can I trust you not to screw up?" Jessica asked, it was a completely legit question to ask. The pregnancy book had said that Jessica should ask the healer all kinds of questions, even if they might be considered stupid.

"You have met your nephew right?" Mary asked.

"You mean Harry?" Jessica asked.

"Yes... he was my first single hand delivery." Marty said with a smile.

"No wonder he turned out to be a weirdo." Jessica muttered.

"Ta ta..." Mary answered dryly. "I can't believe that I forgot how mean you can be."

"Mary..." Jessica said, she had momentarily forgotten that Mary didn't take so lightly to jokes. During all of their time together in school had Jessica been one of those who made fun of Mary, and since Mary was such a good friend with Lily, this was one of the reasons why Lily didn't like Jessica. "I didn't mean it like that, I was just joking... ."

Mary didn't answer at first; she looked down first before saying. "I'm going to check up on those tests, you can wait here until I get back."

And so she walked out of the door.

"Idiot..." Jessica muttered to herself. She really shouldn't have said that. Mary had always been a little bit of the weird girl in the class; she was shy and barely spoke two words to anyone. And both Jessica and Pricilla weren't exactly making it better for her.

It took about ten minutes before Mary came back in.

"Well Jessica, everything seems to be quite alright with you." Mary said, the comment Jessica had made before seemed to be forgotten.

"So I'm really pregnant?" Jessica whispered, feeling that first chock hit her all over again.

"Yes." Mary simply answered.

Jessica looked up at Mary. "But... I can't, I can't do this... I'm just a kid, I can't even take care of myself, how am I going to take care of a baby?"

Mary smiled consolably and sat down next to Jessica on the examinations table. "First of all, you have about seven months left to go before you have an actual baby in your arms. And also, you won't be alone with this... You will get help."

"Yeah, I..." Jessica jumped off the table, getting consoled by Mary Macdonald was a little bit too much for her. "Can I go now; I have other stuff to attend to today."

"No, you're free to go." Mary answered her.

"Great." Jessica said a smiled. "See you soon." She added and took her bag and jacket, but before she left the examination room Mary stopped her.

"Jessica." Mary said.

Jessica stopped with her hand on the door handle and turned around to Mary, not saying anything.

"The father..." Mary continued. "It's Sirius, isn't it?"

Jessica didn't say anything; she just nodded before leaving the room.

Sure it had been great to meet Mary again, but it had been just a little bit too much emotional for Jessica. She and Mary had never been anywhere close to have any kind of friendly relationship with each other.

Just like she told Mary she did have some things to take care off for the day. The visit at St Mungos took less than an hour, but that didn't mean that the day was slipping away. It was already three o'clock when she had found the way to Mr Greg Watson's office.

She was told to sit down a while before she got to see him.

At the moment she felt so alone, like the world had forgotten about her... but when during the last two months hadn't she felt this way?

"Miss Potter..." The female secretary said to Jessica. "He can see you now."

"Thanks." Jessica answered and walked in through the door.

"Jessica." Mr Watson said and stood up to greet Jessica. "Nice to see you again."

"Same here." Jessica said. "I've got the papers, signed and all." She opened her small bag to get out the papers she had got from him last week and gave them to him.

"Thanks." Mr Watson answered and eyed through the papers. "And I have just one more thing to take up with you before you leave, please sit."

"Okay." Jessica responded and sat down, wondering what it might be.

"This year in August is the Quidditch World Cup." Mr Watson started. "My Daughter Gabrielle was going to go with a few friends, but now have some things come up and they aren't able to be there at the event."

"Okay." Jessica nodded to show that she was following.

"So now I have a few tickets and a camping spot which will never be used." Mr Watson continued. "So I was simply wondering if you might be interested in taking over the tickets."

"Oh, well..." Jessica said, felling flattered to have thought of. "Sure. Harry said that he had a friend who probably was going, so... how many tickets, did you say?"

"Five tickets and a very good located camping spot." He said.

"Oh, um..." Jessica said thinking about it, she and Harry would only make two. "Sure, I can take them, I don't know if I'll need all five, but I'll have to come back to you on that."

"Alright then, let's say that." Mr Watson answered.

"Yeah," Jessica nodded and stood up from the seat she sat on. "I'll get back to you on that. By the way, what seats are they?"

"They are open for three more weeks." Mr Watson answered.

Jessica smiled as the two shook hands once more again and she walked out of the office. Ron had said that his dad was going to try to get hold of tickets to the world cup, it was then it hit Jessica, maybe she could work something out with them.

Suddenly she felt like she was a parent having to decide when her child was going to have a play date with some other child, and talking to their parents. Well, she thought that she might as well get used to it.

A/N; I'm deciding to end this chapter here because otherwise it might be too long and I don't know if I'll ever update before you have forgotten this story... yes I have not updated for three weeks. I can come up with about a thousand excuses, but I'm pretty sure that you'll believe them as much as my teacher.

Thanks for those who reviewed and I hope that you'll review this chapter