A Second Life
Summary; in the long term ward at St Mungos is there a door, with a secret behind it. The name on sign is in pitch black letters, and it reads "J. Potter". Who is behind the door? What is it that they haven't told Harry?
Disclaimer; Nothing in this story belongs to me...
Chapter Fifteen; Christmas with the Family
Harry's defeat of the Hungarian horntail was quite magnificent and amazing and most of all clever in every way. This show of both courage and wittiness proved to Harry's classmates and everyone else that he really belonged in this contest and that he could actually win it, and they started to believe in him as a champion. And most importantly Ron started to believe in him, and Harry forgave him for being too big headed about the whole thing.
The night after the first task they had a celebratory dinner at the cottage for Harry. It was just the six of them. It was not as wild and crazy as the party they had the night before in the Gryffindor common room, but it was nice and just what Harry needed, to relax and realize that he actually was in this competition.
After the first task Harry started to relax, as did Jessica, now that the first task was finished it couldn't really get any worse.
The rest of November continued and December came with gigantic steps. And the second task wasn't the only thing on their minds.
Jessica was quite busy thinking about the baby and all the baby preparations and shopping that needed to be done. Hermione was busy with S.P.E.W and even more so since she had discovered from the Weasley twins where the entrance to the kitchen was. Harry and Ron had something completely different on their mind; they had to find dates to the Yule ball.
It was the last week of the term and Harry and Ron still hadn't found any dates to the ball.
The day started as a normal day, but would soon turn out to be different than they had imagined.
Ron and Harry had that morning made a pact that they would find dates before the end of the day. But what they didn't know was that somebody had already fixed dates for the two of them, but just didn't have had any time to tell them.
Jessica had gotten the idea to find them dates one week previously when Hermione had ecstatically told her that the dumb Quidditch star Viktor Krum had asked her to the Yule Ball. At hearing the news Jessica's first thought was to call him a pervert considering the age difference, but she didn't.
On this day she couldn't find Harry or Ron at the lunch hour, she looked everywhere but could simply not find them. She had one lesson left for the day, but a surprise was expecting her at the end of it. As the other students were packing their thing to leave the lesson, Professor McGonagall asked Jessica to remain behind.
"Miss Potter." Professor McGonagall said. She had that same look on her face as when something devastating had happened. "You need to go home."
"Oh Merlin, have something happened?" Jessica said, expecting the worst, that maybe they had discovered that Sirius was hiding there.
"No no." The professor immediately responded. "Nothing's wrong. Your other teachers and I have talked and decided that you should take time off and rest until the... Child comes."
It was quite obvious that McGonagall was quite uncomfortable talking about this. She had always been a bit uncomfortable talking about people's personal life. But she always did what she had to do.
"Are you ordering me to stay home for the rest of my pregnancy?" Jessica clarified what McGonagall had said.
"Yes, that I exactly what I mean."
"Okey." Jessica answered. "You know that it's at least one and a half month left until my due date..." Mary had told her that her due date was February 3rd.
"Yes. Midwife Cattermole have informed me of that."
"... This means that I'm going to miss at least one month of school."
"This I also know. But it can be arranged in such ways that it'll fit your time schedule."
"Okey." Jessica agreed. It sounded nice to not have to worry about school for the rest of her pregnancy, it was already tiring her too much to move as much as she did. "That would be nice."
She later found both Harry and Ron in the common room later; Ron was sitting on the sofa with Harry and Ginny on either sides of him. Something must have happened because Ron looked shocked.
"Ron, what happened?" Jessica said and sat down on a chair in front of him.
Harry and Ginny told Jessica what happened. Then Harry told Jessica that he asked Cho Chang to the ball.
"Why would you do that?" Jessica asked, she cast one glance at Ginny who looked back at Jessica with a concerned look. "I already fixed dates for the two of you."
"Really?" Ron said, he and Harry looked at each other before looking back at Jessica. "Who?" The asked at the same time.
"I... to difference from you guy's... were out asking the girls in time." Jessica gloated; she really loved to rub their noses in it. "Harry you're going with Ginny."
Suddenly Ron started laughing, but once he saw Ginny's hurtful face and realized that she actually was in the room, he stopped laughing. Jessica slapped him in the face.
"Idiot." She snapped. "Just because she's your sister doesn't mean that she's any less of a girl."
"Thank you." Ginny said, looking over with a smile at Ron's reddening cheek.
"Who's Ron going with?" Harry asked, also quite amused over Ron's reddening cheek. "Hermione?"
"No, Hermione has someone else as a date." Jessica answered.
"Who?" Ron asked, he had his hand over his cheek caressing the spot where Jessica had slapped him.
Just as Ginny was about to answer him Hermione entered through the portrait hole, walking over and joined them. "Why weren't the four of you at dinner?" She asked.
"Because Ron and Harry have girl troubles." Ginny answered her.
"You haven't told them yet?" Hermione asked Jessica.
"I told Harry." Jessica answered.
"You said that you had a date for me? Who?" Ron asked.
"Lavender Brown." Jessica answered plainly. "But if you don't apologize to Ginny I'll tell Lavender that you don't want to go with her."
Ron looked at her, and for a moment it looked like he didn't believe her, but then he changed his mind. "I'm sorry." He said to his sister.
Ginny didn't answer him, she just smiled.
The rest of the week and the days following until Christmas and the Yule Ball snow came flowing down the sky like never before. Making Hogwarts and Hogsmeade village look like a winter wonderland.
Jessica hadn't noticed how much it had snowed since she had spent the better part of the time sleeping in her bed. It felt quite nice to finally rest without any restraints, and when she wasn't sleeping she was baking, cooking or fiddling with the baby's room. They had moved the baby's stuff into Jessica's room so that Sirius could sleep in the second bedroom on the second floor.
Sirius spent most of the days eating what Jessica baked or cooked, nowadays he looked more normal than before. He gained a lot of weight and quite started to fatten up.
In the beginning of December had Remus and Jessica travelled to London to shop the things for the baby room. Baby clothes, baby toys and baby furniture. So now Jessica's room looked like a baby's room. She didn't have any idea whether it would be a boy or a girl, so it was rather hard to choose the colours for the things. Jessica had also been and got some of the toys and clothes she and James had when they were children, she thanked Merlin for the fact that her mother never threw anything away.
Toys and clothes wasn't the only thing that she had collected from her childhood home, she had also picked up the Christmas decorations and the three of them had decorated the cottage so that it looked like something out of a Christmas catalogue.
It was now the morning of Christmas Eve and there were still a lot of preparations to be done. They were going to have a nice Christmas dinner tonight; it was going to be the three of them as well as Ron, Harry and Hermione.
Ron hadn't had much problem coping with hanging with Sirius most of the time, but the first time that he came over he acted rather different around him. Sirius looked at him curiously and jokingly said that he doesn't bite. But Remus cleverly pointed out that Ron has a scar on his leg that proves otherwise. Everyone though it was funny except from Ron, who still had painful memories of that attack.
Jessica had decided that she was going to cook the whole dinner, something that Sirius had a bit of a problem with.
"Are you really sure you can do this?" Sirius asked.
Jessica turned around to look at him. "Of course I can do this; you know that I can cook."
"That's not what I mean; all I'm wondering is whether you can manage to cook a whole dinner all by yourself."
"Does that mean that you won't help?"
"I'll help... I'm just not so sure of how much help I'll be. You know how I am in the kitchen."
"Sirius, I have to do this..." She said and sat down on the empty chair next to Sirius. "For my mum... I want to make her feel like her daughter at least succeeded with one thing in her life."
"What do you mean?" He asked with a chuckle. "You haven't failed with anything."
"I'm seventeen, pregnant and unmarried." She answered him. "That really spells out success doesn't it? And let's face it, as much as my parents loved you, you're not the kind of person that my parents wanted me to be with."
At Jessica's response he looked at though didn't quite know whether he would take that as an insult or not. He knew deep down that she was right but it was still hard to hear it come from her.
"So I'm not good enough for you?" He summed up what she had just said.
"That's not what I mean."
"It sounded like that."
"I'm not saying that you are not good enough for me, I love my baby and I wouldn't give him/her up for anything in the world." She said. "Even if this was still 1976, I'd feel the same way, my parents be damned."
There was a bit of silence that hung in the room before Sirius said anything.
"Look, Jessica, I just..." He started, but Jessica didn't want to hear it.
"If you aren't going to help me, then go do something else." She said as she stood up to continue what she had started in the kitchen.
Without any arguments at all Sirius stood up and walked out of the kitchen.
The evening was filled with fun and was a considerably good time. It was good for Harry to get away from the school and forget for a moment that he was in the tournament. Jessica had forbidden both Remus and especially Sirius to talk to Harry about the tournament during this evening, she knew that there was some things that Sirius wanted to talk and warn Harry about, but Jessica had told him that he had to wait for all that.
The argument between Jessica and Sirius still hung in the air but none of them let it bother this wonderful evening. Harry was happy for once and he wasn't the only one, just like he pointed out.
Harry stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room. He was gazing out over the view of the sitting room. "I have never seen him this happy before." He said.
Jessica who was in the kitchen, holding a glass of water turned around and looked over Harry's shoulder. Hermione was sitting on a chair next to a bored looking Ron and explained S.P.E.W to Sirius and Remus who sat next to each other in the sofa.
"Who, Sirius?" She asked.
"Lupin." Harry said, he still didn't seem comfortable calling him by his first name. "During our whole last year I have never seen him as happy as he is now, not counting the day he found out that you had awoken."
"Well, considering everything he's been through over the part thirteen years, you can't really blame him for being so unhappy. He lost everything the night that Lily and James died." Jessica explained and walked past him to join her friends on the sofa.
Jessica though a lot about what Harry had said, Remus did seem much happier, but she didn't have anything to compare to so maybe that was the reason that she hadn't noticed.
Much too soon had time the run out and it was time to go to bed. The three teenagers would stay down in the sitting room on mattresses on the floor, and the rest of them would sleep in their own respective bedrooms.
Jessica found it hard to sleep that night; she tossed and turned for nearly an hour before she sat up in bed. Unlike several other nights wasn't it the baby's kicking that kept her awake, she simply couldn't fall asleep. She guessed it was because she had some unfinished business that bothered her.
The argument that she had with Sirius rang in her mind. She couldn't stand the thought that he was still upset with her after what she had said. She got out of her room and tip-toed over the hallway and knocked on his bedroom door before opening it.
"Are you sleeping?" She asked him. He lay in the bed, his eyes closed but when she spoke to him he opened them slightly.
"Jessica?" He said."What are you doing here?"
"I can't sleep." She confessed. Now she felt a bit stupid for coming here, she shouldn't have bothered him.
"Come here." He said as he moved over in the bed. "Don't worry; I'll stay on my side."
It took Jessica a few moments to decide whether she should get into the bed or not. Her feelings for Sirius were complicated. She knew that she loved him, but he's so different from what he was like when they were teenagers. She wasn't so sure that she would have fallen for the kind of man that he was now. The Sirius she had fallen in love with was young, funny and didn't care about anything much, except the people he cared about, and he always spoke his mind, even though it turned catastrophically most of the time. The Sirius he was now was a "haunted" man as he mother would say; he was broody and kept to himself most of the time.
The age between them was also something that bothered Jessica, although she hated to say it; he was twice as old as she was. Every time she looked at him she had to remind herself of the teenage Sirius that she had fallen in love with, and that he had gone through a lot in the recent years and she needed to give him some time to cope with life. She refused to believe that the carefree person she loved was gone.
Jessica did at last climb into the bed. She didn't want to be alone, especially not tonight. She ignored the thoughts that had raced through her mind earlier.
"I'm sorry about what I said earlier." She said to him when she had made herself comfortable.
Sirius's eyes weren't open, but he was not sleeping. "Don't worry." He muttered.
That was one of the things that showed how much Sirius had changed, if he still were 17 he'd just shrug his shoulders and smiled as he told her not to worry and that they'd cross that bridge when they come to it. The way he told her not to worry about it now was much different; like it was the end of the discussion and that they wouldn't talk about it anymore.
She lay and looked at him for a long time before she fell asleep. She wanted to get closer to him, she wanted him to just hold her, she wanted the feeling of loneliness to stop, she wanted him to hold her as she closed her eyes and pretend for a moment that it was still 1976 and life was perfect again.
But she didn't get any closer to him; it was like there was a barrier between them that brought them apart, and Jessica didn't know how to destroy it.
A/N; I can start with saying that I'm sorry about the none update-ing. But I just started the university and have been pretty swamped with both work and studies, I'm studying to become a English/Swedish teacher, and I love it.
I also just noticed that I have 95 people on my alert list. That's awesome!! I hope that next chapter will bring me to 100! And don't forget to review. I hope that you liked that chapter.
And also tell me what you thought about the sixth Harry Potter movie. I LOVED it, but to be honest didn't I have many expectations when I saw it. I loved especially the whole Draco part, that they showed that it was practically killing him to do what he had to do, but he had to do it. Now I have to be honest again and say that I'm turning into a Draco sympathiser. It's just now that I realize that Draco is just a confused teenager who ended up in the wrong crowd. All I could think about was his face, how devastated he looked when Dumbledore died. That's what I remember most of the scene when Dumbledore's killed.