AN: Thanks to "Funeral of a Friend" for all the reviews and the comments about my writing! (Am an teacher and have to teach writing a lot so picking up myself when I'm teaching kids!) Hope the suspense was enough! So how angry is Sal going to be??!!

Chapter 19

"Surely that was explained to you at your first examination Miss White when you are given all the information on possible tests, the paternity test is in the testing handbook that is given out. A paternity test can be carried out at sixteen weeks, it's new and is a muggle test but it is included in the book," the healer explained.

Gloria looked as if she was shrinking under Salamander's gaze and he could tell that she already knew that, she had been lying to him about it all this time. "You knew this?" he shouted but she refused to answer. "You knew that we could have had the test months ago? And you let me go on with this...this charade?"

"I...I..."

"Maybe I should give you some privacy," the healer said backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.

"What were you thinking?" Sal screamed at her. He felt blood pumping around his body and his heart beat wildly, his head pounded and he didn't think he had ever felt as mad in his life, even when he had found her in bed with someone else. "Why would you wait for this? Especially with your parents breathing down our necks about getting married, we could have found out months ago and known exactly where we stood. I just can't believe you." He started to wring his hands and walked to the window of the room. "It's...it's...it's not mine is it?" he said slowly turning to look at her again as realisation took over his shock and anger, "You know it's not mine, otherwise you would have had the test."

"No...no," Gloria began to plead, tears pricking her eyes but Sal saw none of it, he was too angry to fall for weeping, "it is yours I swear it's yours, even if the wand date is out a few days it couldn't be anyone else's," she went on. "The twelfth was way before I..." she hated to even mention that she had slept with someone else. "I swear to you Salamander that it is your child and...and I thought...I knew that we didn't really need the test I...I was hoping that we would never have to do it I…I hoped that...that you-"

"That I would fall in love with you again before the baby even came and that I would be so happy I would not even remember what you did to me. That is what you were hoping for."

"N...n...no," she whispered.

"Yes Gloria, I know you, you are a conniving girl who will do whatever she wants to get her way, you are as worried that the baby might not be mine as I am that it will, you are too scared to find out because in your heart you know it is not mine and that you will end up alone."

"That's not true Sal," she said wiping her tears and turning angry herself now, the crying was not working and she was now returning to her usual self, "it is your child, I know it, and you know it."

"So why not prove it once and for all?" he challenged.

"Because I don't need to."

"Well I do!" he screeched back at her, "I want the test done today."

"No," she replied adamantly, "you cannot do it without my consent."

"Then you can leave the flat," he shot back at her and her jaw dropped.

"You...you...you can't do that."

"I can and I will, I told you Gloria I am not marrying you until I know for certain that the baby is mine and I mean real proof not your own feeling."

"But...but..."

"That is the choice Gloria, you take the test today or you leave today, you decide."

"But you'll regret it, when you realise the baby is yours then you'll feel guilty for abandoning it so close to the birth," she whined playing on his vulnerable noble side.

"Then it will be one more terrible thing I will learn to live with," he replied not caring now he knew she had lied to him. He knew there was still every chance that the child was his but he had also seen a glimmer of hope that it might not be, Gloria really was nervous about the test and he suspected it was because she had lied about sleeping with other men.

"But...but it's...it's a muggle test," she squeaked quietly, "they...they inject you...with a...a needle. You know like you would sew with? I'm not letting them stick a needle into me," she said quite adamantly.

"Well I am," he retorted walking over to the door and signalling to the healer that she could come back in. The middle aged woman sidled in looking embarrassed and walked over to Gloria. "How soon can a paternity test be carried out?" he asked her as she glanced from one to the other.

"It can be taken today," she replied, "and the results will be ready in four weeks. We have to send the blood off to a muggle laboratory where they see if the samples match."

"Well," Gloria interrupted, "if it's four weeks we may as well wait until it is born, you probably won't get results back before then."

"But-" the healer interrupted.

"Will you?" she asked loudly above the healer's voice fixing an angry glare on the woman.

"Well..."

"Four weeks?" Salamander said and the healer nodded her head looking confused.

"See, just wait Sal, we'll have to anyway." He glared at her warily still annoyed that she had lied to him, he would have done anything to find out the truth as soon as possible but he wasn't that enamoured about being poked with a sewing needle, if they would not find out until around the due date anyway he might as well wait and save himself the unpleasantness of the needles. He nodded his head and turned away not noticing the look which crossed Gloria's face, it was one of relief, she was hoping that once he saw the baby and held it in his arms he would know instinctively that it was his child and they would not need to do the test at all. Sleeping with Andrew had been the biggest mistake of her life, she had been young when her and Salamander had begun to date and thought she might have missed out on something but as soon as he had gone she'd known what she had lost and she was desperate now to be one big happy family with him. She knew he was finding it hard to forgive her but was convinced that the child would make all the difference, she just needed to find a way to stop him from wanting the paternity test, at least now she had another month to wait.

"So what are the arrangements for taking the test when the baby is born?" Sal asked turning back to look at Gloria and her healer.

"Well, we need to perform a blood reaction spell on your blood and Miss White's," she began to explain, "then we do the same with the baby's blood and if the baby is yours then it will have the same reaction. W...we can perform the first part today if you'd like," she said quietly eying Gloria carefully.

"You can?" Salamander asked as Gloria's face turned sour again.

"Yes, we can take your blood and mix it together here and see the reaction, then when the baby is born we can look for the same reaction."

"Then We'll do it," he said ignoring Gloria's attempt to protest, "that way the second test can be done immediately when the baby is born."

"Very well," Healer Jean said turning to retrieve some instruments from a cupboard on the wall. "If I can just take a prick from your fingers," she went on looking at Salamander and then Gloria, he put his hand out towards her but Gloria fixed a deathly stare on the woman holding a long pointed wand in her hand. She went to Sal first and pricked the end of his finger, he winced a little but didn't utter a sound as she squeezed a droplet of blood and placed it into small stone basin. She then approached Gloria cautiously but one look from Salamander told her she had to do it and she reluctantly held out her hand to the healer who did the same thing to her. She moaned at the little prick but did not utter another word either as she watched the healer place the blood in the same bowl as Salamander's. The slightly nervous woman then took her own wand out of her pocket and started to move it in a slow circle over the bowl, after three rotations she uttered quietly, "Sanguine reacto," and then pointed her wand into the bowl, a small spark left the end of it which hit the combination of blood contained inside it.

Though she had been reluctant to take the test Gloria's curiosity still got the better of her and she could not take her eyes from the bowl as a small billowing mass of black gas, which looked like thick smoke from a fire, puffed out of the bowl sending alternate sparks from the middle of it all of which fizzed and cracked noisily. Each crack made Sal cringe as he watched the foul reaction to the combination of blood. After a few moments the reaction stopped like a finished firework and the healer turned to look at them both with a small grimace. She had not performed this test many times, even through her nineteen year career as a healer, but the few she had carried out had produced much nicer results, this was the worst reaction she had ever seen.

Salamander left before Gloria's internal examination without a word to her, he flooed out to the grassy area by the river near his parent's home and took refuge on the carved loveseat made by his maternal grandmother many years before. He sat and looked out at the fast flowing water as it tumbled over rocks and stones built up in the river, he remembered the times he used to spend down here with the Weasleys and Potters when he had been a child and it brought a momentary smile to his face. Life had been so much easier then when they were young and had had no worries. The Longbottom's had little family, Salamander's father, an only child, had been brought up by his grandmother after his own parents had been tortured into insanity and there were no other Longbottoms at all. On his mother's side there was his Grandfather, Xenophilius Lovegood but his mother had also been an only child and lost her mother at a young age so Salamander and Consuella had had no cousins of their own to play with. However the vast Weasley family, two of which had been good friends of his mother and father's in their Hogwarts days, had encompassed them into their extensive family and treated them as one of their own which meant that Sal and his sister had always had other children their own age to play with when growing up.

It was summertime now and further up the river he could hear some of the younger Weasley's playing, there weren't many under the age of seventeen now and a new generation were on their way now that Victoire had given birth to a son, Remus, who was named for his paternal grandfather. Though Teddy and Victoire were the only ones in his generation to be married the Potters were all happily ensconced with a partner and he supposed in a months time he would probably be joining the ranks of husband and father too. Or possibly not, he thought to himself as his eyebrows knitted and he remembered the events of the day. How could Gloria not have told him that they could have found out if the baby was his? Did she think it wasn't and was trying to punish him in some way? Or did she think that when the baby came he would fall in love with it instantly and forget any possibility of it not being his? That thought scared him more than the child really being his, after watching her go through pregnancy, seeing pictures taken with a special camera hovered over Gloria's stomach which showed the baby moving around in the womb and feeling the life inside kicking at her stomach he had started to feel a slight connection to it. He had marvelled at the technology which showed the tiny life form curled up in a fetal position occasionally kicking out one of its limbs and it had really brought home to him that the child was a living and almost breathing thing. These special pictures had brought a tiny tear to his eye, something which had not gone unnoticed by Gloria and it terrified him to think he might already be forming a bond with the baby that could well turn out not to be his contrary to its mother's affirmations.

"Hello Salamander," said a soft sweet voice behind him which made him melt.

"Rose," he gasped quietly turning around to see her beautiful pale face looking at him brightly, "how...how are you?"

"Good," she replied smiling, "I'm just down here visiting everyone," she explained, "Molly and Lucy are up in the river enjoying the last few weeks of the school holidays, I think Fred's up there annoying them too," she chuckled as they both heard a high pitched scream from up river. "I decided to come down and visit Consuella for an hour, well if she's at home."

"Oh, I...I don't know if she is or not, I haven't been to the house, I came straight here...to think," he explained turning back to look at the water, at her presence he had momentarily forgotten what he had come down to think about but at his words the anger had flooded back into his head and he had needed to turn away to stop her from seeing it.

"Is everything alright?" she asked sensing that it was not, she was pleased to see him, but not pleased to see how he frowned.

"Not...not really," he returned.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked softly taking a few more steps closer to the loveseat and putting her hand on the back of it.

"I...no, I shouldn't," he didn't want to burden Rose with his problems anymore, she had gone through enough because of him.

"Sal, I promised I would be here for you if you needed me, for anything," she whispered softly walking around the loveseat and sitting down beside him, "you can just talk to me." He looked at her in amazement, how could she be so understanding? How could she still be there for him after everything that had happened? She reached out to cover his hand then and repeated, "Talk to me."

He almost broke down in tears at her gentle touch, so far he had only felt anger, anger that Gloria had kept it from him, but suddenly he was starting to realise everything he had lost once more, if they had had the test sooner they would have known for sure and if at least been out of this limbo. As she saw the sorrowful look replace the angry one on his face she stroked his hand gently with her thumb and looked at him, she longed to kiss away that look but knew she shouldn't do it, it would only make him feel guilty. "She lied to me," he eventually said barely audibly.

"The...the baby's not...not yours?" she asked tentatively afraid of his reaction to the news, would he be relieved or after all this time would he be upset?

"I...I don't know but...but there's a test, a muggle one which could have been done months ago, its new which is probably why Mum won't know about it but Gloria did, she knew we could have done it months ago," his anger burst back into his statement and he started to breathe deeply.

"But why wouldn't she-"

"Because she's a bitch," he shouted wrenching his hand from hers and standing up, "because she thought we would be back together by now and I would be so in love with the child when it was born that I would forget about wanting the test and we could all live happily ever after." His anger was coming out now, his voice was loud and he started pacing up and down the side of the river. "All this time we could have known but she refused to tell me, she doesn't want us to have the test at all, she's too afraid to face the fact that it might not be mine even though she's adamant that it is." He was yelling now, standing out facing the river and yelling at the water, part of him had forgotten that Rose was even there and his tirade just flowed. "This miserable existence she's had us living has all been for nothing, when the healer told us that Gloria knew about it I could have strangled her, I was so angry that she had made us live like we have for so long, even James has practically moved out because the atmosphere is so bad. I can't abide her, I hate her and the only thing that keeps me going is the possibility that the child could be mine but we could have known for sure months ago we could have made the best of the situation then without all this wondering. Merlin I'm so angry," he yelled, so loudly that birds in the trees nearby scattered to the skies and Rose winced a little, she had never seen him so mad. "Argh," Sal added at the end of his rant before suddenly plunging a balled up fist into the bark of the nearest tree, Rose continued to watch in shock as he pulled it back and she saw blood raining down the fist which he just stared at in disbelief.

"Sal, what have you done?" she whimpered jumping up from the seat and running over to him, she tentatively reached out a hand to his blood stained one and held onto it from underneath, "You're bleeding, this must hurt."

"I don't care," he spat still in a furious voice, "I don't care anymore, I can't even feel it, my body is numb to all everything except for misery and despair, it's all I ever feel." His voice was harsh, even with her and she was shocked even though she understood his pain. However it pained her to realise just how unhappy he was, she may have been sad and lonely without him but she still had a supportive network of friends and family who were there to make the rest of her life happy. Although Sal had the same supportive network he still could not escape from the miserable life he had to live.

"Don't talk like that," she whispered conjuring a soft wet cloth with her wand which she began to dab gently against his bleeding hand, "you do care Sal, otherwise you wouldn't feel so angry." Taking him by the hand she led him back to the seat and made him sit down as she cleaned around his wounds until they were open to her. "You have to care, there is a child to think of," she went on tentatively and she saw his body relax completely as he gazed up at her.

"I only care about you," he whispered suddenly seeing the beautiful caring woman who was tending his now throbbing hand. He looked down at it as he began to feel the pain and watched as she painstakingly cleaned the blood from around the wounds, siphoning it off with her wand and discarding it on the seat beside them, all the time being careful not to touch them and cause him more discomfort. She had a look of pure concentration on her face and as he watched her his anger melted away and was replaced by that loving feeling that he only ever had when he was near her. She looked up at him and smiled at the comment then she whispered a spell over his hand which made the wounds close, it felt as if she was blowing on them softly and he started to feel relaxed and instantly felt some relief from the pain in his hand and in his heart. He closed his eyes and waited until the sensation was gone and when he opened them to look down he saw that his wounds were still sore and red but not open or bleeding any more.

"There," she said softly still holding the hand in her own, "I've never been very good at healing but at least they are closed up now, maybe your Mum could sort them out if you go back to the house?" she suggested but he didn't want her to, Rose had tended him and that was all he needed.

He longed for her to attend to his emotional needs but knew he could not do that to her again so instead he withdrew his hand ever so slowly from her soft touch and whispered, "Thank you," as he stood up. "I should...I should go," he went on, "I'm...I'm sorry Rose," now that his anger had abated he had realised that once again he had piled his pain onto this vulnerable young girl who he was desperately trying to spare.

"Stop apologising Sal," she replied, "I've told you over and over again, I am here for you, in whatever way you want me to be. Just sit and talk to me," she added patting the seat beside her and he sat back down. "Why can't you do the test now?"

"It takes four weeks to get the results because they are sent off to a muggle place and processed like muggle tests, she's...due in four weeks so there was little point in doing it now. W...we did the first part of the other test though," he explained.

"Oh?" she asked, "H-how...how do you do it?" she asked curiously. Paternity tests in the wizarding world were not a common occurrence and usually only the midwife healers knew how to do them, she knew they existed but her Aunt Ginny and Sal's mother did not know how to do them.

"She took our blood and...mixed it in a bowl, then she did a spell over the top and we watched the reaction."

"Oh."

"Apparently the baby's blood will have the same reaction."

"What...what was the reaction?" she asked looking up at him through huge eyes.

"It was...horrible," he continued as he explained carefully the spell which the healer had performed and then the billowing black gas and the fizzing sparks which had followed it. "It looked so foul and...wrong," he concluded looking down at his hands and realising that it was a perfect reaction to the woman he was starting to loathe with a passion. He stared out at the river and neither of them spoke for a moment but then at the sound of a small gasp Sal turned to look at Rose who was wiping her finger across the place where she had dropped his blood when she had tended his wounds. When she lifted up her hand he saw that there was fresh blood on top of it and he looked at her curiously. She didn't say a word but he watched as she began to circle her wand over the mixture of blood and he realised what she was about to do. He wanted to stop her, knowing it might make their heartache worse, but he too was curious to see what kind of reaction they would have had.

However as he finally opened his mouth to say stop, Rose pointed her wand at the blood and whispered, "Sanguine reacto." Salamander watched in awe as two single bright silver sparks began to rise from the loveseat like slow fireworks which twisted around each other leaving bright gold trails of wispy smoke behind which seemed to be neither gas nor liquid. They spiralled closer and closer together until they met about four inches from the seat and erupted like a firework showering bright but soft coloured sparks which landed on the seat and then died out.

The reaction had been the complete opposite of Salamander and Gloria's, it was magical and beautiful and neither of them could speak for a moment. They slowly looked up into each others' eyes and he could see that Rose's were glistening, he wanted to comfort her but he forced himself to stay strong and leave her alone. Really he wanted to do nothing more than whisk her up in his arms, take her into the woods across the river and encase them both in a magic bubble but he couldn't. This time he had to listen to can't and won't even though the look in her eyes told him that she wanted it too. Knowing the inner turmoil he was experiencing she reached out to take his hand and whispered, "Just walk with me," as she pointed in the direction of his childhood home. He nodded but did not speak as he felt his body melt to her touch and they stood up and began to tread a path to the house walking hand in hand in complete silence.

They reached the house but neither one let go of the other as they walked up the steps and tried the door, it was locked so Salamander withdrew his wand and opened it with a wordless spell. He opened the door for her still clinging to the one small bit of life and feeling that he held in his hand and then stepped over the threshold. "Hello?" he called loudly, "Mum? Dad? Consuella?" Nobody answered and reluctantly relinquishing the tender touch he started to wonder around the house checking each room in turn until he got back to the kitchen. He looked over at Rose who was leaning over the sink gazing out of the window, she was almost angelic to him and as he watched she slowly turned her head to smile at him, "We're alone," he whispered and she nodded her head.