A/N: Love to reviewers and Countess Black

Bad news: My chronic health condition has worsened, and I've taken Spring semester off to try to get it under control.

Good news: I'll have more time to update

It seems like everyone's favourite character is Crookshanks. The real life Crookshanks is our cat Princess. She's a gorgeous ginger persian who was apparently abandoned by her people(she was quite scrawny and neglected when we got her). She showed up at our house one night and refused to leave. Now she lives in my parents' bedroom and has four adoring minions to do her bidding.

She'd like everyone to know that celebrity hasn't got to her head at all, but she wouldn't object to a house elf to torment in the slightest.

The ladies were just as overjoyed to hear about the speaking engagments, no matter how hard Hermione strove to downplay them as 'just chatting with some ladies, is all', as they could have been.

They'd taken to meeting several times a week, and this was both a blessing and a curse. Hermione was glad to have friends again, no matter how much she missed Harry and Ron, and it was fun to be able to chat and laugh with someone besides the Malfoys.

On the other hand, the group had decided that the pregnancy was a joint venture. Hermione finally went to Draco in the library one night and said, a touch huffily 'I swear that elf is colluding against me.'

'Leesy, you mean?'

'She must have a hand in this.'

Draco grinned. 'What's happened?'

'Nothing specific, exactly. But I've been entertaining increasingly pointed questions about things and suspect Leesy's been whispering in ears.'

He stood and went to enfold her in his arms. 'Now, love, Leesy would never stoop to a thing like that. She'd just do it right in the open, like any good manipulator does.'

He patted her belly. 'Did you hear that, precious? You must listen very carefully to all of this.'

Hermione batted his hand away lightly. 'Draco, stop trying to influence the baby.'

'Would I ever?'

Her look said it all and he snorted helplessly. 'Can I help it if I want to give the baby the most appropriate start to life?'

'As long as you don't insist on reading the poison book aloud, we'll be fine.'

He pulled a long face. 'Why, I was going to suggest that, too. Ah well, we'll have to stick to fairy stories for the nonce.'

Hermione gently broke the hug. 'Draco? Would you mind dreadfully if I invited some new people the next time we meet? The ladies, I mean.'

He smoothed her hair. 'Depends. Women, I take it?'

'Augusta Longbottom, for one. Luna Lovegood, Antigone Goyle, perhaps Molly Weasley.'

Draco inhaled deeply. 'All right, but I want your solemn word you shan't try to contact...anyone. Promise?'

Hermione looked down. 'All right.'

Draco smelt that this wasn't a good topic for her. 'It's all right, Hermione.'

She inhaled. 'Of course it is. Will you be accompanying Mother and me?'

Draco wrinkled his nose. 'More or less have to. I'd be going insane the whole time you were gone.'

'Oh.' Hermione had learnt not to mind Draco's presence most of the time, especially given how much better he'd been lately, but she still missed going place all on her own.

'And anyway, I've learnt ever so much about fashion and recipes.' This was delivered in such a tone of deadpan earnestness that Hermione stared at him for a second before she giggled.

'What have the ladies been doing, love?'

Hermione huffed (cutely, to Draco) and touched her belly. 'Asking all sorts of questions about why I'm not bundled up more warmly and what I've been eating, that sort of thing.'

'They care about you.'

'I know. Sometimes I feel like a womb, is all.'

Draco blinked. 'Oh. That's...unfortunate?'

'I mean it gets tiring to answer the same questions all the time, is all. Especially when it's not relevant to what's happening. I'm the same person I ever was.'

Draco nodded. 'Sorry, love. We could dye your hair purple or something to distract them, I suppose.'

'That would help my case about being taken seriously.' She rolled her eyes.

Draco chuckled. 'I think you'd look lovely.' He cooed softly and tugged her close again, willing her to want to, because he found the further along she got, the more he wanted it.

She hugged back for a moment and gently stepped away. 'I'm nervous about speaking, too, I guess. A bit.'

'Nervous about what?'

She sighed. 'It's silly, really. Just nerves.' More than that, she wouldn't say, so Draco had contented himself with trying to make her laugh as often as possible to distract her.

The ladies met at Dinglebolt House at five o'clock the next afternoon, two days before the first speaking engagement. Augusta was resplendent in her usual vulture hat and giant handbag, looking as brisk as ever, and the others as well.

Molly was relieved to see that Hermione didn't look as though she'd been tortured or something. The girl was pale-ish but otherwise seemed well enough, though without the glow Molly associated with pregnancy.

'How are you, love?'

'Well, Molly. You?'

'Oh, never better. You know Bill and Fleur are expecting?'

'How nice for them. When is Fleur due?'

''The end of June. And Harry's proposed to Ginny.'

Hermione smiled. 'That's wonderful.' She suddenly felt as though she'd been punched for no reason and pushed the feeling aside. 'She's welcomed to my dress, if she likes. She fancied it, when I tried it on for her.'

'Thank you, love. I'll let her know.'

The women gathered in a loose circle in the parlour, nearly a dozen in number. Narcissa was pleased to see that Hermione seemed to be doing well with all this, but she hadn't missed the look on the poor thing's face when she was talking to the Weasley woman. She'd ask about it, and Leesy as well.

'My dear' bellowed Eudamia, who'd stopped using the hearing charm, which she claimed gave her a headache 'I trust you are well. Not troubling yourself with those letters anymore, are you?'

Hermione sipped her pumpkin juice. 'They've slowed, Eudamia. And those people have the same right to their opinions as we do.'

'Quite. And how is your health?'

'Fine. My stomach's settled down and otherwise I've never been better.'

The ladies discussed this for a few minutes, and then Augusta set down her goblet and said 'Well, what shall we accomplish today?'

Hermione smiled-she approved of Neville's Gran, even if she didn't exactly like her- and waited for the room to still. 'I thought we'd discuss what we'll say at the meeting on Friday. Does anyone have any ideas?'

Olive Crabbe raised a hand. 'Couldn't we ask them for their stories? They must have some.'

'That should be at the end, though' said Bilquis. 'How should we open the thing?'

'By talking about why we're doing this, I would say. Why is it important?'

Louisa snorted. 'Because it's bloody absurd, what we go through. Not us, maybe, but women in Wizarding Britain.'

Hermione nodded. 'And because we're angry. If we're citizens, let us be citizens. No one should live in fear in their own homes, and definitely not with legal sanction.' The ladies nodded. 'And' said Molly 'it's not good for children, either, to grow up like that.'

'Excellent point.'

'What about the opposition? What will they say?'

Hermione inhaled. 'Mostly they seem-the letters writers, at any rate-to feel like we're mucking about with tradition. We're trying to change things that should be left alone, and things've always worked before.'

Eudamia gave an unladylike and Crookshanks-esque snort of disgust. 'Piffle. I remember the days when children routinely died of preventable disease. Someone mucking about with that produced cures to ailments that were killing people.'

'Not to mention, tradition get changed all the time. No one uses flying carpets anymore because they're dangerous. The sky hardly fell when they banned those.' Bilquis looked at Draco from the corner of her eye. Strange, to see him grown, when she remembered him at a scabby six, grubbing for newts with Blaise.

'Exactly. What else?'

Hermione considered. 'We've talked about the privilege issue.'

Olive, looking mortified, said, softly 'Well, isn't the fact we are...privileged, I mean...don't we have an obligation to speak up?'

'Well said, Olive. And if someone's husband is treating her badly, what are the odds he'd let her speak out about it?'

'What about the charges that society is built on this? Won't society collapse if we change the ways things are?'

Hermione looked thoughtful. 'Some muggles used to harass people with differently coloured skin than themselves. Did stopping that make society crumble?' Her eyes darted to Bilquis, hoping she hadn't offended.

She hadn't. 'They still do, in some places, but that's beside the point. That's an apt analogy. And like Eudamia said, change can be for the good. Weren't some people very resistant to the idea of the Mumbleroot infusion to treat Hierophant's Chorea?'

Eudamia nodded. 'Certainly there was. Some people claimed it was the ancestors' judgement on the unrighteous. And medi-wizards thought it might raise the phlegmatic humour too much. We know now it balances phlegmatic and choleric, but one would have thought they wanted to give the patients burning coals to drink.'

Augusta was a forthright woman. But this next thing she took with tact and care that were foreign to her. 'Hermione, don't be supposed if someone brings up...not at the meeting, I'd say...the thing with your husband and yourself.'

'The veela thing, yes. That's neither here nor there, and I've every intention of telling them that.'

'How crass' said Narcissa, giving her son a look 'for someone to bring up a thing like that in the midst of a political debate.'

'But they will' said Draco with a sort of dull, dark certainty. 'They will.'

'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, is all. Anything else?'

The ladies looked at one another. 'Not that I can think of.'

Eudamia stood, ancient, twiglike legs shaking a bit. 'Why don't you young people go and have a look at the photographs on the third floor? Flippy, walk them, love.' The elf was nearly as ancient as Eudamia and floated beside them with painful slowness. 'Flippy isn't meaning disrespect, but is so nice Mistress Hermione is having baby. So nice.' The elf grinned rhumily, eyes gummy and dimmed with age. She and Madam had been together for ninety three years, and wonderful they'd been, too, but if only Madam had had a baby!

Hermione let the old elf stroke her belly and she DisApparated with a crack. 'That will be Leesy some day.'

Draco studied the things on the walls. 'My God, all these pictures are amazing. I'm sorry, by the way.' And they were. A century of Wizarding history, playing out on the walls.

Hermione was so busy watching the pictures that she almost didn't notice he'd said anything. 'Eudamia's had an interesting-pardon?'

'Said I'm sorry. It'll come up, you know.'

'I know.'

'If I could make them not mention it, I would do.'

'I know.' Hermione stepped further down the gallery. 'Is that...?'

It was a wedding picture. A much younger Eudamia, all in cream, stood with a handsome man who must have been Hermann, and two others. Draco nodded and then looked closer at the other woman.

'My God. That's she. Harmonia Singer.'

'She was very beautiful, wasn't she?'

Draco thought Hermione to be the only beautiful woman on Earth (except Mother, in a totally different context) but he nodded to be agreeable. 'And talented. And very nice, they say.'

'It makes me so angry, what happened to her. If we can prevent even one more woman getting hurt like that, it's worth it.'

Draco hugged her. 'Shhh, don't get worked up, hmm? I might have find someone to maul if you do that.'

Hermione poked his ribs. 'That is not funny.'

'No' he said, a bit sadly 'it's not.' He wanted to ask her a thousand different questions, but he couldn't at the moment. They walked a bit further on.

'Draco?'

'Hmm? Look, that man must be Goyle's grandpapa. His mother's maiden name was Rowle, and that bloke is Thorfinn to a life.' Draco had hated Thorfinn Rowle, and he rather hated the man's sister, who'd abandoned Greg. Mother might have made Draco mad on occasion, but he knew she'd never leave him if she could help it.

Hermione would never get used to Pureblood genealogy. She nodded politely and kept looking. There weren't just pictures; there were other things as well. Masks spangled with beads, tufts of feathers, silk flowers. A whole life on the wall, and all the people in the pictures, who'd been part of it.

'Hermione?'

'Yes?'

'It occurs to me that maybe some men don't like the idea of the laws because they don't know how it is. Mother was talking about that the other day. Do you think so?'

She inhaled. 'I think most people are good and decent, but feel threatened by change. And the ones that aren't won't want to loose their right to abuse people weaker than themselves.'

Draco nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes, but I mean...when I said those things to you, that first day, I thought you were just being stubborn. I couldn't see your perspective. And then you said Mother told you not to bother me with minor issues, remember?'

Hermione paused before a picture. 'She didn't precisely say that, Draco. She said it more generally.'

'I know, but maybe Wizarding women are too good at that. Things won't get better if their men don't know how to help them, isn't that right?'

Hermione turned and looked at him, surprised. 'I've never thought about it like that. That could be part of it.' She still sounded sceptical, though, so Draco decided to be upfront.

'I wish I'd known. Because I would have been a bit less...demanding. Not that I regret...' and he took her hand a moment.

Hermione's eyes suddenly filled and she startled them both by pressing her head to his chest for a moment. 'Sometimes I don't think this will ever get easier.'

Draco had no answer to that, so he hugged her and wished for a way to fix all this.

Over a very good dinner, the ladies discussed small and usual things. 'Hermione' said Olive Crabbe 'have you been wearing your woollens? Cold weather is very bad for the baby.'

Draco and Narcissa shared a look, and Draco bit his tongue to keep from smiling. This promised to be rich. Hermione finished chewing her bite of chicken and said, very cheerfully 'Most of them. Especially my flannel undergarments. Those old stone walls trap the damp.'

The women nodded an agreement, as having the walls charmed to do otherwise was very expensive. 'What about your band? Have you got a good one?'

Hermione's cheeks were pink. Nearly every woman at the table had been Slytherin, and they were poised like a pack of attractive and well groomed hounds, quivering with readiness, smelling weakness.

'Hermione, you don't mean to say you've not been wearing it?'

Bilquis turned to Narcissa. 'Cissy' she said, having known her since she was eleven 'this can't be true?'

'Hermione has been most accommodating in things.' There, exactly enough ambiguity that the ladies could draw their own conclusions. Even Molly looked displeased, and Hermione resolved to strangle-well, a good many people, starting with her smirking husband.

'I find it uncomfortable, and I think a few extra layers ought to do.'

Augusta set down her saucer. 'Nonsense, girl. You need to wear both, else the baby might have an imbalance of humours.'

The others ladies were nodding. 'And anyway, everyone knows that pregnancy makes one vulnerable to all sorts of miasmas and vapours.'

'Not to mention a thinness in the bones. Extra layers will prevent them from opening and spilling bad blood into your organs.' There was so much wrong with this, Hermione didn't know where to start. She ate a bit more of her custard and scrounged for a topic to replace this one.

'I've some I can send you that might be more comfortable.'

'I as well. Not mine, of course' said Eudamia, nibbling a petite four 'but my sister's, and her granddaughter's in Helsinki with that fellow she married.' Eudamia's face gave a clear picture of what she thought of this idea, and the elf appeared at that moment, it was a mercy, to say the least.

On the ride home, it was on the tip of Narcissa's tongue to ask Hermione about the conversation between she and the Weasley woman, but before she could find the sufficiently delicate phrasing this required, Hermione rested her head on Draco's shoulder, sighing.

'Everything all right, darling?'

'Just tired.' Hermione closed her eyes and Draco moved the lap robes to cover them both more thoroughly. Narcissa found she couldn't speak, not after she watched that; it was small, but these little gestures gave her hope for all their futures together as a happy family.