'Not long now,' Albus spoke softly to me as he took in my rounded stomach with an appraising nod. I noticed how his eyes did not twinkle behind his half-moon spectacles anymore and wondered how long we could all carry on with this war before we broke.
'No,' I said with a quiet smile, banishing my thoughts least they showed on my face. 'Not long now.' I heard James clattering around in the kitchen behind me and it helped to prop up my smile a little longer. It was difficult to sustain anything for long these days, it was exhausting. Laughter, smiles, crying, yells, yearning. It all tumbled away from one to the other in short succession. Nevertheless one thing that didn't seem to die down was that ever since I found out I was pregnant, James was hell bent on doing everything for me. I had replied a little irritably that I was only pregnant and not an invilid. Yet since my stomach had begun to get more rounded, his insistence on helping grew by a tenfold and became harder to beat down. Listening to him trying to find the tea pot was endearingly amusing.
James finally entered the little sitting room with steaming mugs and biscuits on a tray which he deposited down on the coffee table. He took his place beside me and waited.
'Profes-Albus, would you like to pour-?' My hand closed around my husbands wrist and he fell silent immediately. I could not look away from my old Headmasters eyes. I knew, even without knowing, that this was it. Looking back on the years that had past us with its bloodshed and anguish, all the death that seemed to meet us at every turn, I knew that nothing would compare to this.
'A prophecy has been made.' In all my years of knowing Albus Dumbledore, both at Hogwarts as a student and outside it in the Order, I had never seen him look so grave. There was no denying how truly terrible I knew the situation had suddenly become.
I could feel by my side that a cascade of emotion was pouring into James, drowning him. However the longer Dumbledore spoke, I felt the opposite. Everything was draining out of me, leaving me empty, dying...Dead.
'Who was it Professor?' James said, his voice hitching in an uneven sort of way; the truth threatening to overwhelm him. James had never killed a single person in his life. He had come close, yet abstained in the thick of battle. However I knew if the person whom had gone to Voldemort presented themselves in front of him now, he would end their life. Family, James had always said and stood by most fiercely, was the most important thing in a person's life. In times such as these, he prided himself on making the most of every situation to radiate his love to those that he cherished most dearly.
'Please James, call me Albus.' He was stalling.
'Albus, who told Voldemort about the prophecy, who was it?' James' shoulders were hunched with anguished tension, his hazel eyes behind his glasses burned with painful intensity. His first and probably only child sentenced to death was beyond any pain that could ever be encapsulated into words.
There was a moment of such silence that I had never experienced before. It felt as if the whole world had suddenly ceased to be. All had become hushed and quiet. Slowly, so very slowly, the piercing blue eyes came to rest upon me and in that moment, he conveyed everything.
I closed my eyes. How had it all come to this.