Fat!
Hermione frowned at the ballooning butt mocking her in the mirror. Her size four hips had swollen past a twelve. Her slender fingers were now fat sausages. Her belly stuck out, eating the elastic band of her sweats, yet her breasts had barely changed. At least they filled out an A-cup. It was hard not to feel a little inadequate when surrounded by twelve year-old's like Ellen who were bursting out of D cup bras.
What would her parents say? What would they do? Her mother had always been so outspoken against stupid young girls chaining themselves to a life of babies and hardship. Girls should not be permitted to bear children until twenty-five. Twenty-two, provided they finished college. She was trembling as the vision of her mother's waxy face stared at her. "Didn't your father and I raise you better? After everything we did for you. Years in those hospitals. Our careers. Draining our blood out for those witches. We loved you and how did you repay us? The light of our whole world shuffled us off to die while she whored herself out. Now, she's dropped out of school because she couldn't keep her legs shut.
She huddled in the shower and scrubbed. She was filthy. A dirty mudblood whore.
"Our Lord said, 'Let the dead bury their own,'" the old priest admonished at morning chapel. Hermione gasped. How did he know?
While the other girls snorted at her lack of experience with men, they all came to her for tutoring. They were behind but had a work ethic that she had never seen in teens. Not a single one wanted to return to their old lives. The streets had taught them the value of endless grinding. Pinky talked about working street corners in Minneapolis and Omaha in forty-below weather. Chica told of working as hard as she could to figure out how men ticked, how to avoid the dangerous weirdos, and to accumulate regulars who paid extra. There were stories about being savvy, navigating cops and lawyers and judges on the pad who looked the other way. Then they told stories about the girls who disappeared or died on the streets. Nobody cared about pimps beating them or killers who targeted hookers.
She had settled matter of giving the baby up for adoption and returning to England. She had to contribute. The Ministry of Magic was overstepping their bounds. Nothing was changing! It was worse, in fact, because wizards who suffered under Voldemort were now stuffed into camps. Muggle witches and all squibs were being exiled unless they were married to pure bloods. She needed to do something other than lay around while her friends rotted in jail.
The next morning, the old priest read the story of Lot's wife turning back towards Sodom and being burned up in the judgement, ending up nothing more than a pillar of salt and ash. She shuddered, thinking of the dead sea salt pillars she had climbed when her family visited Israel on holiday. The tourist plaques noted that was the exact spot where meteors blasted the whole region into a desolation six-thousand years earlier.
As much as she ached to return, Wizarding England was a train wreck. The last thing she needed was to lose her baby in Azkaban. The latest issue of The Prophet featured officials from the Minister of Magic's office demanding American cooperation following the arrest of a dozen aurorers involved in the hunt for Tracey Davis. The response of the Magical American Congress had been predictably vitriolic, decrying "Unsanctioned and illegal belligerent action on American soil." Cold chills rippled down her spine. Were they coming for her? Was she doing the right thing, keeping her head down and hiding under a different identity, or should she contact the MAC for asylum? With the ongoing sanctions, the likelihood of extradition was low, even if they caught up with her. Maybe she should get out in front of it. She thumbed the Oregon State Kay Rickson identification card. She was an American Citizen now. Hermione's body was buried beside her parents in Australia. The itch in the back of her skull said Hermione Granger was dead and needed to stay that way.
When no one was looking, she snuck one of the church books into her purse. Father Timothy always told the girls which chapter and verse he was reading out of and invited them to follow along. A few girls found the page and read while she twisted and prised at the cover. She grabbed the one Blondie had been reading, so in theory, it was just a book. This evening, she was going to get it open one way or another.
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Glistening yellow droplets rolled into Wally Renkin's fuzzy left ear. His short nose twitched side to side, wiggling his long whiskers. She nodded and he offered his right ear. Her eye dropper instilled ten drops into that ear next. The maushertz giggled and a wave bristled through his tawny fur. She chided, "You know, if you'll just use swimmer's ear drops immediately after you swim, you won't get an ear infection. Even rubbing alcohol works."
His fur was warm against her hand. He let out a sigh and then transformed back into his human form. His shoulders shifted back and forth. "I just keep forgetting."
He seemed like the lonely sort. The poor guy was in his late twenties and living alone since his mother died. From the talk around the spice shop, Mildred had been the controlling sort who never liked any of the girls he brought home. She forgot exactly what he did, paperwork for an accounting firm or something along those lines. The girls at church would see a nice guy with a house and a decent job and paint a target on his back in a second. Wally would be scooped up in a second. If the girls were legal, she might have considered checking if any of them were a match, but no, she was not in the business of statutory rape. If he had any aspirations of a family, he needed to find another Maushertz, and while several of the girls were Wesen, none were compatible species.
The last patient was done by nine and tomorrow's orders were finished by half ten, which gave her half an hour on the book.
Blood didn't work. Neither did incense or incantations. Orange and white magic spiderwebbed over the cover as if it was just cheap paper. It couldn't be, though, or it would have been open. In a last ditch, she jammed a knife between some pages and twisted, but only bent the knife.
Literally nothing else was working, so she took it outside and started heating it on the hopes that whatever goo was sticking it together would release. Car headlights flashed at the entrance of the alley an instant before smoke wafted off the cover. Freddy was back so she gave up on this round.
-/-
The week leading up to her first ultrasound was torture. Every day was an emotional roller coaster of joy and pain and worry and frustration. She couldn't sleep the entire night before. Warm jelly squished over her belly and the plastic wand buzzed. The fast heartbeat rang in her ears as she stared at the tiny image on the screen. Emotions overflowed. Her child was real. Alive! The sum total of family in her entire world.
Everything flooded back. Returning would destroy whatever chances Harry and Ginny had of a life together. Ron was no sluggard. He could cipher out the difference between six months and nine months as well as anybody else. Certainly his mother would. The whole Weasley clan was already lost.
And... Hogwarts had zero provisions for mothers. Wizarding England held no employment prospects. The editorials in The Prophet decried the sudden influx of war widows with babies. Politicians were wringing their hands, but nothing was being done except talk of ginning up ancient marriage laws. Like that would help a single thing!
It was so different here. There was opportunity. She was accepted and could make an actual life. In fact, the whole American society was awash in unwed mothers. She was shocked to learn that only one out of a dozen couples even considered marriage a viable option. Her problem was simply one of age. She still had another two months before she could legally sign a document. Luckily, the baby wasn't due till November, so the state could not compel her to turn over her child. A shudder rippled over her. What would The Ministry do if they found out?
Should she keep her baby? The church women encouraged girls to stay and mother their children. Barely one in ten hung around to the end of the first month. A million questions and worries gnawed. Would she be able to breast feed? Would the baby be healthy? Would muggle medicine provide sufficiently for a magical child? The ancients whispered. Blood would secure all things.
Tears ran down her cheeks. How often had she complied? Prostrated herself to their demands, and yet they still mocked her. She bled for Harry, dutifully made supplication for her parents, so why were they murdered while men like Antonin Doholov walked free?
She had researched the ancient Contaminatuo Ritualis procedure that made her a witch. Every scrap of information she managed to turn up said wizards had always made provision for the sustainment of their species through candidates. The records in Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Babylonian cuneiform indicated the practice was of old, predating civilization itself. Normal magic was inherited, but their birthrate was chronically low. Muggles made fine candidates, but they had no magic. In exchange for the life of their daughter dying of bone cancer, her parents sold her soul.
The darkness was drawing her deeper. Each time she disappeared, the blanks grew longer and longer. At first, the demands were small. Learn the sacred runes and their five points. Orient them properly using the stars and moon. The blood of a chicken or fish butchered for dinner was held back and offered. Blood offerings were a normal thing at Hogwarts, so Dobby always saved her some from the kitchen. For a time, they were satisfied. Then she sought power and knowledge, and their demands escalated. Then came the baslisk. Afterwards they required repayment. Blood for blood and soul for soul.
They had been quiet in her new home, but as the days passed and she spent more time away from the church, their demands returned. She must show proper obeisance. Burn the sacred incense mingled with blood. Bird entrails and herbs swirled with wine and poured out into fire. She found groves of giant trees and small clearings by the river side. Work got out after midnight most nights. Nobody would notice an hour in the forest.
Then the priest read, "A man or a woman who is a witch, or who has familiar spirits, shall surely be put to death."
She froze but the voices reminded her that these sort of fellows said a lot of things. It was just a coincidence.
-/-