A boy!
She couldn't tear her eyes off the tiny baby image as the plastic wand scooted over her belly. He had little hands, and eyes, and legs, and toes, and lips. Her mind spun. Would she dare call him Harry or Harold or Harrison or James? How about Neil, like her grandfather. Then she ran through a dozen familiar names... Ron, Michael, Arthur, Colin, Kurt, Vincent, Tyler, Albus, Severus, or Horace? None of them sounded right... But Mark Evan... It had a nice ring to it. Mark for her father, Evan as a nod to Harry.
Mark Evan Rickson. Maybe some day she would tell him about his father. Regale her son with tales of how The Boy Who Lived saved the world from evil.
Notebook pages full of names clunked into the trash. About half the girls weren't even planning to name their children. Her heart ached at that news, but others talked about reuniting with their parents. How was it so easy to leave a baby behind? They talked about being a real woman and finding a good man. She wanted to shake them. They were so young, just children. A family man would never settle down with a thirteen year old. It was illegal! A short Venezuelan girl sniffed and snipped sarcastically. Minnie obviously didn't know how to treat a man. Most of her regulars had proposed more than once, and a few brought rings! The other girls nodded. Every one of them claimed they could have been married a dozen times over. Then they sniffed at her paychecks. Her entire month's pay was one night for Chica. Pinkey nodded in affirmation and muttered, "A slow night."
She stuck out. Those girls thought nothing about making passes at the priests. Staffers' sons and even their husbands were opportunity. A nice house and a steady meal ticket with a man that didn't beat them. They professed the men free for the taking. The girls were so jaded, and so mercenary. She wondered if any of them could go on to have a normal life.
Pharmacy Tech classes started a week before her third trimester began. The bus carried her across town to the community college where she ground her teeth tromping up and down a dozen flights of stairs each day. The students were friendly enough. Some of the boys stared and some of the girls giggled, but most ignored her. Like Hogwarts, they all seemed to know each other. She felt like an outsider all over again as she waddled from class to class. Elastic bands helped her aching hips while she scratched reams of notes into spiral bound books.
Unlike Hogwarts, these classes were pure application. They taught laws, techniques, and procedures, as well as how to precisely fill out the paperwork. There was no supplemental library work, it was all right there in the books. Nights, she chewed through compounding batches of medicines and giving treatments. She even started helping Freddy with a few house calls.
The next issue of The Daily Prophet featured a wave of vitriolic reporting in the wake of bombings and attacks perpetrated by Death Eaters. Pressure was mounting over the lack of ministry response, but fiscal cutbacks made barely ten months ago left their aurorer ranks stretched dangerously thin. At the same time, Stamp Duty Land Tax increases had failed a referendum vote. One politician was quoted saying, "The situation was an unfortunate but predictable outcome. Aurorer salaries don't grow on trees."
The middle pages reported the memorial at Hogwarts for the children lost during the war. Rita Skeeter quoted several families who felt that memorializing Hermione Granger alongside those who had perished during the war was crass. Skeeter reminded readers that Ms. Granger had been smashed by a muggle car in Australia whilst fleeing from Ministry Aurorers. Certainly important lessons must be taught about the hazards of trafficking with muggles, but as Ms. Granger was one of them, she should have been well aware of the dangers of automobiles. A shiver ran down her spine. She agreed completely. It was crass.
In other news, Wizarding Weekly reported that the European Magical Parliament and the MACUSA had enacted more sanctions against Wizarding England for their continued human rights violations. Top on the list was torturing minors such as Harry Potter whilst at Azkaban. The picture showed a grizzly, blonde haired corpse hanging limp over a pool of blood. Organs draped out of holes in his back. Hermione shivered as the picture moved and the corpse's fingers twitched. The caption indicated that Lord Malfoy's Estate was appealing to the European High Court over the attempted murder of an underage Heir Malfoy.
She quirked an eyebrow. Dumbledore always maintained that seventeen was the age of consent for wizards. That had been holy writ.
Further scandal erupted when Beaubaxtons enrolled Ginny on full scholarship after France refused to extradite her.
The back page letters decried the ministry's continuing lack of interest in the students who were apparently made blood sacrifices during The Battle of Hogwarts. Death eaters were blamed, but no suspects had ever been questioned.
Buzzing filled her ears. A rock hit the pit of her stomach. If they knew...
It was late and classes started early tomorrow morning. They locked up and she waddled off to the bus stop.
Her eyes fluttered open. She was slicked with sweat from and her body was weary from dancing and chanting around a crackling fire. The air reeked of the sacred incense. Tendrils of smoke mingled with the slick of blood and swirled through the flowers woven into her hair. Black and red runes smeared her naked breasts and swollen belly.
A toe spasmed as weak gurgles burbled at the edge of the shadows lacing the firelight. Hermione gasped. She fumbled for her wand and a vial of healing potion. She had was more than happy to comply when it came to pouring out the blood of evil men, but innocents were a different matter entirely.
Her wand came up and healing magic rippled into the man. She poured the Wiggenweld down his throat and held pressure until the thumping gash under his ear sealed completely shut. Her legillemency bored into his memories and then her wand swished and tapped, carefully erasing each and every memory of the pregnant girl picking him up in the bar, his euphoria with the free sex in the park, and then his horror when her eyes turned empty and cold. Paralysis soaked into his bones and pain burned as the devil girl chanted in strange languages while laughing and stabbing a knife into his neck.
It all vanished like smoke. He simply got too drunk last night, wandered off, and passed out in the bushes. He must have cut himself on a rock or some trash, but it wasn't bad enough to worry about.
She was shaking as she scourgified every inch of her body. The man would have a rough day, but he would be fine after several hours of sleep. She, however, was a mess. She found her clothes and rushed back to the church, where she laid under the shower and scrubbed her skin raw.