Hermione was waiting for the Daily Prophet's article on the Weighing of the Wands ceremony only to be caught entirely off guard by a different headline – one she should have expected but had somehow slipped her mind.

.

DAUGHTER OF MAGIC BORN TO TWO WITCHES!
First child successfully conceived between two witches born healthy and strong

Jade Rince and Milan Bexley welcomed their daughter into the world last night, at a healthy 10 pounds, 22 inches. Labor came upon Bexley unexpectedly, leading her to deliver her child at a muggle hospital.

"It happened so quickly, we didn't really have an option," Rince told reporters. "Luckily, everything came out okay."

St Mungo's healers visited the muggle hospital to examine the child, and we are happy to report that the baby is completely healthy and normal, despite being conceived through a feat of ritual magic.

"The babe's too young yet to tell if it'll be magical or not, but that's normal at this age," said one healer. "Given the circumstances of conception, though – I'd be astonished if this were a squib child."

Though everything turned out well, the healers made a point to explain that the good outcome was due to luck, not the capabilities of the muggle hospital.

"Magical pregnancies should really be delivered at St Mungo's," the other healer said. "A lot can go wrong. The mother's magic can lash out and break things. How are you going to explain that to the muggles? What are you going to do when the placenta is stuck and they can't use a summon charm to get it out? These two women are very lucky that everything turned out as well as it did."

Two women having a child together opens new doors that were previously closed to many, especially to families with traditional matrilineal lines. Rince emphasized, however, that it was not an easy process.

"It was an expensive ritual, and really intricate and detailed," Rince told reporters. "By the grace of the coven, they helped us, but now that they know it works, I expect anyone else would have to shell out for it from their own pocket. I can't even imagine how expensive basilisk ovaries are."

Despite the pain of the ritual and toll of the pregnancy, Bexley practically glowed, cuddling her baby at Rince's side.

"We've decided to name her Hermione Morgana Rince," Bexley told us, "after the most powerful women we know of, so she has strong female role models she can look up to throughout her life."

.

Hermione was stunned as she put the paper down. She'd need to send a gift of some sort, she knew – there was some pureblood custom about this, and maybe a christening thing…

"Merlin," Blaise breathed. "They named their baby after you."

Hermione looked up at Blaise, who was looking at her carefully.

"How do you feel about this?" he asked her. "Do you like them naming their child in your honor?"

"I don't know," Hermione admitted. "I—on one level, like, it's my name, how dare they – but on another level, I feel really kind of humbled? Honored?" She gnawed on her lip. "I don't know how I feel. Conflicted, I guess."

"So long as you're not outright angry or upset, we can work with that," Blaise said, nodding. "Which is good – I didn't want to have to go yell at a new mom."

Hermione was startled into laughing, which helped her relax. She reached for the toast, knowing she should probably eat something despite her stress.

"I wish they'd given me a heads up," Hermione admitted. "Just so I could react in private. Not that the Slytherin table is a massively public stage or anything, but… still…"

"Basilisk ovaries?" Millie said loudly, looking up from the paper. She grinned at Hermione. "Not sure if you can get those again, but if you need weird ritual components again, let me know. I've still got my uterus in a jar around somewhere."

"You what?" Blaise turned to look at Millie in astonishment, his face tinged with green, but Draco took that moment to arrive at the breakfast table, holding a large roll of parchment.

"Well, we did it," Draco said, slamming the parchment onto the table. "It took nearly all night, but we've got a prediction tree we feel fairly confident in. You ready for this?"

Theo and Daphne hastily cleared off a space for Draco to unroll the parchment onto. A large, sprawling diagram emerged as he revealed the completed Arithmancy prediction tree, branches going off in many ways, numbers and runes written above bracket lines in glowing ink.

"We started trying to do the entire tournament, but that was too vague, and we didn't get anywhere," Draco said, rubbing one of his eyes. He did look rather pale, Hermione observed, and the circles underneath his eyes were dark. "Potter finally said we should just focus on the challenges, and once we did that, we started getting somewhere."

As she looked over the prediction tree, Hermione could follow the logic – there were lines here confirming decisions made by people in the Ministry, Arithmantic Queries confirming logistics and moves being made in preparation for the challenge.

"We're fairly certain it's some sort of creature he'll have to face," Draco said, pointing to one of the junctions of the lines. "The issue is when we tried to get more specific, we got a runebind back, and we haven't gotten anywhere near those in class yet, so who knows what it means."

"Here you tried to figure out his chances," Hermione murmured, tracing a line. She glanced up at Draco. "Is this accurate?"

"As best we can tell," Draco said. He gave her a smile. "So long as you continue with whatever plans you have in place now, Harry stands a 95% chance of surviving, and a 50% chance of winning the challenge."

That was interesting. Hermione was tempted to analyze and try and guess what the challenge would be based on that information, when she paused at a later junction.

"What's this?"

Draco grinned.

"That is where everyone cheats and finds out what the challenge is in advance, as best we can tell," he told her. "All four champions find out within 12 hours of each other, a few days before the challenge."

"Excellent," Blaise said, obviously relieved. "So long as we know what's coming, we can prepare for anything."

"We?" Draco said, raising an eyebrow. "Potter's the champion, not you."

"His magic's tied to mine, thank you very much," Blaise snapped. "If something happens to his magic, what do you think happens to me?"

Draco paled slightly, looking concerned for a moment, before refocusing.

"What we've really got to watch for is this second challenge, I think," he said, pointing further up the tree to an absolute mess of branches. "The judges haven't made all the decisions for this part yet, and depending which way they go, this could be really, really easy for Potter to win, or really, really challenging for him to survive."

"Let's get through the first challenge first," Hermione said grimly. "One crisis at a time."