Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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Before sunrise one morning, Harriet slowly sat up in her cot and put her hands to her head.
The pain that throbbed in her temples demanded her attention.
During the previous weeks, it had occurred to her that for some disturbing reason, the closer she came to destroying Voldemort, the more her suffering increased.
She had been sad, melancholy......moody.
The headaches had come, a throbbing, unmerciful pressure.
Finally, her stomach had fallen suit, tormenting her first with vapid spells of crippling nausea before eventually developing into violent fits of rageful, projectile vomiting.
Harriet did her best to hide her afflictions from her friends, knowing her heart was broken by grief and her mind heavy with the worry that no living person should have had to bear.
As her stomach took an ominous turn, the inside of her mouth suddenly tasted like slick metal.
Saliva pooled inside her cheeks.
Determined not to wake Hermione with the unpleasant noise of her loud retching, Harriet hastily clambered out of her tent and stumbled across the campsite, clad only in her nightdress.
As soon as she made it past Anuman's empty cage, she fell on her knees, curled over, and began to empty her stomach's contents.
By the time the fit ended, the pain in her head threatened to start another one as Harriet spat the last bit of bile from her mouth and pressed a trembling hand to her face.
Hermione and Ron remained asleep, blissfully unaware.
Tom also slept in his own cot, too tired to rise early, too exhausted to bend to the demands of Harriet or the others, no matter how pressing their requests seemed.
Tom had hidden his own physical struggles during the last few weeks and the events that heralded his own, new shortcomings.
No matter how much he and Harriet lived in denial of the truth, the fact remained that young Tom Riddle had weakened more and more with the destruction of each horcrux.
His bones had thinned, his face had paled, his dark eyes had become less and less vibrant.
Draco, on the other hand, suffered none of those limitations.
As ready to aid his darling as ever, that particular morning, he left his bed the instant he heard Harriet outside, disturbingly ill.
"Snape?!" Draco called in a hushed whisper while he stuck his head out of his tent, "........Snape?!"
Harriet was too busy to respond, although she tried to hunch over and quiet the noises of her affliction while he rushed towards her.
Determined not to garner any more unwanted attention than necessary, Harriet tried to silence the desperate gasps that came from her throat in between the episodes of violent sickness.
Suddenly, the strands of her long, dark hair were pulled back from her face by some unseen source
As Harriet's stomach hinted at the idea that it may give her a moment of relief, she dared turn her head to look over her shoulder.
Draco frowned as he held her hair gathered in his hands.
Harriet's eyes widened as she hurriedly turned away to wipe her mouth, but when she started to use her sleeve, he kindly offered her the handkerchief from his trousers' pocket.
"..........Do you carry those around with you and wait for girls to need them?" Harriet snapped.
Draco refused to respond as he pushed his offering towards her.
With a defeated frown, Harriet's snappy defiance for once quieted itself.
She reluctantly reached out and took the clean handkerchief from Draco.
While she used it, he realized that a spell may have been easier, but the social limitations of their situation made his handkerchief a much more acceptable choice.
".........Have you told him yet?" Draco asked.
Harriet had never heard his voice sound as soft or as forlorn.
".......Have I told who what?" She scowled as she handed the handkerchief back to Draco.
He cleaned it with a brief swipe of his wand before he pocketed it again and frowned, "..........You really do take me for an idiot, don't you?"
Harriet's fair face clouded with the stony weight of grim acceptance as she turned away.
"We should really try and get you to a healer or something.......Or a midwife......It is a midwife that women see at times like this, isn't it?" Draco rambled on.
"I don't have time for a midwife!" Harriet snapped, "And if I'm seen, then-"
"-Then what?" Draco asked.
Harriet frowned.
"We've already told him......Well, you know. I'll go with you and wait outside. If someone sees us together, it'll make perfect sense." He shrugged.
Harriet rubbed her lips together as she passed a hand over her face.
"I'll bet he loves it, doesn't he?" Draco asked, his wounded heart only allowing him to extend so much softness, "Tom Riddle......knowing you're walking around with his-"
"-I can't tell Tom." Harriet interrupted.
"Why not?" Draco scowled.
"Because I think that Tom is dying." She frowned.
Draco opened his mouth to say something else, to ask a question, to do anything other than dwell in silence on the awful fact that his darling carried the child of the man she loved, of anyone but him.
Harriet's emerald eyes widened as her cheeks turned a sickly shade of grey, green.
Draco moved with a surprising amount of instinctive speed as he hurriedly tightened his grip around Harriet's hair as she leaned over and started to vomit again.
He had never hated Tom Riddle more.
Not only had Tom Riddle enslaved him and his family into forced obedience under the ever-looming threat of death and destruction, Tom Riddle had stolen the very gift he had promised Draco.
While Harriet gasped and wheezed for breath, Draco's grey eyes narrowed to slits.
He would see every horcrux destroyed and Tom Riddle, Voldemort, or whatever he would be called, crumble to bits if it was the last thing he ever did.
"You should tell your parents, Snape." Draco suggested once Harriet's awful sickness abated once more.
".......Have you gone mad, Malfoy?" she hissed as she turned around.
To her irritation, Draco offered her his handkerchief again, which she grudgingly took, having more need of it then than she had before.
Once she finished cleaning herself once more and he pocketed it again after a brief cleaning spell, he nodded, "They may......They may be able to use the information.....in the fight....in the fight against him."
Harriet narrowed her eyes, "Are you saying my parents may think of a way to weaponize my baby?"
"You're carrying his child." Draco sneered, "His, Snape......Don't you realize what that means?"
A shockingly humble frown clouded Harriet's face as Draco mentioned the possibility she hadn't dared yet acknowledge, ".........That baby may already be a weapon."
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Severus and Lily enjoyed a quiet evening at home on what to them seemed like any other Wednesday.
Their afternoon had concluded two hours previously with an early dinner in the Great Hall, followed by a hasty retreat to their cottage.
"The only reason I can sleep knowing Ellery's there and we're not is that he's your son." Lily sighed as she leaned against Severus while they each read separate books.
"Do you think him wise enough, for that reason alone, to avoid danger?" Severus asked. He frowned at Lily in critique of her comment as he huffed, "His mind came from his mother's as much as from mine."
"That wasn't what I meant, Sev!" Lily chuckled, "He's your son! As the child of Voldemort's general, I like to think those bullies he hired as 'professors' will leave him alone when they choose someone to torment."
Severus frowned at his wife for a moment before he turned back to his book.
Lily smiled as another quarter hour passed while they sat in quiet company as she read on Severus's chest and he idly let the fingers of his free hand play with her long, crimson tresses.
"Ow!" She flinched as an unpleasant tug on her scalp suddenly sent pain shooting through her head.
Her eyes widened as she glanced up from her book to notice the worried look on Severus's face.
"Sev?" She asked as he scrambled up from the sofa to stand, "What's the matter? What's wrong?"
"He's calling me." Severus murmured as he hastily unfastened his sleeve and revealed the undulating Dark Mark on his left forearm.
"What could he want right now?!" Lily asked, "We've......We've just got home a little while ago. The evening's-"
"-I'll be back as soon as I can, my love." Severus interrupted as he slipped his wand from his pocket, pressed the tip against his tattoo, and quickly vanished from the room to begin his obedient journey to his false master's side.
Lily gasped for breath as she staggered over to the sofa and slowly sank down upon its cushions.
A moment ago, there had been peace, then chaos had come so quickly to steal her joy.
While she closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her racing heart, worry flooded her mind.
Her son, her daughter, her husband......every single person that Lily loved seemed to be in some sort of trouble.
She yearned for the day that she and Severus would be able to live their lives without the constant threat of death and destruction.