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SIYE Time:12:36 on 28th March 2024
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The Space Between
By YelloWitchGrl

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Category: Post-Hogwarts, Post-DH/AB, Post-DH/PM
Characters:All
Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Fluff, General, Humor, Tragedy
Warnings: Dark Fiction, Death, Disturbing Imagery, Extreme Language, Intimate Sexual Situations, Mental Abuse, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Negative Alcohol Use, Rape, Sexual Situations, Spouse/Adult/Child Abuse, Violence, Violence/Physical Abuse
Rating: R
Reviews: 559
Summary: Harry and Ginny's lives have finally evened out. They've faced trauma, and loss, more than most have, but they've fought hard to find a normal.

If only things could stay that way... Old enemies find new ways to seek revenge.

This story is the sequel to Bound. It would be extremely helpful if you read that first.

Warnings are to be safe. It's probably overkill. Please message me if you have any questions or concerns.
Hitcount: Story Total: 352144; Chapter Total: 1955
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
I hope you enjoy. Please consider finding me to support my original work. Sarah Jaune. You can find me loads of places including pa treon

Thank you Arnel for beta'ing!




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Chapter 62

They were halfway through August and Harry still didn’t know how he was going to send Lily back to Hogwarts without at least one brother there to protect her. He couldn’t even seem to work! He was left staring at his closed office door in the Ministry willing for time to stop.

He’d wanted to ignore Crabbe and pretend life was going on just fine, but his grandson was living proof the crazy old bat was still alive and well and waiting for Lily. When would she strike? He didn’t know and it left him sick and hollow inside without any clear way to stop her. It had seemed like Voldemort had been impossible to kill. He’d had a roadmap, albeit a crazy one with more holes than a leaky cauldron. Dumbledore had done the hard work for him and in hindsight he could see the old man had truly tried to do his best for Harry. Yes, it had been a gamble to leave it in the hands of a seventeen-year-old young man, but Harry had managed to pull it off with a lot of dumb luck and help from extremely loyal and talented friends.

He couldn’t do that now. He didn’t have a clue where Crabbe was holed up, although he knew she liked Brazil. The Brazilian Ministry didn’t have a tight hold on their borders, especially to the north west where most of the country was dense rainforest. They had magical tribes still living there which made it nearly impossible to travel for Muggles, let alone wizards. Venezuela was currently in a horrible state, both for their magical community and the Muggles alive and they had absolutely no security in place to keep a witch of Crabbe’s caliber out of the country. From there, she could easily cross into Brazil because all the countries relied on the rainforest to keep them secure and it mostly did. It was covered in poisonous insects, snakes, jaguars, and a whole host of other nasty beasts of the magical variety including a few thousand dragons in the wild.

Hagrid would be in heaven.

But Crabbe wouldn’t let any of those things stop her and once she was in Brazil, it was a large country with a thinly stretched Ministry unable to patrol or care what might happen to a few stray Muggles.

They hadn’t had word of her in months. There hadn’t been an official spotting of her in much longer than that. He simply didn’t know when she was going to turn up again.

There was knock at his office door, startling him so he nearly toppled his chair backwards before he even realized he’d had it balanced on two legs. “Enter,” he called as Daniel stuck his head in.

“Audrey wants to see you at St. Mungo’s,” he told Harry, looking alarmed. “She sent one of the junior Healers to come fetch you rather than an owl.”

Harry sprang to his feet and grabbed his cloak. He pushed through to see a woman about James’ age waiting for him, her black hair pulled back neatly in a plait down her back. She was in a familiar green cloak all Healers wore and she looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. “Mr. Potter,” she said with a nod of her head as her cheeks flushed.

“Yes, let’s go,” he said as he led the way to the Floo. In moments they were at St. Mungo’s.

“This way,” the young woman told him as she hurried through the hospital until they arrived at Audrey’s office door. “Go right in,” she said before turning to leave him there.

He pushed in to see Audrey pouring over pages of handwritten notes. Even at a glance he could tell she was frantic and frazzled. “Close it and seal the door,” she ordered and Harry obeyed, more alarmed than he could admit to.

“What happened?”

Audrey’s eyes were raw as she finally met his gaze. “We have another one.”

He wanted to ask what but he waited for her, knowing she was valiantly trying to pull herself together.

“No one can hear us?” she confirmed.

A younger Harry would have been affronted at being questioned on if he could ward the office against magical spies, but he knew all too well nothing was infallible. “It’s as safe as I can make it.”

Audrey flopped down into her office seat and Harry took the one across from her messy desk. She buried her head in her hands. “We have another Alex.”

Harry’s heart stopped as her words sank in. They had another poisoned baby. They needed Nat and they hadn’t yet worked out how to use Nat without exposing her to untold levels of danger. “This one is a trap.”

“This one is a trap,” Audrey agreed as a tear slid down her cheek followed rapidly by another. “The mother already died, Harry.”

“Oh no,” he breathed out as his heart went out to the young father grieving his wife. The baby might not make it, either.

“I can’t think of what to do!” his sister whispered in anguish as she picked up her stack of parchment and dropped them again. “The man won’t leave his baby’s side, not even for a moment since the baby is clearly in pain and upset, but he’s wrecked at having lost his wife and without any way of getting the baby from him, I can’t have Nat heal her! She’ll have that brown ooze come out and it gets everywhere. How do I explain that to him?”

Harry tried to think of how to handle the situation but every scenario he played out involved Nat in the invisibility cloak and she couldn’t do the healing through it. She had to actually be holding the baby and people would know the baby had been healed, leaving Crabbe to know they had help. “You could pretend it’s a potion that heals the baby, but it’s just colored water and… no. Maybe I can try to talk to him, to let you take the baby for a moment. Or we dose him to sleep.”

“Everyone in the hospital knows the mother was poisoned, Harry,” Audrey told him quietly. “Absolutely everyone. It was obvious from the start and they know the baby is poisoned, as well. They’ll be asking why I can heal the baby and not the mother.”

“You didn’t know she was poisoned until she died,” Harry pointed out. “More to the point, it was a midwife who delivered her, correct?”

“Yes,” Audrey agreed slowly. “Yes, one of the midwives but we had another Healer looking in because she was doing so poorly. We had to remove the baby, actually. It wasn’t a vaginal birth.”

Harry wasn’t totally surprised to hear that, even though it was rare for a baby to be born that way in the magical world. “So, the midwife didn’t see it which is natural. They don’t deal with poisons.”

“You want me to throw this at the feet of the midwife?” Audrey demanded as she rocketed to her feet.

He kept his seat and waited for her while she stormed around the room. “What the bloody hell are we going to do, Harry?”

“We are going to find a way to heal that baby,” Harry said simply. He pulled out his two-way radio and called up Teddy. “Are you still at home?”

“Yeah,” his godson answered with a yawn. “The babies are teething something awful. We barely slept.”

“I need Nat snuck into the hospital under the cloak and I need her now,” Harry said bluntly.

Instantly, the younger man’s face hardened. “We’ll be there in an hour. She’s at home? Where’s the cloak?”

“The cloak is in my office at home in the trunk,” Harry told him. Since Al was back home, so was the cloak and he knew Lily wouldn’t want to take it with her to Hogwarts. “One more thing, Teddy. I need you to arrive at the hospital as Gran and have some kind of baked good to bring to Audrey.”

“Merlin,” Teddy breathed it out. “You really need this kept quiet.”

“I really do,” Harry agreed as he signed off and used the mirror to contact Ginny, who promised to pop over to a Muggle shop to grab biscuits for Teddy to bring in.

“I’ll go grab one of Mum’s dresses while I’m at it,” she assured him.

Then, for good measure, he contacted his mother-in-law and kindly asked her to stay home and if anyone asked, to say she brought biscuits to Audrey at work today.

It wasn’t unheard of for Molly to stop by the Ministry or the hospital, even though it rarely happened. He simply hoped it was enough that no one would think much of it.

Then Harry laid out his plan.

It went off nearly flawlessly. Teddy, in the guise of the elder Molly Weasley, showed up with Nat under the cloak and was shown up to Audrey’s office where Audrey, who didn’t have to pretend to be stressed, told her she needed to see a patient and could Teddy/Molly wait in her office or head up to the fifth floor Tearoom. As Audrey took the biscuits, she palmed Teddy/Molly a note with further instructions.

Teddy even played it up by asking Harry what he was doing at the hospital, allowing Harry to say he had to speak to someone.

Of course, that part was true.

Nat nudged his side to let him know she was there and they made their way to the baby’s room where the poor tiny girl was still screaming her head off while her father walked around with her.

In her hand, Audrey had some colored water in a vial. Only her pinched mouth gave her away and unless one knew her well, they wouldn’t be able to tell how stressed she felt.

Audrey was the Healer in charge of the hospital that day. Everything was riding on her and they all knew it. She knocked at the door and entered at the man’s call.

He was a younger man, maybe mid-twenties, with dark brown hair and a two-day growth of stubble. He looked simply awful, as Harry knew he’d look if he had just lost his wife. He had the tiny baby in his arms while she continued to scream in what Harry knew was pain. He hated the delay, but if Nat was found out they’d have no chance of helping anyone else. Her part in all of this had to stay absolutely secret.

“I thought of something to try,” Audrey said as she held up the vial of blue liquid. “I don’t know if it will help, but it will not hurt.”

“I dunno,” the man shook his head. “I dunno.”

“Mr. Blane,” Audrey said soothingly as she stood before him. “Your baby is very sick and we have to try everything we can. I’m very sorry we didn’t spot the poison in your wife. You have no idea how sorry I am. I want to do everything I can to fix your daughter so you can take her home. Where’s your mum?”

“She… she uh,” tears leaked from his eyes as he shook his head. “She took Hailey’s parents to get a cuppa in the tearoom a minute ago.”

Harry breathed out a sigh of relief as the plan was working. They’d had one of the younger Healers go suggest as much to the grieving grandparents and now it would be up to Teddy/Molly to keep them up there for at least twenty more minutes. “I need a few moments of your time, Mr. Blane.”

The man stared at him blankly and it took him a good minute to register the Head Auror standing there. “Harry Potter.”

“Yes,” Harry confirmed. “I’m so sorry for your loss and I want to do everything I can to catch who did this. Can we step outside for a moment to allow Healer Weasley to work? I promise your baby will be safe with her. I trust my children’s lives to her.”

“I… I dunno,” he said again, glancing between them. “Why can’t I stay here?”

Harry hated to do this but he went for the hardball. “My hearing isn’t what it used to be. I want to make sure I understand all the facts and with your daughter’s cries, I am afraid I might miss something or you might not remember what I need you to remember.”

He felt like scum for saying it, for taking this man away from his hurting child, but it was for the baby’s own good.

Mr. Blane finally nodded and handed the baby over to Audrey as Harry led him from the room and closed the door part of the way while the baby continued to cry. Soon it would be over and the baby would be well again. Audrey would have to completely clean her up before handing her back. The experimentation of the brown gunk hadn’t netted them much in the way of answers, but they did figure out it could minutely infect anyone who touched it with bare skin.

They’d worked that out how to handle this problem. Andrey was going to quickly strip the baby and put her on a disposable pad to pull the brown gunk out, wash the baby as best as she could with magic, and then quickly redress the tiny patient.

Harry’s job was to keep the father distracted. “Mr. Blane, when did your wife fall ill?”

“She… she weren’t never right after she got pregnant,” the man said as he ran a hand through his hair. “I think she was working too much. I have two jobs and she worked at The Leaky Cauldron as a waitress. I kept telling her, she needed to take it easier. But she wanted us to get a nicer place, ya know? Well, she was sick a few weeks before she got pregnant. We were surprised because we weren’t trying! But… but…”

Harry waited while the man broke down in tears and he was thankful the man was distracted because he missed the best sound Harry had heard all day.

Silence. The baby had stopped crying.

Harry didn’t know how Crabbe had snatched Blane’s poor wife to impregnate her, but he doubted the baby was biologically related to this man, but he wasn’t about to offer that observation. It didn’t matter if the baby was related to him, she was his wife’s biological child.

“I will be working with Healer Weasley closely to try to find answers,” Harry told him. “But it’s my thought she was probably poisoned just before she became pregnant. It’s going to be a challenge to go back that many months, but I will not let this rest.” He paused as the man swiped at his eyes. “Will you have help with the baby?”

“My mum says we’re going to move in with her,” he told her, “and Hailey’s parents will be helpful. We’ll… we’ll be okay. I want you to find who did this to them! I want–” he froze as he glanced back towards the room and realized his daughter wasn’t crying. He didn’t wait for Harry to say anything, but pushed into the room just as Audrey finished rewrapping the baby up in the blanket. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Audrey’s smile was genuine and relieved. “She’s resting now. It worked, Mr. Blane!” She handed over the little girl and clasped her hands together.

Harry felt Nat bump his arm and he grinned. It was time to make sure she was cleaned off and get her home. “I’ll wait in your office, Healer Weasley,” he said as knew Nat would follow him.

They hadn’t won the war, but they hadn’t completely lost the battle.

He had been frustrated at his lack of progress with Crabbe, but he realized now he needed to be careful what he wished for.

They still had to explain to the other Healers how Audrey had healed the baby without being able to offer any clues as to what they had done. After that, they had to keep Audrey safe from Crabbe’s wrath if Crabbe realized it was Audrey who had cured the baby.

The whole thing was a bloody mess without any good solutions. The only bright spot was Audrey Weasley was not Natalie Parker and wouldn’t be vulnerable in the way Nat was.

~*~

“We’ve had questions,” Audrey sighed into her glass of wine as Harry sat at her kitchen table while Percy prepared dinner in the kitchen.

“I really don’t like the position you’ve put her in, Harry,” Percy told him stonily. They’d had to lock down Percy and Audrey’s house for the first time and clearly it was already taking its toll. “She’s in real danger!”

“I know,” Harry agreed, splaying his hands before taking a sip from his beer. “Believe me, this is not what I wanted to happen! I didn’t want to have anyone in danger.”

Audrey held up a hand when Percy opened his mouth to fire back. “Darling, I wanted it to be this way. We’ve been over this. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed, but I’d rather it be me than that poor girl! It makes the most sense for it to be me.”

“We are doing everything we can to ensure her safety,” Harry reiterated yet again. “I have an Auror on her at all times. She’s being guarded as carefully as we can manage. Unfortunately, with Crabbe able to use house-elves to bypass the security to get into the country, we can only do so much.”

“It means she can get into the hospital to get to Audrey!” Percy growled with barely controlled fury.

Harry honestly didn’t blame him. If it was Ginny, he’d have been furious, too. But Ginny, like Audrey, would still stand up to try to defend someone else. “What would you have us do, Perce? You want us to let that baby be in pain? What if she’d died, too?”

He watched his brother-in-law close his eyes and grip the counter hard. His lined, angled face bespoke of the sleepless night he’d clearly had after their ordeal the day before. As soon as the baby was healed, Harry had taken Nat home and had moved straight away towards securing Audrey’s safety.

Audrey rose and went to her husband, putting an arm around his waist. “This is going to get worse.”

“I know,” Percy said before turning to wrap his arms around his wife. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “I didn’t have you during the war, so I didn’t know fear like I do now. I can’t lose you.”

“You aren’t going to,” Harry promised as he stood, knowing he needed to give them space. “I’m going to up the security on the hospital.”

“How are you going to explain this to the rest of the staff?” Percy asked them as Audrey turned to face Harry.

It was a question that was haunting them both but they’d decided on enough of the truth to hopefully keep the rest of the staff safe. “We told the staff that only Audrey and I know the secret of how to cure someone from this poison. We explained that there is a person out there who is doing this and we don’t want anyone else to be impacted.”

“We also explained that the secret to curing everyone is in a vault that will automatically be opened upon our deaths,” Audrey went on. That part had been her idea. “We’re hoping it will keep us from being killed.”

“I really don’t like this,” Percy said again as he dropped a kiss to the top of his wife’s head. “I know this is the right thing to do, but what if Molly or Lucy is taken so you give up the secret?”

“Crabbe doesn’t want the secret out, though,” Harry reminded him. “She’s going to want us silenced, but with the threat of the cure getting out, she will have to be careful to try to find this vault we’re talking about.”

“And she’ll know we know what we’re doing,” Audrey continued. “Too many of the Healers saw what we did and I can promise one of them will talk to the papers. It’s going to come out how the mother died from poison and how the baby was cured. She’s going to know we have a cure and we have to hope she thinks it’s a cure based on a potion.”

Harry’s jaw flexed as he thought about the work they were trying to get done to get the poison to yield something useful, but thus far Crabbe had covered all her bases. The poison, once exposed to air after Nat pulled it from the body, degraded quickly. It took minutes for the sample to be worthless until they left it on someone’s skin to infect someone, but that was asking too high a price. Nat would have to keep pulling the poison out of someone and they’d have to hope the person didn’t become seriously ill and die from it.

“The whole family is in danger,” Harry said bleakly as he tried to fight back the guilt at being the reason they had yet another monster after them. He knew it wasn’t his fault. He knew she was crazy and her being crazy was directly related to her husband’s abuse of her, but nevertheless the guilt stayed lodged in his gut. “We have to be hyper vigilant again. It’s not as bad as with Voldemort, as we only have one woman and whatever henchmen she hires, but she’s still very dangerous and she doesn’t behave like other criminals. She has her own agenda and timeline.”

“She’s going to target Lily.” It wasn’t a question Audrey was asking.

Harry nodded. “I know.”

~*~

“How did they deal with Aunt Audrey curing the baby?” Lily wondered a few nights later as she and Nat lounged on the couches watching Al and Scorpius play chess. The boys were stretched out on the floor on their stomachs, the game between them, with Teeny curled up asleep on Al’s back. She’d been playing for a while, and Lily didn’t know exactly when she’d had enough, but it was pretty cute. She was a lot smaller than Emma now and didn’t take up much room there since her brother was growing into monster proportions.

She, Honor and Hugo were going back to school shortly and she honestly didn’t know how she was going to manage it. She hadn’t felt like this since just before she went to school for the first time and her father had bought Ducky for her. At least she’d have her cat. Even now, Ducky was curled up asleep on her lap, giving Lily a measure of comfort.

“I haven’t heard,” Nat told Lily dejectedly, “but I’m worried about your aunt’s safety.”

“Just focus on your own safety,” Al called out form across the room, alerting Lily to the fact that her brother was already done with the game and stringing her boyfriend along since he could focus on listening to them. Scorpius, however, still thought he had a shot at the game and clearly was not paying them any attention.

Lily chose to ignore Al because it suited her mood at the moment. She was definitely in a mood. Something felt unsettled to her and she didn’t know what it could be but as she stared at Nat she realized exactly what it was. “Oh.”

“What?” Nat wondered as she shifted in her seat.

Lily grabbed at the ends of her long, red hair and splayed them through her fingers trying to work out how to say it. “It’s just… I’m going to be you in two years.”

Her friend’s eyebrow rose in question.

“I’m going to be restricted to the house,” Lily sighed as she sat back with a grimace. “I won’t be able to get a job or anything.”

“You want to start a restaurant, right?”

“I did,” Lily admitted as she twitched her nose back and forth, thinking it through. “I really did think that’s what I wanted, but I’m not sure now. I don’t know what I want to do, to be honest.”

“You don’t have to know right now,” Nat pointed out reasonably. “You have a few years yet.”

“Yes, but it’s my sixth year,” she reminded her. “I should have some idea.”

“What’s your best subject?”

Lily shrugged. “I’m not really brilliant at any of them. I’m not bad at anything, either. I’m getting fine marks in everything.”

“How do you want to spend your days after we leave school?”

How did she want to spend her days? What did she want to fill her time with? She’d thought about becoming a therapist for a short while because she liked talking to people, but realized quickly it wouldn’t do. For one thing, as soon as anyone around her became too emotional, she was instantly overwhelmed and had to escape from them. It was one of the best things about Scorpius, to Lily’s mind. His emotions could be all over the place, but they never overrode hers or made her feel like she was suffocating. Most of the time he was so calm now that they’d been together for a year. Nothing his parents said or did could change their relationship and she knew that was one of his biggest fears all along.

Then she’d thought about working in a shop which might be fine after she was married, but definitely not before. Men would be forever hitting on her and she hated it. It always made her skin crawl in the worst way, even though most of them weren’t trying to make her feel rotten. She had been feeling badly about hating the attention but her mother had pointed out she didn’t ask for the attention and she had a right not to want it.

But Lily would feel a lot better if Al would get off his bum and ask Nat out. She’d tried telling Nat he was interested and to flirt with her brother but Nat wouldn’t do it. She’d tried telling Al just to ask her out already but Al wouldn’t do it. They were stuck and it left Nat feeling like a complete failure as a woman.

Lily shook her head and tried to refocus on what sort of job. “Nothing in the ministry.”

“No, you’d end up crying a lot,” Nat said and Lily nodded. “Although,” Nat mused after a moment, “they might get a lot more done just to stop you from crying.”

Lily grinned and Al snorted.

“What?” Scorpius asked, finally glancing their way.

“I was just wondering how many things would get done if Lily was crying,” Nat explained.

“All the things,” Scorpius said with a grin and refocused on the chessboard.

“Give up,” Lily told her boyfriend. “He has his checkmate face on.”

“Damn,” Scorpius sighed and rolled over. “Want me to put Teeny in bed?”

“Please,” Al told him. Lily watched as Scorpius carefully lifted the tiny elf and carried her, almost like a baby, to the small cupboard where Polly insisted they sleep. Polly was currently with Victoire as Teddy had to work that night and all three kids were sick, but it had been no trouble to keep Teeny occupied while her best friend was too ill to play.

“What were you discussing besides Lily crying?” Scorpius wondered as he flopped next to her and tucked her into his side.

“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after Hogwarts but I realized I’ll be kept locked up just like Nat is if Crabbe isn’t caught,”

Scorpius threaded his fingers through her hair and sighed as he leaned in to press a kiss to her temple. “What do you want to do?”

“That’s just it,” she said as Al came back from the loo and took a seat on the other end near Nat. “I don’t even know what I want to do. Nothing sounds appealing.”

“I asked her what she might want to do with her days and that’s when we agreed the ministry was a terrible idea,” Nat explained.

“Hence the crying,” Scorpius said with understanding.

Lily thought about it for a long moment and then finally said, “I like children. I could be a nanny.”

“Not in just anyone’s household, though,” Al pointed out. “We’d have to have it secured and we’d have to totally trust them, plus you wouldn’t be able to take the children on outings.”

That was true.

“You like helping people,” Nat said after a minute. “You always volunteered to help with any of the projects at school. Is there a way to help people as a job, just with… you know, like charity work.”

Excitement flared in Lily’s heart as she thought of it. There were so many ways she’d love to help people. The wizarding world had its share of poverty and issues. Plus, there were Muggles she could help as well. “I don’t think there’s anything like that which would be paid, though,” Lily said as she chewed on her lip.

“I mean,” Al chuckled as he shook his head. “It’s not like you need any money, Lils. You have a huge amount of gold waiting for you, plus a bloke who won’t mind if you don’t take a paid job. In a few years Scorpius will be making a lot of money.”

Lily felt her cheeks warm. She often joked about marrying Scorpius, and she sincerely hoped it was where they were headed, but he hadn’t asked her and she still had two years of school left. It was two years of being away from him. Still, he’d need all of that to get out of his training at the bank and to where he was making real money. She was so proud of him, though. He had a head for numbers and she knew he was going to go far.

“He’s right,” Scorpius agreed as he ran his fingers lightly down her arm. “I just want you to be happy, whatever that looks like. I’ll keep a roof over our heads.”

His words shot warm pleasure all through her as she heard his love for her in everything he did and didn’t say.

“Plus,” Nat said with excitement, “Lily’s being Lily means that every fundraiser will be a smashing success because absolutely no one has the ability to say no to her!”

Lily felt herself blush even further as both her boyfriend and brother burst out laughing.

The fireplace came to life and moments later Honor walked through with a small bag. “I’m spending the night,” she told the room at large. “My sister and your brother are being gross.”

“They tend to do that,” Nat said as Honor dropped the bag and sat down at the chessboard to start replacing the pieces.

Lily was so proud of Honor. Her friend had come a long way from the tall, shy girl who hid behind her hair to who she was now. “What were they doing?”

“Nothing too gross, actually,” Honor explained as she finished setting up the board. “I think they were missing having alone time so I begged Caroline to let me come spend the night. They put Alex in his room for the first time and Caroline is attempting not to have a meltdown. I figured that was a job James could handle on his own.”

“You’re a good sister,” Nat promised as she rose and sat down across from her at the chessboard. “I’ll play and won’t even cry when I lose.”

~*~

“I’ll just move the crib back,” James offered again as he held her in his harms, stroking the hair from her tearstained face. “He doesn’t have to be in his own room.” He still wasn’t sure why she’d decided to move Alex, but she’d woken up that morning and told him they were turning Alex’s room into a proper nursery and he was moving in that night.

Much to James’ surprise Alex had first napped in his cot in the new room and then went to bed in the new room. Caroline had nursed him to sleep in the rocking chair, James had moved him to the bed, and he’d slept through it.

Now his wife was sobbing against his chest as they lay in their bed together and he didn’t know what else to say. So he held her and let her cry it out. The dogs padded in and Rufus even helped Steve jump up onto the bed so the already huge puppy could cuddle on her feet, helping her calm down.

When she finally calmed enough to mop up her face and drink some water, she sat up and hugged her knees, hiding her face in her arms. James rubbed his fingers along her back, feeling the shirt and the ridges of her spine. He hated seeing her so upset. Alex was such an easy baby now. They could keep him in their room. He had two months of light workouts until the next season started to really pick back up. They hadn’t gone to the world cup. It wasn’t worth the risk, and James hadn’t minded since England hadn’t made it anyway.

“Your mum suggested I put him in his own room.”

Surprised, James straightened. “Well, Mum isn’t the boss here. If you’re upset–”

“No,” she turned her head so he could see her red, puffy eyes. “I told her I was scared to have him out of my sight what… what with everything that’s going on. It was making me a little crazy! I… I heard from the cheer gym about a job.”

“Yeah?” James grinned. “With the little kids again? I know how much you liked it.”

Her eyes filled and when she closed them the tears spilled down her cheeks. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” he sat up further and wrapped his arms around the ball she’d made of herself. “You don’t have to work if you don’t want to. I thought you liked teaching the class, but if you don’t want to, then don’t.”

“I want to teach the class b-but I don’t want to leave Alex.”

Ahhh. James finally started to put the pieces together. She’d been reluctant to have anyone mind the baby for her, except him. She’d done it once to go out to the bar, but she’d been nervous the whole night and had woken with several nightmares for a week afterward. “You’d need Mum to watch him so you could teach the class.”

“She and Nat would help, I know it, and Emma will soon be old enough to join. She’ll be four in January and I’d love to have her in my class.”

“I know she’d love to have her Aunt Caroline teaching her,” James agreed. There had been a time when he wouldn’t have left Nat in charge of anyone because she’d been so ill, but she was completely stable now and knew how to eat to stay healthy. She also seemed to be getting a bit stronger on her mostly meat diet. Granted, she was absolutely no help if someone attacked, but no one could attack the house so it was a moot point.

“Your mum said to try Alex in his own room and to see how I did,” Caroline explained miserably. “I got the letter from the gym owner while your mum was here on Tuesday and she had me write back straight off because of course, I want to do it. I’ve been trying to tell you and trying not to panic for three days now.”

James kissed her cheek and nuzzled her with his nose until she looked up and he could properly kiss her lips. “You still don’t have to do this now if you’re this unhappy.”

Her blue eyes looked even brighter with the sheen of tears. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because Alex is ready and I can’t hold him back just because I’m afraid or he’ll grow up stunted and weird.”

James couldn’t help but chuckle. “He’s going to be fine.”

“He is fine,” she said as she wound her arms around his neck again. “He doesn’t need me to sleep near him anymore!”

And the sobbing was back.

James glanced at the dogs, but they didn’t look the least bit concerned by her very radical mood swings at the moment, so he went back to what he had been doing and held her while she cried it out. Eventually, he whispered, “He’s going to get up and immediately want a nappy and to nurse with his mum, Caroline. He still isn’t eating solid food yet. He still needs you.”

“I’m hormonal.”

“No, you’re not,” he lied without a single moment’s hesitation because there was no way to actually fess up to the truth on that one. “You’re sad.” That seemed very safe.

“He’s g-going to go to Hogwarts before I know it and then what?” she sniffled hard as she clung to him. “He really won’t need us and he’s probably going to be in as much trouble as you were!”

There was definitely no way to reply to that one so he skirted around it. “Maybe he’ll take after you and won’t cause trouble.” She snorted. “Alright, but he’ll go off to school with Amelia and Livy, so he’ll have his cousins there to keep him in check. They’ll be in the same year at school, maybe even in the same house.”

“He needs a sibling.”

James blinked. “What?” The conversation had turned in a way he definitely hadn’t expected.

And unfortunately, his wife was still looking miserable as she scooted away a bit so they could actually look at each other. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

And she hadn’t mentioned it to him once. But of course, he also kept that to himself. If he’d learned anything about Caroline, it was to leave her be until she was ready to talk. No amount of cajoling would get her to talk and trying to pry anything out of her before she was ready was more likely to send her into a tailspin. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She hesitated. “I don’t think you actually want to hear this.”

He took her hands and rubbed his thumbs along her soft skin. He grinned even as his brain tried to wrap itself around having another baby any time soon. “I always want to hear what you’re thinking.”

Caroline chewed at her lip for a moment and then nodded, almost to herself. “I… I was thinking that once Alex is one and my potion wears off, I mean, if he’s okay, that we could start trying.”

Alex would be one in March and of course there was no way to reverse the birth control potion anyway. “If he’s okay?”

“If he’s not having any more problems with food since I might have to stop nursing him if I get pregnant.”

He nodded slowly and found he didn’t hate the idea. “I think that’s workable, but we should probably decide closer to January or February, but if you were to get pregnant, it’d have you due during the down time for me for work.”

“I was thinking about that, too,” she sighed and leaned into him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing is wrong with you,” he grinned as he pulled her down to cuddle on his chest while Steve wedged himself against her back. “You’re perfect and I love you.”

“You’re a saint.”

“No,” he shook his head as he cupped her cheek. “Just a man who loves his wife. It’s as simple as that.”
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