Coral

Oh, it\'s a jolly \'oliday with Mary



Mary makes your \'eart so light!



When the day is gray and ordinary



Mary makes the sun shine bright!



Oh, \'appiness is bloomin\' all around \'er



The daffodils are smilin\' at the dove



When Mary \'olds your \'and you feel so grand



Your \'eart starts beatin\' like a big brass band



It\'s a jolly \'oliday with Mary



No wonder that it\'s Mary that we love!



Lonicera



Amanda was not the sort who needed constant verbal reassurances, not since she was a very young girl, at least. Sometimes, she had a great difficulty in knowing which way to go, or what to expect from a situation, but she was learning to understand looks. Understand looks,yes, and the look he had been giving her since she gave him the news spoke more words than a few common compliments could offer. As did discreet gestures, some so discreetly made as to be almost invisible by someone who did not understand them.



She was rather pleased with herself, and that, combined with the happiness and hope of motherhood once more created for her an aura of unadulterated health and natural beauty; a glow that no cosmetic or spell could ever recreate. Part of that healing had been psychological.



After she had learned of all that Demogene had done, she had ceased visiting the small cemetery where her daughter was buried, unable to cope with the anguish that such visits created in her heart. She had not once been to Polly\'s grave. She had not given Polly a thought, except when she adamantly refused to find a replacement for her.



Edward had dutifully refrained from discussing Olivia, Demogene, or Polly with her, and watched with some trepidation as she ceased visiting the little grave.The healer\'s warnings about her mental health concerned him, but since she seemed otherwise to be well, he let it lie.



The day after telling him about the newest pregnancy, Amanda called on Stella to take her to see Olivia\'s grave. She also went to see Polly\'s, and lamented that she could not find it in herself to forgive the woman, despite her innocence.



" In a way, she wasn\'t innocent." she said to Stella, who sat beside her on the grass, looking at the grave-marker. " She didn\'t resist."



" She couldn\'t. Demogene was much stronger. "



Demogene\'s grave lay in the far corner of the Rookwood cemetery, beside her mother. The interment had been grim, stark, and composed beneath the still stifling air of disbelief they had all felt since the trial. Amanda of course had not gone, nor had Stella. They said that Agnes had; they said that Agnes had been frightening to behold in her grief and dismay.



Even now, when Amanda could look upon Polly\'s stone, and feel pity, she could not look towards her cousin\'s grave, which sat stark and flowerless compared to the floral covered resting places of the other family members. She tried to stir up the intense grief of before, but alls he could muster was cold emptiness.



Later in her journal she wrote;



" I must be less sentimental than I should be. But I can only feel what is natural, I cannot pretend to feel sorrow any longer. I cannot, either,pretend to feel forgiveness."



After her visit to the graves, she devoted herself to conditioning the second bedroom into a nursery. She had chosen that room over the other, smaller rooms, due to the connecting door, and because she could not bring herself to reopen the first nursery.



She made and hung white curtains in the windows, and spent many hours seated cross-legged in the bed, trying to decide which color she would have Winter paint it when she finally divulged her secret to the rest of the family. Or maybe she would insist on hand-painting it. She could enlist Stella\'s help with that. Stella would not be pleased, but Amanda was becoming very opposed to magic in it\'s superfluity. Hadn\'t she always managed very well without it? Some days , she would much rather have no magic, and the means by which to do her work the Muggle way, than to have to wait for someone to appear and do it for her.



Bit by bit, since Polly\'s death, she had been adapting the house to fit her needs, instead of before, when she relied on someone else to simply swish and flick to find or repair any specific object. Instead of simply summoning the matches from whatever room of the house they happened to be, she made sure to have a supply next to every fireplace and candle cupboard.



She told Edward what she was thinking, and he was not entirely enthusiastic, even after she said she intended to have Stella paint the upper walls. He hoped that her mother would successfully talk her into some sense when the time came. To distract her, he told her to have Amele come and make the bedding and what-not for the room.



" There will be a need for a great deal of it, I would imagine." he had said mysteriously.



The next morning, to Amanda\'s shock and delight, she walked into the room to discover a wooden cradle, with delicately turned spindles and a scrolling ivy wreath at the headboard. She stroked it appreciatively for a moment, breathing in the smell of new wood.



New wood?



She knelt and examined it more closely. Two years ago, she might not have been able to tell a person anything other than it was a cradle, but after spending so many days either in the wand shop or at home preparing wands, or wood for wands, she was able to discern that this was no heirloom dragged from the attic. This was new, freshly carved, and recently polished.



Excited, she turned it slightly to it\'s side, and began feeling around for the mark. Triumphantly she discovered it just under the bottom, towards the lower left. A very small, raised \'O\'.



" You made this!" she exclaimed.



He started. He had been watching her from the doorway, and had assumed his presence was unnoticed.



" I did." he agreed.



" Isn\'t it just amazing? Look at all of the detail work!"



" Yes...I\'ve seen it." he replied with dry humor. " I don\'t only do wands you know."



" I never thought about it, I suppose. Do you do this, furniture I mean, often?"



" Not anymore. I learned it when very young. I decided at a specific juncture of my adolescence to rebel against my father and make only end tables and owl perches."



" What happened?"



" The end tables were a success, and the owl perches were temperamental. I couldn\'t bear the thought of all those crippled owls on my conscience."



---



Amanda could wait no longer, and sent Crisp with a note inviting Amele over that afternoon. She understood Edward\'s sudden enthusiasm towards purchasing cradle linens, and was determined to have the perfect set created. Something to showcase not just a baby, but her husband\'s handiwork.



Amele appeared forty minutes later than she had promised in her reply, and came through the fireplace explaining rapidly that Franchot had pushed Renee through the Floo earlier, so that she had to travel all the way to Ipswich, where she found her son in a sweet\'s shop, eating caramel barley and telling the elderly couple who owned the establishment that he was an highwayman who had only nearly escaped being hanged by his elder brother.



" Embarrassing! That is what it was. Ah, but they grow up so fast, and you just never know what they will say to someone. Nearly hanged! Oh, they looked at me very queerly. Imaginative, my little Renee. Of course..." she glared without anger at her elder boys." I wouldn\'t doubt they did try to hang him!"



The older boys feigned a look of surprised innocence that she would suggest such a thing.



Wellis, the youngest, Amele kept tied to her wrist by means of a long, brightly colored gypsy shawl, which she had magically affixed to the waist of his toddler robes. Amanda was not sure whether this was for Amele\'s convenience, or Wellis\' safety, as his brothers would come around ever so often and ask if they could use him for a prop in this or that game they were attempting to play. Their mother always refused.



When Amele and Amanda had finished their tea, and the boys their juice and sweets, Amele herded them all into the parlor with strict orders not to break anything that she couldn\'t mend with a Reparo. She then took out a small bag, and emptied several tiny objects onto the floor. These were shrunken toys, with which, after they were returned to their normal size the younger boys fell to playing, while Jules read from a large volume on curses he had brought along, and Arden asked to play on the piano.



Amanda propped the lid open for him, and Amele stabilized it with a sticking charm to keep him from pretending later that it was a finger guillotine for his younger brothers.



" Now, this entire room had better still be here, when we return." she warned sternly, before following Amanda, and leading Wellis patiently up the stairs.



As always, Amele carried in her bottomless bag, a catalogue of fabric samples that was always being changed to suit the fashions and times. Amanda flipped randomly through them, as Amele admired the cradle.



" What colors were you considering?" Amele asked.



" Well...I hadn\'t considered any. I was hoping one would just appeal to me."



" Try out your imagination. "



" Well, I\'ll probably give grandmother the task of decorating it. She did such a wonderful job the last time. "



" Yes, but she just performs the spells, no? You choose the world."



Amanda looked at the ivy-crowned cradle, and then at the walls. She thought of Crisp, and the oak tree where she had spent so many afternoons in her childhood.



" Forest." she said at last. " I would like it to be a forest. But not too realistic. Whimsical. With owls painted in the trees."



" Then the linens should look as moss. "



" But not a fairy bower."



" Artistic."



" Exactly."



Amele took the fabric book, and found a sample near the back, of large tear drop printed cloth, where each teardrop fitted into the one below.



" This...only with leaves?"



" Yes."



Amele took out her chewed pencil and made a note.



" For the curtains. Now for the cradle...hmmm, I will find something mossy, and soft. " she began listing the many essential items, and they spent a good half hour figuring up how many sets of what might be needed, and whether the rocking chair should have a new cushion, and whether Amanda should or should not have any new dresses made.



At last they were both satisfied, and they returned downstairs for more tea, and to see if the boys were still alive. Amanda asked Amele to be certain not to give her secret away, as she was waiting for just the right time to surprise her mother with the news.



The perfect time with which to surprise her mother was slow in arriving. She had many opportunities, but none seemed exactly appropriate. The day Stella was having her teeth cleaned, for instance, was not the right day, nor was the day they spent in Diagon Alley straightening out an order for live slugs that Winter had placed a week earlier, and had been delayed by an owl collision during an unexpected fog.



Amanda let the time slip away, happy in her secret selfishness. She blamed her unease and pallor on a spring cold she had managed to acquire in Muggle London, and Stella, preoccupied with her newest hobby, ( the creation of hair wreaths; an antiquated, tedious craft once favored by the Victorians and now blazing through the Wizarding community.) was satisfied with her answer.



Three weeks after Amele\'s visit, the linens were finished and delivered. Amanda spent three-quarters of an hour admiring them, and another fifteen minutes in writing out a lengthy note of sincere thanks. Afterwards, she was preparing to move a few items, such as blankets and diapers, from the first nursery into the second, when she was interrupted by the arrival of Snegourka, Eloise\'s demure owl, who had come to deliver a lacy invitation.



Snegourka seemed unusually reluctant to relinquish the envelope; Amanda suspected that was her small revenge at Amanda for sending Crisp around so often. Snegourka was an old maid and a hermit, and she didn\'t appreciate the fact that Crisp was allowed to barge in with such familiarity. He also seemed to be smitten with her, and had come home many nights with holes pecked in his head by her impatient beak.



" You shouldn\'t be so hard on him." Amanda said to the white owl. Snegourka only ruffled her neck feathers irritably and flew off before Crisp had a chance to discover her.



The invitation was for a dinner at Rookwood in three days. Just a small affair; Eloise, Winter, Stella, and two other guests, one that Amanda only vaguely remembered from the days of being groped under the table by Martin Ashwell. A man named Sloop.



The other was an eccentric Witch named Francy Suttlecomb. Francy was an explorer by trade and would say she was \' just going out\' when what she meant was she was going to traipse barefoot across South America without any provisions other than a penknife and her glasses. She always wore a baggy sort of short pants that looked like bloomers, and a series of vests each with numerous pockets in which she claimed to carry everything she required for survival; yet on inspection, the pockets revealed only her wand, penknife, a ball of string, two musket balls, and a tin of apricots. Amanda liked her.



She showed the invitation to Edward that evening, and he agreed it would be nice to attend. If Ms. Suttlecomb were planning to traipse anywhere particularly exotic in the future, he could place a request for some unusual ingredients, or if nothing else, ask how the witches and wizards in Tobago made their wands.



Amanda toyed with the idea of at last telling Stella and the others about the baby. After the other guests had left of course, and she could speak with them in private. She liked that idea. It was nearing the time when she would no longer be able to hide the fact, despite how safe it made her feel. An evening of light food, and even lighter conversation appealed to her, and she began to look forward to the event.



When the evening of the dinner came around though, she discovered one of the few things for which she missed having a little magic . Her hair. Personally she could manage it into no more than two styles. Loose. And a loose tail. After two frustrating hours in which she was determined to achieve something more bold, she at last managed to pull it back on top and pin it with a bronze barrette; a style that made her look even younger than she was, and much more innocent.



Well, it would have to do. It was straight at least, and she was not going to Floo her mother to come all the way over just to curl her hair. She did regret for a moment declining Edward\'s offer to hire a new maid. As she grew more tired, the help would be nice, but the desire did not outweigh her complete fear at the idea of having another person in the house again.



Tightening the barrette, she gave an impatient sigh and since Edward was not looking, dared to stamp her foot just a little. After the hair, she was not looking forward to choosing her dress. She had a wonderful selection, ranging from the greatly formal, to the severely casual, but none of them fit her well at the moment. She could squeeze into any of them, but she didn\'t want to make her condition blatant.



After flipping impatiently through the closest choices, she selected a rust-colored suitdress with a large peplum. It was one of Amele\'s miracles and looked classy, like something Ingrid Bergman would wear in a farewell scene. It had a low vee neckline, and the skirt hit her at mid-calf, much shorter than her usual dresses. She had worn it many times in the past as it was comfortable, and cool. Even Eloise wouldn\'t think it out of place.



She examined herself closely in the mirror. She was four months along by her own calculations, and her belly seemed quite obvious to herself. However, to anyone who was not suspecting, it would look as though she had merely gained back the dramatic amount of weight she had lost after her fall.



" You look lovely." Edward commented sincerely. She gave him a small flirtatious smile in reply.



" Can you feel her moving yet?" he asked, noticing her where her hands lay.



" Not yet. Why so certain it is a girl?"



" It is. I insist. And she will have curly red hair." he said, fastening Amanda\'s pearls over the locket, as she held up her hair. " Are you certain you feel well enough for this?"



She nodded, applying a thin coat of lipstick. He watched with amused fascination, having rarely seen anyone use Muggle cosmetics.



" I feel quite well. I\'ll come home if I tire." she assured him. " I\'m sure the evening will be interesting."



Besides, she thought to herself, she was ravenously hungry, and if Eloise was having a party then it would most likely involve crepes suzette. And she could think of nothing she wanted more right now than a plateful of crepes suzette. Her mouth was practically watering at the thought as Edward let them out the front door into the mild evening.



It was early yet, so they decided to walk a while before Disapparating. They strolled comfortably along, enjoying the sound of the wind in the trees, and the hooting of owls carrying messages through the night.



" Lenore." Edward uttered.



" Excuse me?" she asked.



" What do you think of the name Lenore?"



" Too tragic." she said after some thought.



They had not discussed names yet, but it suddenly felt very right to do so.



" What about Elizabeth?" she asked.



" Regal, but too long. Especially in combination with the surname. Anne?"



" Too short. Especially with the surname. Caroline?"



" Not quite pretty enough. Pandora."



" Might lead to a few bad habits. Clytie?"



" No...I don\'t care for that one at all. Perhaps something fresh. Gemma?"



" Not too bad. Charlotte?"



" Perfect!"



" What?"



" Why, that name is perfect. Charlotte. We can call her Lottie, and she will have your hair.Do you like it?"



" Yes, actually I do. It\'s highly appropriate too. She would be named after one of my favorite authors."



" And that would be...?"



" Charlotte Brontë."



" I\'ve never read her writing.What did she write about?"



" Love." Amanda answered, squeezing his hand and laughing." Rather...unorthodox love."









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Jolly Holiday Lyrics- Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman



Lonicera- Honeysuckle is a vining plant that smells sweet, and coils its more fragile self seductively around sturdy trees for support. It symboloizes an erotic love.