Cold Feet

When Hermione got back to the office, she discovered that the rest of the team had been running bets on exactly how well she knew the stunning Draco Malfoy.



“I can’t believe that man is single,” Nancy swooned. “There must be a girlfriend he wasn’t telling us about. Nathan, find out.”



Nathan automatically scribbled a note in his pad as the joke flew right over his head. If he ever quit this business, he would have a great future in international espionage. Ray had once suggested that the only thing Nathan couldn’t track down was his own sense of humour.



“At least we know he’s not gay,” Elle added.



“A lot of gay men have brief relationships with women in order to have children,” Nathan piped up. He was a veritable fountain of conversation-killing information. “Don’t you remember that item we did last year about same-sex parents?”



“Oh, Nathan! Shut up, for Merlin’s sake. Is he gay?” Elle asked Hermione. “He’s a little too well-groomed for a straight guy, isn’t he? That’s always a bad sign. Tell us, Hermione. You must know if he went out with anyone at school or college. Were they male or female? Thin or fat? Blondes? Or darker girls?” she added hopefully, patting her own glossy black locks.



“I think he’s into other blondes,” Nancy sighed, twirling a lock of golden hair around her manicured finger. “There was something about the way he smiled at—”



“I went out with him at college,” Hermione admitted then.



Elle’s mouth dropped open in shock and, Hermione thought, slight admiration.



“See? I told you!” Nancy whooped and slapped her palm down on her desk. “What did I say? I knew it. Tell her what I said. I could tell from the look on her face when she saw him. Horror of the kind that only the unexpected appearance of an ex-lover can cause. Woo! I win. That will be five Galleons from you, please, Ray.”



Ray tutted with annoyance and handed over the cash.



“And you, Elle.”



“What was it like?” Elle wanted to know. “You lucky, lucky bitch.”



“I’m not telling you.”



“Tell me or you’re fired. I lost a whole five Galleons on this.”



“I can’t remember. It was a very long time ago.”



“How long?” Nancy probed.



“I haven’t seen him for at least six years and it’s sixteen years since I first met him as a first-year at Hogwarts.”



Hermione saw Nathan’s eyes narrow as he immediately tried to work out exactly how old that made her. She knew Nathan was constantly measuring his career up against hers and was eager to know how long he had to go before he could be sitting in her seat.



“I went to university when I fifteen,” she said to annoy him. “But enough about me.” She sat down at her usual place at the round table covered in newspaper and magazines cuttings where they held their afternoon meetings. “Shall we start? What have the papers thrown up as tomorrow’s hot topic? Anybody?”



“Meeting your long-lost love in the workplace,” Ray suggested wickedly.



“Can bygones be bygones?” Elle asked.



“Has your long-lost love turned out like you expected?” Nathan threw into the mix. “Or even better?”



“Is there still a spark?” Nancy asked.



“Oh, for God’s sake,” Hermione interrupted them. “Will you shut up about it? Yeah, it was a shock to see him. And yes, it was a shock to see how much he’s changed. He used to have longer hair, you know. Used to tie it back in a ponytail.”



Elle and Nancy gave an approving nod.



“But no, it didn’t make me question my entire existence since we broke up and see that I’m marrying the wrong man, my life has become a meaningless shell and I won’t be complete until my ex and I are together again. Draco Malfoy is just a man I happen to have gone out with in my dim, distant past. He’s history.” Her voice started to rise. “I’ve put that man behind me. Discussion over!”



The whole team looked at her in faintly stunned silence for a second or two.



“Where did that come from?” Elle asked eventually.



“Oh, fucking PMT,” Hermione snarled.



Ray and Nathan nodded wisely.



“Nathan,” she continued, “perhaps you would like to start the meeting by telling the rest of the team about that article you found in the Daily Prophet on pet owners who grow to look like their pets.”



*



That afternoon’s meeting progressed without any further reference to Hermione’s shared past with Draco Malfoy, but as soon as she got home, an owl was patiently waiting outside her window, sent from someone she knew would be far more persistent in uncovering the truth about her feelings on the matter.



Ginny always watched the show. She had switched allegiance from their rival show, ‘Witching Hour’ while pregnant and she was still watching ‘Let’s Talk’ now that she was at home full-time with Francis (her parents had insisted on funding some proper ‘maternity leave’). In fact, she had once even been a guest on the show for a segment on the year’s most popular baby names.



That morning, Ginny had sent her a letter so frantic, Hermione could barely decipher her writing.



'Was that him? Was that REALLY him? Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be on the show? Are you with him now? Are you having an affair with him? Are you having sex with him in a seedy hotel in Brighton right now?'



Not having sex with anyone since Francis was conceived, Ginny had become obsessed with the idea that everyone else was having lots of it, shagging simply all the time. Hermione was having plenty of sex, thank you very much, but certainly not with Draco Malfoy.



Hermione grudgingly got out parchment and a quill and jotted down a reply.



'Yes. Yes. Didn’t know. No. No! NO!!!!!!'



*



In less than thirty minutes, Hermione’s fireplace flared into life and Ginny’s excited face popped through the green flames. She must have rushed to Floo her the second her owl arrived with Hermione’s reply.



“Hermione Granger! Have I got you out of bed?” she began.



“No,” Hermione said flatly.



“That was quick.”



“Ginny, I have not been having sex with Draco Malfoy. I didn’t even kiss him goodbye. Why does everyone assume I want to pounce on him?”



“Does everyone assume?”



“You obviously do. And everyone at work did. They wouldn’t let it go.”



“Because that’s exactly what would happen in one of those Muggle soap operas – a face from the past reappears. Neither of you can control yourself. The chemistry’s still there—”



Hermione snorted.



“It’s true! Hundreds of relationships start up again after years apart. Unfinished business,” she added wisely.



“Draco Malfoy and I have no unfinished business.”



“He looked great, didn’t he?”



“No.”



“Typical, isn’t it? As if a Malfoy would actually allow themselves to age. Very shaggable,” Ginny persisted.



“No, he isn’t!”



“Wow. All that stuff he said to Nancy. Incredible. Can you believe that a woman actually left Draco Malfoy? Can you believe he actually got married so young? What on earth can she have been like? I’d like to say she must be amazing, but since you’re the most amazing woman I know, the whole thing must have been arranged by that stuck-up mother of his. And she walked away from him? I almost choked on my tea,” she told Hermione.



“I did choke on mine.”



“I bet you want to track her down and offer your congratulations. We should buy her a medal for services to witch-kind.”



“No, I don’t,” Hermione snapped. “It’s horrible being dumped, especially if you’ve got a kid. I wouldn’t even wish it on someone who’d dumped me.”



Ginny’s disembodied head made a “pfft!” sound. “Very big of you. Bigger than I would be in the same circumstances. Good girl.”



“Thanks.”



She raised her eyebrows expectantly. “So…?”



“So what?”



“So, you must have had some kind of conversation with him off-air as well.”



“Yeah.”



“What about?”



“I don’t know. Yachts.”



Ginny looked confused. “You talked about yachts?”



“What else were we going to talk about?”



“Um, I don’t know…” Ginny said sarcastically, putting on her best village-idiot face. “What do you think, you stupid woman? So many things left unsaid since the last time you saw that man.”



“Right. That would have been a very enjoyable conversation to start in the lobby at work, ten feet away from the security guard,” Hermione shot back, equally sarcastic. “Ginny, he was in a rush because he had to get back home to his daughter and I had to get back to work. That’s all.”



“He dumped you six years ago without giving you a proper reason, and this morning, all you managed to talk about was yachts? I don’t believe it. You might have missed your opportunity to ever learn the truth.”



“Who says I want to know it? What difference could it possibly make to me now?”



“It could heal all those years of anger and hurt,” Ginny joked.



“Perhaps they have healed and going back over them would just be like picking at a scab.”



“Charming image,” Ginny grimaced, wrinkling her nose. “But I still don’t believe you really don’t want to know. Unless you’ve secretly arranged to see him again and you’re just not telling me—”



“Of course I haven’t!”



“You told him where you live these days?”



“Nope.”



“Then he asked you to owl him, didn’t he?”



“No.”



“But your office must be able to contact him if they want to.”



“Probably.”



“Did you tell him about Harry?”



“He knew already. From the papers.”



“And you said you were getting married?”



“Yes.”



“And you showed him the ring?”



Hermione hesitated. “Sure.”



Ginny snorted and eyed her cynically – a little disbelievingly, perhaps. Though, there was no reason on earth why she shouldn’t have believed her, given that Hermione was crazy about Harry. She was smitten with the man she was going to marry. Harry was the centre of her universe. He was the love of her life. Why wouldn’t she have wanted to tell Draco? Ginny didn’t really know that she hadn’t. She was just projecting her guilt into her friend’s questioning.



“Did you show him the ring?” Ginny asked one more time.



“Ginny, I showed him the fucking ring!”



*



When Hermione finally managed to get rid of Ginny, having promised that she would see her first thing the following morning to sift through another set of replies to her personal, she Flooed Harry at work, in his office at the Ministry. She felt the need to hear his voice, as though it might block out all the sudden noise in her head. But he couldn’t talk to her – he was up to his elbows in paperwork. His secretary promised Hermione that she would let him know she had called.



“Thanks, Maria.”



“He’s mortified about the treacle thing, you know. He told me you were really pissed off about the mess.”



“Well, yes. I’ve forgiven him now, though – mostly.”



“Don’t be too hard on him, will you? Those Quidditch friends of his are just a bit silly, that’s all. I’m sure I’m not letting the cat out of the bag when I tell you Harry can’t believe how badly he’s messed up. He keeps asking me how he can make it up to you. He loves you more than anything. You know that.”



For all his laddish posturing with the Quidditch boys, Harry was, in truth, more softhearted and sensitive than Hermione was. While she had never cared that much for big romantic gestures and that kind of thing, Harry was the complete opposite. When he couldn’t get away from work, he even often got his secretary to call her to tell her that he loved her. It felt cruel to say it, but she sometimes found his affection a little too much.



“Thanks,” she said now to Maria. “I do know that.”



“You arranged your hen party yet, then?” Maria asked, beaming.



“Not yet. The wedding’s still four months off and I want to make it a good last night of freedom.”



“Those four months will be over in no time. Before you know what’s happened, you’ll have been married for fifty years with ten grandchildren.”



“Yeah.”



Fifty years? Ten grandchildren? Hermione tried to hide her reaction as an image of a worn-out old sow popped into her mind’s eye, unbidden. Seriously. An actual pig.



“Don’t forget to invite me, will you?” Maria smiled brightly while Hermione was still trying to shake the mental image.



“You’re number one on my list. Look, Maria, I should let you get back to work. Have a nice weekend.”



“Goodbye, darling.”



As Hermione pulled her head from the fireplace, she found herself twisting her engagement ring uneasily. It didn’t really matter that she hadn’t shown it to Draco, did it? It would have been a bit forced, not having seen him for six years – six years since she smacked him as hard as she could, shaking with rage as she left the room before she actually caused him seriously injury – then, suddenly thrusting her diamond in his face. And besides, he and Harry had always hated each other so much, even after Draco had switched allegiance before the Final Battle against Voldemort. It would look like she was trying to rub it in his face. There just wasn’t a moment when it would have seemed like showing off or spiting him in the worst possible way.



Besides, she would be showing the ring to plenty of people that night. Once a year, Harry’s Quidditch team hosted a proper, formal dinner to which wives and girlfriends were invited. It was a black-tie affair, a thanks for the patience the girls had shown throughout the season. And their laundry services, in some cases – though the day Hermione did Harry’s laundry for him was the day she would 'Avada' herself. He could damn well do it himself.



*



That night, Harry came home from work slightly earlier than usual, and by six o’clock, he was as excited to be pulling on his dinner jacket as any teenage schoolgirl slipping into her best robes for the Yule Ball. He had Hermione knot his necktie, though he inevitably complained that she didn’t do it properly and retied the thing himself when he thought she wasn’t looking. Then, he pulled James Bond poses in the bedroom while Hermione put on her make-up.



“Do I look like Sean Connery?” he asked her. “Pierce Brosnan, maybe?”



“More hair than Sean Connery and much better than Pierce Brosnan.”



Harry was satisfied she had given him the right answer.



Having grown up in the Muggle world, both Hermione and Harry had found that, on the whole, they preferred Muggle clothing to the more formal wizard’s robes they’d had to don during their Hogwarts years. Most formal events such as the one they were attending tonight had a good mix of people decked out in both robes and Muggle clothing; tonight, Hermione had decided to wear a dress she had bought for her work Christmas party the previous year. It was black, very form fitting and fell to just above the knee – a little conventional perhaps, but it flattered her tall, slim figure, and was very well cut. And expensive. She was damn well going to get some use out of it, particularly since she had already had to take it Madame Malkins to be professionally cleaned after Harry spilt beer all over the skirt – even several dozen 'Scourifys' hadn’t been able to get rid of the smell of stale beer.



When eventually she was ready, Harry grabbed her by the waist and threw her backwards over his knee in a ballroom-dancing style swoon so that her carefully arranged hairstyle was instantly ruined.



“Don’t we make a gorgeous couple?” he grinned, waggling his eyebrows when Hermione had finished berating him.



“We don’t look too bad together,” she shrugged, and went about fixing her hair again with her wand.



Before they left, Harry went downstairs to show Mrs. Smith how handsome he looked in his black tie and to drop off some Pepper-Up Potion he had picked up for her on his way home from work. After that, they Apparated to the venue where the party was being held, though they planned to catch a cab back home afterwards. It was unthinkable that they wouldn’t get too drunk to Apparate that night – Hermione was especially sure she would be getting quite thoroughly drunk. After all, she needed a drink or nine to find the naked Quidditch songs even remotely amusing.



When they arrived, most of the team were already there, propping up the bar and making excruciatingly polite small-talk with the wives and girlfriends of their Quidditch buddies. The women were all in boring black robes or dresses like Hermione, but the variety in the men’s outfits was pretty impressive. They all wore the exclusive Quidditch team tie (a gold skull and two broomsticks crossed in the manner of crossbones, against a burgundy background), but accessorised with a crazy waistcoat here and a brightly coloured wizard’s hat there.



Harry and Hermione greeted their former classmate and Harry’s teammate, Seamus Finnegan, and they talked a while. Two minutes later, Ron Weasley immediately came bounding over in that goofy yet adorable puppy dog manner of his, his lanky limbs flailing as he greeted Hermione with a kiss on the cheek and a hug. Then, he grabbed hold of Harry’s head and tried to force it down between Seamus’ thighs.



“Harry’s gay!” was the accompanying call. “Call the paper and tell them Harry Potter is a bend-eeeeer!”



“But I’m getting married! Tell him, Hermione!” Harry appealed to her.



“He’s a bender,” she agreed with Ron, who gave her a wink. Smiling wickedly at her fiancé, Hermione turned and left Harry to fend for himself. He had battled the Dark Lord at the tender age of seventeen – he could handle being groped by Ron Weasley.



“Hi, Hermione.” Seamus’ wife, Amanda Finnegan – formerly Brockhurst – kissed her on both cheeks, as did Ron’s girlfriend, Luna Lovegood (this, Hermione thought, was the big problem about living in the Wizarding World; since practically every witch and wizard living in Britain had attended Hogwarts, it severely limited the dating pool, because chances were, you had known or at least met any potential partners during your school years – hence why so many of their former schoolmates were married to each other).



“Hermione, hi!” another of the boys hollered in passing before throwing himself on top of Seamus, Harry and Ron.



“Are you ready for this?” Mandy asked her as the men continued to fondle each other’ crotches in an orgy of the kind of homoeroticism they otherwise spent so much energy denying.



“Can you ever be ready? I like the ‘can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ approach,” Hermione confided. “I’m getting absolutely wasted before the trousers start coming off. Who wants a drink? Double Firewhiskeys all round?”



“Yes, please,” Luna smiled serenely.



“I can’t,” declared Mandy.



Luna turned to gaze at Mandy, her gaze sharpening a little. It took Hermione a moment longer to work out the huge significance of Mandy’s throwaway line.



“Oh, my.” Luna’s smile grew wider and she put a hand to her chest. “I thought I sensed something different about you, Amanda…”



“Yes, we’re pregnant!” Mandy confirmed. “I had my twelve-week check up at St. Mungo’s yesterday afternoon.”



“Oh, congratulations,” Luna sighed, actually clapping her hands at the news. There was kissing. "I thought there was a change in your aura…”



“Of course you did,” Hermione muttered. The other two either didn’t hear or just ignored her. Mandy smoothed the sky-blue fabric of her robes over her as-yet inexistent bump and adopted a coy look. “I would have told you earlier but… well, we wanted to be really sure. Can you believe it? I’m going to be a mother.”



“This time next year, you’ll be washing baby-grows,” Luna said wistfully. “You lucky thing.”



“Very lucky,” Hermione concurred. “Who wants to party when you can do the laundry instead?”



The sarcasm seemed to go right over Mandy’s head, which was probably for the best. She had been thinking of Ginny’s ‘friend’, Janine, and the stinking dustbin of soiled reusable nappies in the corner of her kitchen that Ginny had described to her. She sighed and decided maybe she should make an effort to at least act a little interested. After all, though she had never been very close to Mandy, Seamus was one of her oldest and dearest friends, and he was going to be a father! “Congratulations, Mandy. Seamus must be very pleased. I’ll go congratulate him later. You know… when he’s done fondling my fiancé.”



“Oh, please do, Hermione, he’s over the moon. He’s been broody for years, just like Harry has.”



Hermione blinked at that comment.



“Seamus has already been out and brought a broomstick,” Mandy continued. “I told him we needed to get a toy that would suit either a boy or a girl – we decided not to find out the sex, you see – and he said he wasn’t intending to let the baby anywhere near it anyway, boy or girl. It was his treat for proving he’s so virile.”



Luna giggled.



Hermione caught the barman’s eye at last. “What can I get you?” he asked.



“Double Firewhiskey and ice. Actually, make it a triple. Save me coming back to the bar,” she explained to Luna and Mandy, who had stopped laughing rather suddenly, Hermione thought, when they heard her order.



By the time her drink was ready, a small group of witches had already lined up to place their hands on Mandy’s stomach in veneration. She ran a hand over floaty chiffon robes proudly to display her ever-so-slightly convex midriff. Hermione rolled her eyes and took a large gulp of her drink.



For the rest of the evening, she could almost chart Mandy’s progress around the party by the feminine “oohs” and “ahhs” that followed her happy announcement.



*



Seamus and Mandy were seated on a different table from Hermione and Harry. Hermione had to admit, she wasn’t entirely disappointed. It wasn’t long before the pre-natal photo – kind of like a wizarding ultrasound – came out of Mandy’s beaded handbag, and there was only so much you could say about a picture of something that looked like a pink shapeless blob. Mandy flashed hers as proudly as if it were a cover shot for Witches Weekly.



“There are the fingers,” she crowed. “Or perhaps they’re the toes…”



“Perhaps they’re the horns,” Hermione had said. Mandy had just looked at her uncomprehendingly, a smile on her face. Hermione liked Mandy, she really did. But pictures of foetuses, to her, were only slightly more interesting than a picture of drying paint. She could only widen her eyes in disbelief when Luna claimed she could actually see a resemblance between the embryo in the photograph and Seamus. The only thing Hermione thought it resembled was a pink peanut.



Their table of eight was completed by three other couples. There was Jake and Lucia Middleton (him a lawyer, her a very busy mother of three), who'd had to resort to fertility charms and ended up with triplets. “You have no idea how stressed I am,” was Lucia’s favourite catchphrase. There was also Jamie Larcombe and his girlfriend, Isabella – or at least, Hermione *thought* that was her name. They’d met just two weeks earlier on a blind date. She was teacher from Spain who hardly spoke any English, which was probably how Jamie had managed to hang onto her for so long. Next to them were Ron and Luna.



These days, Ron sold property to witches and wizards. He’d started out at a big estate agency in Redmead as soon as he graduated from Hogwarts, but now, ten years on, he had a small agency of his own and was working all hours to get it off the ground. He had massively impressed Hermione with his dedication actually, dispelling her long-held beliefs that Ron was someone who wouldn’t do anything if it involved hard work. His girlfriend of six years, Luna, had naturally gone to work for her father at The Quibbler upon graduation and was one of its senior journalists. Recently, she had also taken an interest in art dealing and was considering switching careers in order to open a gallery of her own one day. She looked a little like a watercolour herself with her long, wavy blond hair, just like a china doll’s, and that far-off, dreamy look in her wide, pale blue eyes.



They had been together a very long time. Luna was special, Ron had said when they first started dating.



Hermione got on with Luna well enough, although she did still think of her as extremely odd at times, and easily tired of her strange talk of non-existent beasts and ancient myths which obviously weren’t true, though Luna swore they were. That was when she talked at all! Often, she would just sit there in a serene little bubble, only joining in with conversation to make some off-the-cuff remark. For a while, Hermione had wondered if Luna did it to deliberate annoy her, or maybe Luna just found her too boring to bother talking to. Later, she would realise that, even as Luna seemed to be lost in her own little world of Crumple-Horned Snorlaks and one-eyed unicorns, she was always keeping an ear on whatever conversation Ron was having on the other side of the table. If he was talking to another woman, her tranquil, dreamy façade would slip just a little bit and she would become fidgety, obviously straining her hearing to make sure he wasn’t flirting.



Unfortunately, Ron usually *was* flirting – much as she hated to admit it of her best friend. When they had first become a couple, Ron had announced Luna was “special.” After six years, however, it was clear that the shine had worn off – for him, at least. Luna was still besotted, even after all these years. Her eyes had started to look perpetually melancholy, like a devoted puppy’s.



“You must be so excited about the wedding,” was her opening statement that night as the baskets in the centres of the tables magically filled with rock-hard bread rolls that would later be used as the first missiles in a food fight.



Hermione started to tell her about local politics at the beautiful sixteenth-century church near her parents’ home where she and Harry were to be married. Having finally persuaded the old-fashioned vicar to perform the ceremony for a non-religious couple living in sin, they now had to warn him that there would be a very good chance there may be several hundred journalists and photographers in strange clothing camping out in front of the church on the big day.



“We managed to convince him it was because Harry's a minor royal from some small European principality. Still, he’s vetoed outright our plans for me to walk down the aisle to ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ by the Darkness,” she joked.



“The who?”



Hermione sighed and shook her head. “Never mind. Muggle song.”



“Oh.” Luna’s eyes seemed to become more wistful than ever as Hermione spoke. In fact, they almost seemed to glisten wetly. Then, she zoned out completely, one ear on Ron’s conversation again.



“Dos birras, por favor,” Ron crowed happily. “See, Jamie, I can speak Spanish, too. I can steal your girlfriend. Easy.”



“I think you mean ‘cerveza’,” Isabella said seriously. “Cerveza is Spanish for beer.”



“Whatever,” Ron shrugged. “It’s all French to me.”



*



The meal was predictably terrible. You couldn’t expect much for fifty Galleons when forty of those Galleons were budgeted on booze. Everything was the wrong colour. The chicken was still pink on the inside. Someone complained that the House Elves must have been completely untrained. Mandy was practically in convulsions as she passed by their table to the ladies’ room. “That was raw chicken!” she exclaimed. “Salmonella could have killed the baby! I’m going to complain!”



Conversely, the colour of the vegetables had been obliterated by three weeks on the boil. Brocolli? Cauliflower? Beetroot? Who knew? Dessert wasn’t much better; a black-forest gateau which would have been unfashionable in the seventies with ‘cream’ that hadn’t ever seen a cow. Hermione and Harry struggled through it while Ron didn’t seem to care what anything looked like. He might as well have been eating dog food. To him, it was about lining for his stomach for the next glass of wine. Harry was on his second glass of Claret and was determined not to be the first man to pass out that night.



“How long until the big day now?” Lucia swapped places with her husband so that she could grill Hermione as well.



“Four months,” Harry called across the table. He got up from his seat and kissed her on the top of her head as he paused on his way to the bar.



“You’ve been engaged for a whole year, haven’t you?” Lucia observed, as though there might be some sinister reason behind the delay.



“We didn’t think we’d have enough time to arrange a proper wedding if we tried to do it last summer,” Hermione explained.



“But we don’t want to wait too much longer because I feel the need to breed.” Harry beat his chest.



“Oh, God, Harry,” she retorted back irritably. “You’re not a fucking gorilla. And I’m not a bloody brood mare!” She hated it when Harry did his gorilla impression. She felt her pelvic muscles contract involuntarily – and not in a good way – whenever Harry talked about sex in terms of animal husbandry.



Lucia rolled her eyes in sympathy. All around the room, lawyers, Healers and office workers were connecting with their animal ancestry. “We’ll just have to hope his sperm aren’t already swimming in circles,” Hermione added with a wry smile.



“What are you talking about?” Harry snorted. “I’ve got super-sperm! I’m not some loser who needs fertility charms.”



Lucia winced. Thankfully, Harry was dragged off to join the rest of his team on the dance floor before he could elaborate his theme.



They bounced up and down in a large circle, arms around each other’s necks, in a boys’ version of dancing around their handbags. Strange, how men would only venture onto the dance floor when the song being played was almost impossible to dance to. Harry certainly looked more comfortable pogo-ing up and down to the Sex Pistols than he had done the one time Hermione had tried to drag him onto the dance floor in a London nightclub. God only knew what he would choose for their wedding song, given the chance. Probably another boy-dance classic, offering the perfect opportunity for the Quidditch boys to camp it up and grab each other by the balls.



“Sorry about that,” she said to Lucia.



“About what?”



“About the… you know, the fertility charms thing. He didn’t mean to sound so insensitive, I’m sure. Harry doesn’t really know what he’s talking about half the time.”



“Why would that bother me?”



Hermione had momentarily forgotten that she wasn’t actually supposed to know the triplets weren’t conceived without the aid of magic. Mandy, who had always been good friends with Lucia and much closer to her than Hermione had ever really wanted to be, had spilled the confidential beans. Harry wasn’t the only man in the Quidditch club who wanted it thought he was a fully functioning, breeding male. Who had Jake talked to when things got tough, Hermione wondered?



In some ways, it was a shame they couldn’t mention the fertility charms. She would have loved to have asked Lucia what made them decide to give it a try. What made them decide that having a child was worth the discomfort of hormone spells and potentially fruitless hoping and waiting, not to mention the money? Ginny had once told her that having fertility charms performed on you meant growing a moustache like an eastern European woodsman. Hermione felt pretty certain that, given the same circumstances, she would have just thrown up her hands and consoled herself with a lifetime of fabulously expensive childfree holidays instead. She found it very hard to imagine that anyone could really want a baby enough to suffer poverty and facial hair.



“Have you Flooed the babysitter?” Lucia yelled at Jake as he pogo-ed close to their table. “Jake? Jake? Have you Flooed the babysitter yet? Has she given Paige the potion for her cold?” Lucia looked exhausted at the thought. “Honestly, sometimes I feel as though I have four children. You have no idea quite how tough life is with kids.”



“Show me the ring,” said Luna dreamily. Again. But Hermione was grateful to get off the subject of babies.



She held out her hand towards the blond former Ravenclaw and smiled. Every time she saw her engagement ring, it was as though she was seeing it for the first time, even a year on. The perfect diamond, which had exactly one hundred facets, Harry told her, seemed to be lit on the inside. It sent a small shard of reflected light onto Luna’s cheek, where it hovered like a glittering tear.



“And he chose it himself, didn’t he? Amazing that he got you something so tasteful. In the six years we’ve been together, Ronald has never once managed to find me anything I would wear. I’m always first in the queue to get an exchange at Gladrags the day after Christmas.”



Lucia nodded sympathetically. “What’s a mother of three supposed to do with red lace crotchless panties?”



“Can I try the ring on?” Luna asked.



“Sure.” Hermione slipped it off and handed it over.



“Not on your engagement finger, Luna,” Lucia admonished. “That’s really bad luck.”



“I don’t think my luck in love can get very much worse. I’m so jealous of you, Hermione,” Luna told her, turning her hand from side to side to catch the light. “Harry’s an amazing guy, and you’re about to marry the most famous, lusted after wizard in England. You’re so lucky.”



“It will be your turn one day, Luna,” Lucia reassured her.



Luna smiled graciously but Hermione felt like punching Lucia when she patted her on the ‘engagement’ hand in patronising consolation.



It was this kind of outdated insistence that marriage was a state in which every girl should find herself that made it so hard when you weren’t anywhere near it. All this talk of couples and weddings… it was as though there was no other way to get through life. Hermione could remember being in Luna’s position very clearly, and she’d hated the pressure she felt under to settle down, get married and have babies, like a good girl should.



But then again, as soon as you did find someone, you were expected to start outlining your family-planning arrangements to practical strangers every time you went out to dinner. Hermione didn’t know what was worse.



Luna handed back her ring and turned her wistful smile towards the dance floor, where the first brave boy had already lost his trousers.



“Oh, no,” said Lucia eventually. “Looks like Harry’s just passed out.”