Curiousity Killed the Cat

READ AUTHOR'S NOTE AFTER FINISHING THIS CHAPTER. Please? (:

Elyse Black, no scratch that, Elyse Potter was having what she would like to call a “mild panic attack.”

To anyone else, she was having a psychotic break and was at a very high risk of throwing herself (and anyone around her) off of a building.

Hermione and Ginny were next to her, eyeing each other as if asking desperately what they were going to do with the woman in front of them, who was as of right now, banging her head repeatedly against the tile floor.

Perhaps the scene should rewind a bit.

All had been going great for Harry and Elyse who were happily married and what not. They still lived in their flat but often would visit their friends. Recently they have been a bit more involved, er, physically but that was nothing new. When they weren’t doing that, they were as much in love as they had been at Hogwarts many years ago. They had been married for about six months and had yet to do anything that could risk their marriage.

Now, three months ago, Hermione found out that she was pregnant in what Elyse had claimed would be a “very smart yet awkward ginger child.” Of course, the moment Hermione expected that she might be with child, she began to hyperventilate and literally pulled Elyse away from Harry (Hermione had tried very hard to forget about what they were doing when she found them). She then made the pregnancy potion, which was the one sure way to tell if a woman was pregnant or not, well, by magical means at least. If one was with child, once she drank the potion a cloud of smoke would appear before her giving her either a green check mark or a red x.

Once she took the potion and that ever so wondrous green check mark showed up, Hermione then proceeded to burst into tears. It took five hours, a baker’s dozen of donuts, three butterbeers (non-alcoholic for the pregnant woman, of course), and two boxes of tissues in order to get her to stop crying.

Of course, after Elyse and Ginny managed to convince her that she was not going to spontaneously combust, she was quite happy to be with child and be able to start a family with Ron.

But that was three months ago. This was an hour and a half ago…

. . .

Elyse felt funny. And by funny, she did not mean the good kind of funny. Friday night, she had gone over and visited Luna and Ryland – who were very much together yet, not married – and had stayed for dinner. Dinner turned out to be… something rather odd and Elyse immediately regretted taking a bite of it. It tasted like dirt, cotton candy, onions, and a sweaty Ron sock.

Needless to say, she had been throwing up all Friday night, Saturday, and now at the wee hours of Sunday morning. Now, at 5:24am she was once again hunched over the toilet vomiting for what had to have been the hundredth time.

There was a soft knock on the door and Elyse assumed that it was Harry, who had been very helpful last night in her ill state.

Elyse groaned. “Come in.”

Sure enough, her husband stood in the doorway. He looked very tired and she suddenly felt very guilty that she had woke him up, again. His hair was worse than it was when it was tamed, black hair sticking up in all directions. If it were any other time, Elyse might have laughed.

“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly, closing the door behind him. He was wearing a pair of flannel pants and no shirt; however, this wasn’t very new to Elyse.

Elyse sent him a look that said ‘do you really have to ask?’

“Right, well, I sent an owl to Hermione. I figured she’s much more educated with illness and stuff,” Harry explained, looking somewhat nervous. This was not new either. Whenever one of them would get sick, most of the time Elyse, it was an unspoken rule to get Hermione and let her deal with this.

Elyse nodded her head weakly. “Thank you.”

Before Harry could even muster up a reply, there was a loud pop that came from the other room. Hermione came flying through the door, looking once at Harry before biting back a laugh at the woman on the ground; however she knew better than to laugh at Elyse in this state. She might not be able to last twenty minutes without getting sick, but she would still skin her alive.

“Er, you might want to leave,” Hermione said, focusing back on Harry. “You can go visit Ron if you like, he’s probably still up. He saw some Muggle film about spiders and hasn’t stopped screaming since. And, well, you remember last time....”

It was very hard not to get the memory of Ron building what resembled a bomb shelter to protect him from “those damn spiders” in the middle of the night out of their heads, let alone forget.

Harry nodded, fully aware that he might go and find Ron curled up in the fetal position. “Right, I’ll be on my way. Just get me if, er, anything bad happens.”

Harry was out of the bathroom and had gone off to the Weasley’s before Elyse could get it wrapped around her head. However, there were other things that were keeping her a pit preoccupied, such as the urge to empty her stomach for yet another time.

“I need someone to blame for this,” Elyse groaned as Hermione sat down next to her as gracefully as a pregnant woman could.

Hermione offered her a hesitated smile. “Sorry, ‘fraid it might only get worse.”

“Worse? So you do know what God forsake illness has been brought into my body?” Elyse said, raising an eyebrow at her friend. Had she not been so distracted, she might have noticed that she was acting a bit… odd.

Hermione looked away from her watchful eyes. “Well, sort of. Actually, yes… maybe. I don’t know how to say this…”

“Well, you probably should first say it.”

She took a large breath of air before spitting out at rapid speed. “Ithinkyoumightbepregnant.”

“Run that by me again.”

“I said,” Hermione said, looking at everything but Elyse, “that I think you might be pregnant.”

Silence.

“It’s completely possible!”

Silence.

“Don’t they say children bring joy to the world, or something?”

Silence.

Followed by a giggle… then another one.

“Oh, Hermione! That’s a riot! Me? Pregnant?” Elyse giggled, finding the idea very funny and very much impossible. After all, hadn’t she already learned about what happens if you aren’t protected? Yes, a child. Gold star for Elyse…

She coughed nervously. “Well, you never know!”

“Hermione,” she giggled, calming down a bit, “you are the brightest witch I know, but sometimes you can be such a dope!”

Hermione glared. “Fine then, if you are so sure, why don’t we do the pregnancy potion!?”

“Fine,” Elyse said confidently, glaring right back at her.

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

. . . . . .

“You don’t know how to make it, do you?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

Hermione sighed and reached over for her bag, knowing that it would probably come down to this, she had created the potion the moment Harry sent over an owl about Elyse’s state of being. It was a strange, silvery liquid and Hermione knew it all too well.

“So sure of yourself that you had one premade?” Elyse asked, eyeing the potion fearfully. On one hand, she was fairly certain that was wasn’t pregnant. On the other hand, however, she really didn’t want to even consider it as a possibility.

“I figured you’d either accept the idea or you’d try and prove me wrong,” Hermione said, handing her the glass bottle. “Either way, you would still end up drinking it.”

“And where is Ginny? Or Luna? They would be on my side!” Elyse said, still eyeing the potion fearfully.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Since when did we start taking sides?”

“Does it matter? There are sides!”

“Sides of what? There are no sides to this convocation!” Hermione replied, rolling her eyes at her friend, who was obviously so nervous that she would do anything to stall this.

Elyse huffed. “Yes there is. There is my side – where good people are and there is rainbow and sunshine – and then there is your side –where little children are eaten by monsters and all is chaos.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I wish,” Elyse groaned, giving up on her small, drastic attempt to postpone this pregnancy potion. “Damn, if I’m pregnant I won’t be able to drink until… like… nine months!”

Hermione smirked, despite the situation. “I thought you weren’t pregnant.”

“I’m not,” Elyse replied instantly.

“Alright,” Hermione said, giving her a knowing look.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

“GINNY!”

Hermione and Elyse both whipped their heads towards the door leading into the bathroom where, sure enough, Ginny was standing in, grinning like she just won the lottery.

“What?” Hermione asked, very confused, which is something that usually doesn’t happen to her.

Ginny shrugged. “I don’t know, all I heard was yelling and that we might have to force feed Elyse a pregnancy potion.”

Elyse’s jaw dropped. “H-How did you find out about that?!”

“Well, you weren’t exactly whispering…” Ginny said, that same grin returning to her face.

Hermione tried not to laugh at Elyse’s defeated look. She was, after all, her friend and she knew that she was probably having a mental breakdown in her own mind. However, Elyse tended to make people laugh even the worst situations.

“Fine, fine, fine-freaking-fine!” Elyse cried out, throwing her arms in the air as if to prove the intensity of her future actions. “I’m taking the damn potion!”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea…?” Ginny asked, eyeing Hermione carefully. They weren’t exactly sure how Elyse might respond if she found out that she was pregnant.

Hermione shrugged. “Ginny, we’re sitting on the floor of a bathroom while Elyse curses the world around her. It simply can’t get any worse.”

“Take your best shot, imaginary child!” Elyse said, poking her stomach.

Hermione and Ginny shot a look of confusion at their friend before looking at each other, wondering if it really couldn’t get any worse.

Elyse popped the top off of the bottle, watching as a small amount of smoke came from the concoction. She looked at Hermione, then Ginny, then her stomach before shrugging and throwing the bottle back and downing it in one gulp.

Now, these things usually take a minute or two to process your result.

So, for the next one hundred and twenty seconds, there was a very, very, very tense feeling in the air.

That, along with panic, of course.

It seemed as if all three of them had the same mental countdown going through their head, because when they all reached one hundred and nineteen, their eyes widened as a puff of smoke came out and appeared in front of Elyse…

. . .

Hermione and Ginny were next to her, eyeing each other as if asking desperately what they were going to do with the woman in front of them, who was as of right now banging her head repeatedly against the tile floor.

“Er, Elyse?” Ginny said, being the braver of the two.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

She would occasionally thrown in the words “men” or “Harry” or “sex” but this was the majority of words they could hear from Elyse as she banged her head against the tile floor.

Ginny looked at Hermione, urging her to say something. “Um, Elyse!”

She paused. “Yes?”

“Well, um, are you okay?” Hermione asked, surprised that she actually responded.

Elyse gave her a look, which told her that she was very far from okay, before going back to banging her head against the tile.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Come on, Elyse! It’s not even like it’s your fault. It takes two to get pregnant.”

Elyse paused, once again, thinking this over.

“Die, die, die, die, die.”

Hermione glared at Ginny. “Nice, now she’s going to stab her husband.”

“Well, she won’t get the chance if she keeps killing her brain cells!” Ginny replied, gesturing to their friend who went back to banging her head against the floor.

Hermione was about to respond, when another voice came into the convocation. “What about brain cells?”

The two women whipped their heads around to see Harry – wearing a shirt – leaning against the doorframe, completely oblivious to what was going on right before his eyes. Actually, he did in fact notice their frighten looks as well as the fact that his wife was currently banging her head on the tile floor. However, he did not notice the rather large green check mark that was still hovering before Elyse.

“Harry!” Ginny said, realizing what could happen if this situation didn’t start off better. “How’s Ron? He better not be building another bloody bomb shelter.”

Harry, slightly confused at the site that was going on, answered. “Er, no. However, there is now a ring of torches around your house, Hermione. Said something about ‘fire keeps them away’…?”

“For the love of…” Hermione mumbled, despite the situation.

There was a small pause before someone spoke again. “So, um, not to intrude but would one of you mind explaining to me why my wife is banging her head against the tile floor?”

“Stupid. Sperm. Stupid. Sex. Stupid. Miracle of life,” Elyse continued, obviously missing the fact that Harry was right in the room, eyeing her suspiciously.

Ginny looked between Elyse and Harry before shrugging. “I’d run if I were you Harry. This is the second time you’ve knocked her up, she might not be so forgiving this time.”

The scene that continued as such:

Hermione, who was trying to figure out exactly how to word the situation to Harry, was now shaking her head at Ginny, who handled the situation in the worst possible way. After all, the cat was out of the bag, what could she do now?

Elyse, who had been banging her head, came to a complete and total stop at the words that fly out of Ginny’s mouth. She was now looking directly at Harry as if to say “well, she’s probably right”. Then, in true Elyse fashion, she went back to banging her head as if Ginny hadn’t spoken a word.

Harry, who had been leaning against the doorframe, had managed to lose his balance as he was shifting his weight and landed flat on his back after missing the doorframe completely. He was currently laying flat on his back, wondering how the hell this could have happened.

Ginny simply glanced around at the people in the room before, once again, shrugging.

“Well, congrats!”

“Ginny, shut up.”