Harry followed Bellatrix through the winding halls of Hogwarts towards their quarters in dungeons. Both had to force themselves to walk the path away from the hospital wing where Severus lay sleeping. It simply didn't make sense.

People didn't survive the Killing Curse. Harry was the only one and then there had been extenuating circumstances. They were happy that Severus wasn't dead, yet at the same time it was terrifying and confusing. Children's stories and fairy tales spoke of Dark Necromancers that could withstand horrible curses, but Severus hadn't done any dark magic for decades.

That wasn't important now. The family was back to normal. Bellatrix was pregnant and Severus was alive. Harry's actions in the Great Hall, being in the know and helping defeat the Evil Professor, would raise his status and with any luck he'd have some friends now.

“Mum?” Harry slipped his hand into his mother's. She turned her head towards him slightly. “When is the baby going to be born? What is it going to be like? Will it go to Thames Wizarding Day school just like I did? When will it be able to play Quidditch with me?”

Bellatrix smiled and shook her head slightly. “The baby will be born in about nine months Harry. It's November 1st now so somewhere around the first week of august. And it will be a few years before our child needs to worry about school or is big enough to play Quidditch.” She squeezed Harry's hand. “Let's go home.”

Harry wished he was still small enough for his mother to cradle him in her arms and carry him home. She used to do that, when he was small. He yawned, covering his open mouth with his hand. “What happened to Da? Why is he so much better now and why did that mark thing disappear?”

He waited for a response noticing after he took another step that his mother wasn't alongside him any more, and he didn't have to reach up to hold her hand any more. Harry turned back, looking for Bellatrix, wondering what was going on.

Bellatrix was kneeling on the floor, bent nearly in half as she clutched her rapidly swelling stomach. Within a moment she seemed to sense Harry looking back at her and looked up at him, her eyes wide and horrified. “Andromeda, please, get Andromeda.” She seemed to not even recognize Harry, he could have been anyone in her eyes.

As fast as he could, Harry turned around and ran back to the Hospital wing. The halls blurred around him and a few times he nearly crashed into the stone as he rounded corners and clambered up the stairs three at a time.

By the time he arrived that the hospital wing he was very out of breath. “Madame Pomfrey!” He gasped, making his tired legs continue running into her office as fast as they could. “You've got to get Aunt Andromeda. Mum is really sick, something weird is happening to her belly!”

Poppy Pomfrey didn't waste a minute. She tossed a handful of floo powder into the fireplace behind her desk and a little piece of paper that would give off an alarm signal as soon as it landed in Andromeda's clinic. Within minutes the witch would be there, ready to help.

“Where is she?”

Harry didn't bother giving a verbal answer, he just ran back out of the hospital wing hoping that he'd be able to remember where he left his mother.

Poppy cast a quick charm that left a long lasting stream of gold sparks in the air behind them. Andromeda could follow without a problem. Within a few hallways she was huffing and puffing, running through the school wasn't usually part of her job. The injured and ill tended to come to her, she didn't seek them out.

Bellatrix was still on the floor. There was a small puddle of vomit to one side and a bit of it still left on her face. Her stomach had stopped swelling beneath her hands and was now pulsing up and down in some kind of beating pattern, almost as if she had a giant heart within her, beating away.

Pomfrey took control of the scene immediately. This was a Magical Medical Emergency. She knew how to deal with those. “Harry, go find your aunt and make sure she gets here was quickly as possible.” With Harry taken care of she could focus on Bellatrix.

Within a moment she'd whipped out her wand and was on the floor kneeling next to Bellatrix. “Bella, are you all right? Can you hear me?” She asked, her voice low and soothing. She waved her wand gently around the witch. There was no response, but the diagnostic spell was much more promising.

The only problem was that it didn't make any sense at all. Certainly lots of information, just none that lead her to any obvious conclusions. The results conflicted with each other and every update contradicted what she'd been told moments before.

“Bella, please look at me. Look up please. Respond, tell me you're awake!” Pomfrey was getting frantic, she'd done everything she could think of short of grabbing the woman's shoulders and shaking her to wakefulness, not that it was likely to work, and she didn't dare use magic in case it affected whatever was happening to Bellatrix in a different way then she'd been expecting.

But she was running out of options and soon magic would be the only choice left. Pomfrey pointed her wand at Bellatrix with a shaking hand, but before she could even think of a spell to cast, a hand rested on her shoulder and she dropped her arm back down to her side.

Healer Andromeda Tonks hurried past the Hogwarts Mediwitch and summoned a stretcher, levitating her sister onto it carefully. “Take care of Harry.” She instructed Poppy as she began to jog down the hall next to the stretcher.

Harry wasn't happy when his aunt closed herself off in one of the private treatment ones with her assistant and his mother. In fact he banged on the door and demanded to be let in before Pomfrey arrived and stopped it.

“Harry please, Healer Andromeda can't concentrate and help your mother if you keep distracting her.” She placed a kind, yet forceful hand on Harry's shoulder and guided him into her office and sat him gently in a chair. “She'll be all right. Healer Andromeda knows what she's doing.”

Harry nodded, his lips pressed tightly together and his eyes slightly red. Everything had been going so well and working out. That was all gone now. It was as if their family could never be happy for more than a few hours. Something always had to wreck their happiness. It was a cruel curse, one that he couldn't even begin to comprehend.

It seemed to Harry like he sat in the uncomfortable chair in Pomfrey's office for hours. There was no noise coming from the treatment room and his father still hadn't woken up. Pomfrey wouldn't even look at him, let alone engage in conversation.

But still he sat there, waiting for Andromeda to come out and reassure them that everything was going to be all right. And that it hadn't been a killing curse that hit Severus, only a green tinged stunning spell. But none of that happened.

When the door to the treatment room finally opened and someone came out, it wasn't Andromeda. Her assistant, Healer Trainee Jason, emerged looking more exhausted that was physically possible. “Harry, Healer Andromeda wants to see you in the room.” He held the door open and after Harry entered, closed the door and entered Pomfrey's office to discuss what had occurred.

“Aunt Andy?” Harry asked tentatively. The Healer's white robes were covered in blood, she hadn't had the energy to use a quick cleaning charm.

A small smile crossed Andromeda's face. “Harry.” She opened her arms to him, raising an eyebrow when he didn't come any closer. “Oh, my clothes.” She realised after a moment and glanced to the curtain that separated them from the bed where Bellatrix was lying. A few words later her clothes were as clean as if she'd just taken them from the dryer.

“What happened? Is Mum all right?” Harry asked, his eyes began to get red again. As if he was about to start crying.

Andromeda looked the eleven year old in the face, staring straight into his eyes. “She will be fine. The process was exhausting for her.” She waved her wand again and some flaming words flowed out of it before flashing out of existence. Within a second a steaming cup appeared on the table next to them. Andromeda took a long swallow of the drink, savouring the hot burn. It helped her wake up.

Harry didn't have a question to ask. He just looked at her and glanced towards the curtain that kept his mother from his view.

“About that.” Andromeda settled into the chair. “Well, it's related to your father and to the baby and to a slight miscalculation I made.” She pulled out her hand and twirled it nervously through her fingers.

“The procedure that allowed your mother to carry a child is very experimental and very risky. The life-force of the foetus was magically created and maintained by both your parents' life-forces. In a normal pregnancy it is only the life-force of the mother that get connected to the child. I knew this and it could be detected by scans of energy and life-force of the foetus.”

Andromeda paused for a breath and clenched her hand into a fist for a moment. “The killing curse took away half the life-force that was maintaining the foetus and it didn't react well to that. At first, when your father died, it was transferred into his body and created a new, identical one. Then the remains of the energy went back into your mother's body.”

“Then things went wrong. Her body didn't want the child's energy back. It saw it as foreign and forced her through a very fast pregnancy in order to get rid of the energy remaining.” Andromeda smoothed a few strands of Harry's hair out of his face.

“There wasn't anything I could do but stop Bella from losing so much blood.” She looked away. “I'm sorry Harry. I knew that you didn't want this to happen. But the important thing is that your parents are fine and healthy. There aren't going to be any more problems.”

Harry got off his aunt's lap. He'd been looking forward to being an older brother and having a little sibling to play with and tease and share his things with. Someone to be his friend, no matter what. He'd become rather attached to this little person already. While they were still a little lump of cells.

He took a step and rested his hand on the curtain. For a moment Harry looked back, when Andromeda nodded, he pulled the curtain aside.

Bellatrix laid on the bed, underneath a light sheet and heavy blanket. Her skin was pale and washed out. She'd lost a lot of blood. Her eyes were closed and she breathed in a shallow, peaceful sleep.

“I gave her a dreamless sleeping potion. It'll help her heal quickly and give her body time to rest. Her mind needs a break too.” Andromeda spoke from the other side of the room. “She'll wake up in a few hours.”

Harry bit his bottom lip. This was all wrong. Everything had been working out so well. He wanted to scream and shout and throw things into the wall. But that wouldn't help anything. And he knew that now. Tantrums were a thing of the past, for the most part.

But even with these more mature thoughts in his head, the jars and bottles in the room, as well as the window, began to vibrate. They shook with him in anger, frustration, and sadness. Even his aunt's arms around him did little to stop the pain.

Everything was twisted. He worried about his parents and their unborn child, Kevin had to worry about which hand was his dominant one. Stephen and Hermione had to deal with an entirely new world. It just wasn't fair. Some people were singled out for extra hardships and more problems, while others had everything given to them and perfect lives.. Harry didn't understand it and he didn't want to. There was nothing right about it.

“Come on now. There's nothing to do but let her sleep.”

Slowly, with a hand on his back guiding him out, Harry left the room and heard the door close softly behind him. Andromeda followed close behind him and brought him into Madame Pomfrey's office. Her assistant had already left and the mediwitch was checking on Severus.

Andromeda pulled Harry onto her lap and let him bury his face in her long hair, her arms reaching around and holding fast to his shaking body as he cried. “It's all right,” she murmured, crooning comforts in his ear. Her own daughter, Nymphadora, had never been this kind of child.

Finally Harry pulled away and wiped his eyes on his sleeve before accepting her handkerchief. “Thanks,” he whispered, not trusting his voice at a normal volume.

“What happened? I demand you tell me what happened!”

The loud, hoarse voice of Severus Snape came suddenly from one of the bedrooms. “Where is my wife? What happened to our child?”

There was a rustle of bedclothes and the sound of something heavy falling to the floor and he appeared in the doorway. His hair was a mess, falling in knots about his face, more greasy than ever. He looked at them with wild eyes. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Please, why won't anyone help me?”

Andromeda took Harry off her lap and hurried to his side. “Severus, please calm down. Bella will be just fine. Just come with me, sit down and breath.” She spoke to Severus in low, soothing tones as she lead him back into the room he'd been sleeping in. In there, their voices fell too low for Harry to hear and he didn't want to move any closer and get caught eavesdropping.

Instead he leaned back and dreamed about the baby.