Snitches get Stitches

Harry wasn’t sure what to say… he just kept staring at Mandy in absolute shock, waiting for the second shoe to drop.

Initially, Harry didn’t want to talk with Mandy because he just wanted left alone, then she showed up out of the blue and said she’d keep it. Harry hustled Mandy back to his place after Ian swore to keep an eye on Hermione.

Hermione tried to follow them but she sat up, realized the trampoline was bouncy, and was immediately distracted.

Fred was no where to be found, Remus left for the full moon, and Harry and Mandy were just sitting in the living room, staring at each other.

“It might not be yours,” Mandy eventually said. She had on Harry’s clothes, not that he minded, and the sleeves of his sweater nearly hid the way that Mandy twisted her fingers together on her lap. Mandy had sat on the couch and looked disappointed when Harry took the recliner.

“But if it is…?” Harry asked slowly, already knowing it was Harry’s baby and having no way to rationally explain that to her.

“Then I guess you can have it, if you want it,” Mandy said. She hunched her shoulders up and Harry couldn’t help but notice how young she looked without her usual makeup.

“I do,” Harry said, sure of that if nothing else. “I just don’t get what changed?”

And more than that, Harry wasn’t certain if Mandy meant it when she said the night before that she didn’t want it at all. Harry wanted that baby more than almost anything in the world, but he couldn’t keep thinking he could have it and then have it taken away.

Mandy shrugged and continued to twist her fingers without quite looking at Harry.

“I don’t want to be a mom,” she said. “I’d just fuck it up because I’d be another tied down, fuck up from the hood. But I…” Mandy looked at Harry through her lashes. “It’s not like I want to be fucking fat and I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt like hell to give birth, but I can quit drinking for a few months if you swear I don’t have to do shit when it’s born.”

“I don’t think you’d fuck anything up,” Harry said. Mandy was a good person, even when Harry had been hurt and angry, he never thought Mandy was doing anything to purposefully hurt him.

“I will,” Mandy insisted. “Every time I look at it I’d think of all the shit I can’t do with a fucking kid hanging off my tit.”

All Harry could think of were all the things he could do with a child. Harry could teach them to walk and console them when they had a nightmare… Harry could make up silly traditions for their birthday and he could read fairy tales to them.

What Mandy saw as something to hold her back, Harry saw as something to give him everything he ever wanted.

But Mandy wouldn’t be there for any of it.

“You- what happens to us then?” Harry asked Mandy thickly. If Mandy didn’t even want to look at the baby, how could they be together?

“We could just… be friends, I guess,” Mandy said. Harry didn’t miss the way her eyes watered and she dropped them to her lap.

“Is that what you want?” Harry asked.

Mandy didn’t look up at him, but Harry saw her lips twist to the side unhappily.

“If I keep it so you can have it, we have an expiration date. If I get an abortion, you’ll hate me. It’s…” Mandy looked at Harry and had tears spilling freely. “It’s so fucked up because I kind of hope it’s not yours.”

Harry moved automatically from the recliner to Mandy’s side and it felt natural when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. When Mandy made the most horrible sobbing sound, Harry couldn’t hold back on his own grief.

Mandy wasn’t offering Harry their baby without a huge string being attached. Harry wished he could say that they’d be together no matter what, but Harry didn’t think he could be with Mandy if she aborted their baby.

It was unfair to both of them.

Harry did promise Mandy the only thing he could. Unlike almost everyone that Harry knew, Harry actually tried hard to keep his promises.

“We’ll always be friends,” Harry swore through his own misery. “You- Mandy, you’re always going to be the most important person to me. You’re my best friend and I love you.”

Mandy sobbed extra loud and clung hard on Harry.

“If it’s not yours, can we try and fix us?”

Harry closed his eyes and tilted his head down to lay his cheek on top of Mandy’s head.

“Yeah,” Harry said softly, “if it’s not mine we can try.”

It was hard to feel very happy about Harry getting a tiny piece of his family when it meant that Harry might lose Mandy after the baby was born.

Mandy fell asleep on the couch with her head on Harry’s lap not long before Hermione tiptoed through the front door.

“Oh. I can go?” Hermione offered in a whisper.

Harry shook his head, he didn’t want her to leave. Harry needed someone to talk to and Hermione looked sober enough to be that person.

“Stay, please,” Harry said with an embarrassing croak. He cleared away the clog in his throat while he very carefully slid Mandy’s head off his lap.

Mandy looked sweet when she was asleep. All the stress that she carried and her defensive sneers and scowls disappeared and she was just a pretty teenage girl who deserved good things in her life.

Harry brushed her bangs off her forehead and left a soft kiss before he pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and covered Mandy with it. Hermione watched Harry do it while she chewed her lower lip and she was quick to follow Harry to the kitchen.

“She’s really going to keep it?” Hermione asked when they were in the kitchen and had a reasonable amount of privacy.

“That’s what she said,” Harry said rather dully. He sat down at the table and ignored Hermione’s tut of disapproval when he lit a cigarette.

“Harry… can I be honest?” Hermione asked tentatively while she sat across from him. Hermione reached out to grab Harry’s free hand and she squeezed it. “Mandy said she didn’t want to be a mum. I think if she said she does now - perhaps I misheard, I was very high - but that she’s only saying that because she loves you.”

“She doesn’t want to be a mum,” Harry said. “She said I can have it if I want, but she doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Oh.” Hermione seemed as surprised by that as Harry was. “Soo… what are you going to do?”

“I… I want it so much,” Harry admitted to Hermione. “I never really thought about kids, but I want it, Hermione. Except…”

“Except if you take the baby then Mandy won’t be your girlfriend anymore,” Hermione said knowingly. She squeezed Harry’s hand and smiled sympathetically. “I love you, Harry, but you’re very stubborn in your beliefs. I- I think you two might have been over as soon as Mandy said that she would abort it.”

Harry hated to think that about himself, that he was someone who couldn’t look past one thing when everything else was so brilliant, but he didn’t think Hermione was wrong either.

Hermione wasted some time with showering, having Harry help her braid her hair up in the rows that she rather liked, and she raided Harry’s kitchen like a starving woman on the brink of death.

“Er… we’re taking a bus downtown to get Mandy some things,” Harry said while Hermione multitasked with a bowl of cereal and her textbook for her new Charms class.

“Do you want to come?” Harry offered.

Hermione looked up and was pleased to see that Harry and Mandy were holding hands, even if they both still looked rather sad.

It was a terrible position they were in. Hermione thought perhaps they should have used protection, but it wasn’t as if either of them had parents to stress such a thing to them.

“No, thank you,” Hermione said politely. She had something rather important to take care of and it would be best to do if Harry weren’t home while she she did it.

“Okay, I’ll be back later,” Harry said. “You’re… er… fine just hanging out here?”

Hermione already returned her eyes to her book and she held it up as a silent explanation that Harry huffed out a laugh at.

“Right,” he said fondly. “I’ll probably grab something to eat at Kevin’s tonight, want me to let you know?”

“That would be wonderful,” Hermione said genuinely. Hermione absolutely needed to get to know every single new person in Harry’s life.

There were just so many.

Hermione had gotten to know Mandy Milkovich almost immediately upon arriving in the States. They had a wonderful talk and Hermione had fully supported her plan of terminating her pregnancy… until Hermione saw how desperately Harry wanted a baby.

Harry was an absolute moron, but he was also an orphan whose godfather left him. Hermione could give him a pass and support his idiocy as she did truly think that Harry would make a wonderful father. Possibly a very immature father who would likely have an insurmountable number of obstacles in his future, but Harry had overcome much worse ones before.

And, after Hermione once spent a week thinking that her best friend was dead, it was Hermione’s thought that anything that gave Harry a reason to live and tone down his recklessness-that-bordered-on-suicidal behavior should be supported.

Even becoming Aunt Hermione before Harry even turned sixteen.

And… Hermione waited until she heard the front door close… more importantly, Hermione had a red-headed thorn that needed removed to support Harry’s life.

There was hardly room for Mandy and Fred in Harry’s home and his life. Hermione knew Harry loved them both, but Mandy was the girl pregnant with Harry’s child and Fred was the nuisance who couldn’t see when a relationship was over.

Hermione respectfully washed her dishes after she ate nearly half a box of cereal that her parents would cringe to see. Honestly, Hermione had no idea how all of Harry’s friends were in such good shape considering how often they must smoke marijuana. Perhaps they offset the weight gain from one with the appetite curbing effects of cigarettes.

A filthy habit that Hermione was determined to break Harry of as soon as his life was a normal level of insane.

Hermione smiled to herself as she climbed the stairs. Harry was honestly so hopeless without anyone around who spoke his language. Professor Lupin was a very kind man, Hermione was quite thrilled he was staying on as Harry’s guardian, but their argument last night had killed Hermione to not interrupt more.

Professor Lupin allowed his feelings to be hurt when Harry said he wasn’t his father when obviously Harry had meant ‘I don’t trust you to stay if you don’t have to’. It would have been a perfect opening for Professor Lupin to assure Harry he would stay, but he missed it and they fought instead.

It was almost lucky, in a way, that the Wizengamot of Britain had decided to haul Harry before them for the most ridiculous trial ever seen. If they hadn’t then Hermione might not have as utterly done with her home country as she was.

And clearly Harry needed Hermione more than Ron did. Ron had other friends - he played quidditch with Dean, chess with Seamus, flirted with Lavender. Harry was alone, planning on having an actual baby, and his life needed Hermione’s careful meddling.

Starting with Fred Weasley.

Hermione knocked smartly on the bedroom Fred was using and then - to prove a point - she opened the door before he could grant her entrance. Fred sat at a desk and had parchment spread out all across it. He looked up at Hermione’s intrusion and grinned as if they were friends.

“I could have been naked,” Fred said.

“That would have been embarrassing for you,” Hermione said coolly. She sat on the end of the bed in the center of the room and crossed her legs while staring Fred down.

Fred wasn’t a bad person, even if Hermione personally found him to be insufferable. Fred had made Harry incredibly happy the year before, he had been the cheerful bit of optimism that Harry needed for the tasks and challenges he had. Hermione put up with the pranks, the jokes, the endless quidditch talk, and the general annoyance because she loved Harry and Harry had been in love with Fred.

They were sweet and they were over. Which was a true relief to Hermione because Mandy Milkovich was much preferable to Fred Weasley, even if Hermione didn’t see a happy ending for Harry and Mandy.

“We need to talk,” Hermione told Fred. “You are embarrassing yourself.”

“I am?” Fred turned around in his chair so he could straddle it backward and stare at Hermione. “And it’s your job to tell me that, is it?”

“Nobody else seems to be doing it,” Hermione replied evenly. “Mandy is pregnant with Harry’s child.”

“And she’s getting rid of it.”

“She’s not, actually,” Hermione said. “She’s going to give the child to Harry.”

Hermione watched as Fred’s face fell for just an instant before he blinked and there was a new light in his eyes.

“So Mandy doesn’t want it?” Fred asked, as if Hermione couldn’t see where he was going. “It might make date night a little tough with Harry toting around Harry Junior.”

“Oh, they won’t be a couple,” Hermione said pleasantly. “But neither will you and Harry.”

Fred frowned at Hermione with the same stubborn look Hermione had seen countless times on Ron’s face.

“That’s for you to decide then?” Fred asked with a scoff. “Harry’s a big boy, he can make his own decisions.”

“He has.” Hermione inspected her nails and was disgruntled to see that one of her nails had ripped. As she didn’t start at Ilvermony until Monday, she would have to either suffer or break the law to fix them magically. There were a lot of things that Hermione would break the law for, but not her fingernail.

“Harry’s decided that he wants to be a father,” Hermione told Fred, still thinking about her nail. “Unless your plan - which I’m quite sure you made and is terrible - includes a marriage proposal and becoming a stepfather, then you should leave.”

It was simple math.

Mandy’s parents were dead and she was pregnant with Harry’s child. Harry lived in a house with four bedrooms. If Hermione knew Harry as well as she thought she did, Harry would give his child their own room and it would still end up sleeping in Harry’s room. And, because Hermione did know Harry quite well, Hermione knew that Harry would offer Mandy to stay with him as she seemed to have no other adult relatives to take her in.

Four bedrooms- Harry, Professor Lupin, Harry’s child, and Mandy.

There was no room for Fred in the future that Harry chose.

Fred considered what Hermione said for all of three seconds before he raised his chin and squared his shoulders.

“I could do that,” Fred said. “I could help Harry raise his kid and take care of them.”

Hermione smiled pityingly at Fred. If Harry knew nothing about what it meant to be a parent, Fred knew even less about what he was offering.

“You would give up your shop? Your magic? Your twin waiting on you back home?” Hermione asked him. “Harry’s life is here.”

“Harry’s still a wizard!”

“Harry will never go back,” Hermione said confidently. “To visit Ron? Maybe. To live? Absolutely not.”

“So we… live here,” Fred said with much less self-assurance than he had shown. “I can open a shop at Hoosier Hills, George can move here.”

It was touching, in a way, that Fred thought he would do all that for Harry without harboring any resentment. It was just that Harry was rather petty on occasion and tended to accept the worst in life until it blew up in his face.

“Harry might still be a wizard, but he can never legally use magic again,” Hermione said, spelling it out for Fred. “He was convicted of a crime, expelled, and had his wand snapped. Do you think that he would never come to resent you for all the ways your life is different from his?”

Hermione knew Harry would. Hermione certainly would, if she were in Harry’s position. It might eventually even drive a wedge between Hermione and Harry, though she thought not. Hermione was perfectly happy with one foot in both worlds and she did a decent job at blending in both places.

Fred was a pureblood raised in a very large and magical family. The Weasley’s didn’t even speak to their one relative who was a squib. Fred wanted it to work with Harry but he wasn’t thinking long-term.

“Harry loves me,” Fred said as the only excuse Hermione knew he had.

“Harry does,” Hermione agreed. “But Harry’s life is here.”

And Fred’s life, preferably, was very, very, far away.

Hermione left Fred alone to ruminate on what she said while she went through her suitcase in Harry’s room. There was a compartment on the inside that held all of her new textbooks and Hermione wanted to be at least halfway through all of them before she started at Ilvermony on Monday.

It would be… uncomfortable, at first, going to a new school without Harry or Ron there. Hermione wasn’t very outgoing and she doubted if she would have ever truly fit in with her boys if a troll hadn’t tried to smash her head in.

But Harry wasn’t very outgoing either and he had made multiple friends in his new neighborhood. There was the polite girl next door, Ethel, who was entirely too young at just fourteen to have a child of her own. Then there was Mandy and her brother, of course. Hermione doubted if Harry and Mandy’s bond would break over the pregnancy, they would only need time to adjust to the new circumstances.

Harry was the type of person to bond for life, something Hermione always teased him over. Harry might no longer be in love with Mandy, but Hermione knew he would always love her.

And then there was the Gallagher family, who Hermione couldn’t get a very good read on. Fiona seemed lovely and little Liam was a handsome boy who would make a wonderful wizard if he was already showing signs of magic. Ian had reminded Hermione of Fred with his effortless charm and easy-going nature. Lip was… actually something of a mystery that Hermione hoped to crack.

Harry had described him in his letters as his best friend then said they had a fight that ended their friendship. Hermione thought Harry was a gentleman for ignoring the boy that insulted Mandy, then come to find out- Lip was the one who tattooed Harry’s arm on Halloween and added his own name to the design.

Which sounded like something much more than friendship.

Hermione certainly wouldn’t want her name on any of her friends’ arms.

Hermione just had to hope that she would have a chance to get to know Harry’s friends better the next day before she would become too distracted by school and her own possible friendships.

Harry and Mandy returned home a few hours later and Hermione smiled to herself when she heard them laughing in the hallway. She rolled off Harry’s bed where she had been lounging and went to the room that used to belong to Sirius.

“Hello,” Hermione grinned when she walked in and then her eyes widened at the sheer amount of bags that Harry was removing from his arm to place on the bed. “Goodness, did you buy an entire store?”

“He tried,” Mandy huffed. She was smiling some though when she looked at Harry and it was as sweet as it was sad.

In the very bottom of Hermione’s heart, the part that she couldn’t say to Harry, Hermione thought that Mandy looked at Harry as if some type of Prince Charming. Mandy had - from what Hermione gathered through whispered comments, insults, and subtext - a terrible life. Then Harry appeared and treated Mandy like a princess, making her feel special.

And Hermione thought that Mandy might only be offering to go through with the pregnancy because she felt indebted to Harry for it.

Hermione rather hoped that Mandy found someone else who treated her as Harry did. Mandy seemed perfectly nice, according to what Harry said, and was certainly pretty enough.

It was a shame that Harry chose the baby over a true future with Mandy, but Hermione didn’t expect any other decision from him.

“Harry’s like a small child when he goes shopping,” Hermione told Mandy, teasing Harry some. “I’ve always wondered what Harry grocery shopping would be like.”

“If it’s anything like clothes then fucking ridiculous,” Mandy said with a roll of her eyes. Mandy had a single bag on her wrist and Hermione looked at the contents with interest when she dumped it on the bag.

“Oh, makeup?” Hermione didn’t have any experience with muggle makeup and very limited with magical. It seemed like a lot of work to do it daily and Hermione had never understood how the tiny cosmetics even worked.

“It’s literally the only thing he let me buy myself,” Mandy told Hermione while she began rooting through the pile. She held up a thin black tube that was pencil-shaped and smirked. “I think the cosmetic section just scared him.”

“It did not,” Harry argued swiftly. He had left the bags strung out on the floor in front of the long dresser and he leaned outward to pop his back loudly. “You distracted me and then disappeared,”Harry complained.

“I said ‘you’ll need one of those soon’ and you fucking ran to the baby section,” Mandy said deadpan.

Hermione could picture that very clearly. Ron had once done that very thing to Harry about broomsticks so he had a private moment to stammer his way through asking Hermione to go to the Shrieking Shack together during a Hogsmeade outing the year before.

Hermione’s refusal led to a couple of awkward days between her and Ron, but Hermione was rather certain Ron only asked her because she went to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum. Hermione had been so teased by her classmates that she didn’t have the bravery to tell them that she had actually asked someone else before Viktor asked her. And since Hermione had been turned down and Viktor didn’t know many students at Hogwarts, they had went as friends.

Which was all Hermione ever wanted to be with either of her boys.

“I was looking at prices of nappies so when Remus gets home and starts another row then I’m prepared,” Harry explained. He grabbed something tiny and white and held it up with a bashful smile. “Also, this was cute.”

Hermione looked at the tiniest little onesie she had ever seen before and rolled her eyes at the message on the front-

‘Daddy’s Girl’

“It might be a boy,” Hermione said as she sat down on the bed to watch Mandy apply her makeup with a little handheld mirror.

“Might not be his,” Mandy murmured while she lined her eyes with thick black lines.

Hermione hummed and avoided looking at Harry when Mandy said that. It was definitely Harry’s, though there was no logical way to tell Mandy that yet.

“Does that not hurt?” Hermione asked Mandy as a distraction. Mandy had the black pencil-like device right up against her eye and Hermione couldn’t imagine it felt good.

“What? Eyeliner?” Mandy glanced down at Hermione and raised an eyebrow. “Have you never worn eyeliner?”

Hermione shook her head.

“You want to try?” Mandy offered. She finished the lines around her eyes and then held the eyeliner out to Hermione.

Hermione did, actually. If she marked marijuana off her ‘things to try before I graduate university’ list then there was no reason to not try makeup as well.

“Will you help me?” Hermione asked Mandy uncertainly. Hermione had limited experience in making friends and she had absolutely none in making female friends.

Ginny had been Hermione’s friend by association and the fact they tended to room together when Hermione went to the Burrow. But Hermione spent four years sharing a dorm with Lavender and Parvarti and she never so much as learned their middle names.

“Can I, like, give you a whole makeover?” Mandy asked with a slow smile.

“I suppose so,” Hermione said, unreasonably nervous. She touched her hair quickly though, “But not my hair. It’s a nightmare to get in these little braids.”

“Cornrows,” Mandy said as she quickly moved around the bed to sit right beside Hermione. “That’s what the black girls here call those ‘little braids’.”

Hermione knew that, she wasn’t an imbecile. Cornrows just sounded crude when the end result was actually quite beautiful.

“I’ll just meet you two at Kevin’s?” Harry said, not waiting for an answer before he practically darted from the room with a single bag in his hand.

Hermione thought that maybe she wasn’t as lousy at making friends as she thought she was when she met Mandy’s eyes and they both laughed.

“Boys,” Hermione said with fond and familiar exasperation.

“They suck,” Mandy said cheerfully. “Now close your eyes so I don’t blind you.”

Hermione didn’t even know that was a possibility.