A/N: Please be aware that this story contains recurrent miscarriages and infertility. Although this is ultimately a positive story (I think) about love and healing, this is heavy stuff, so if these subjects strike too painful a chord, now would be the time to hit that back button.
After the final miscarriage, they go to Spain.
They can't afford it, not on Neville's teaching salary, not when Hannah's pay goes toward Muggle doctors and to the drugs that have become an unwelcome fact of their lives, drugs that most witches and wizards have never heard of: Clomiphene, Follistim, Prometrium. London is in the grip of the dreary dead-end days of winter, though, and the two of them are barely holding on, so when Neville suggests the trip, she just nods and packs their bags.
They eat too much and talk too loudly, and they make fools of themselves dancing to local musicians, but it is better than just sitting and staring at the sea, her first impulse. She thinks that if she gives into that, she won't have the strength to ever get up again. Better to keep moving.
They are coping the best way they can. When he drinks too much, she rubs his back as he vomits into the toilet. When she sees smiling babies in the tourist areas and has to turn and walk away, he catches up to her and holds her hand.
When they just can't pretend to be all right any longer, they hold each other while they cry.
~nh~
It is Augusta—of course, it is Augusta—who openly asks the question she is sure everyone is thinking: "Well, when are you going to have a baby?"
She can't take it, and runs crying out of the house. From the front garden, she can hear Neville yelling at his Gran, something she knows he would only do on her behalf. It's none of her business, he tells Augusta, and she has no idea what they're going through.
Neville finds her in the garden, and they Apparate home together. He dries her tears, and tells her to ignore his gran, but she can't stop thinking about the old woman's response: "What do you think marriage is for if not children?"
She thinks, for the first time, that maybe Neville would be better off if she left him, so he could marry someone else, someone who wouldn't bring him all this misery.
The thought breaks her heart anew. She loves him too much to be that unselfish.
~nh~
They keep their pregnancies and losses a secret, a lesson learned after the first time. Neither one of them wants to risk repeating the misery of announcing a pregnancy and then having to announce a miscarriage a few weeks later.
Perhaps it is the mantle of sadness she and Neville wear everywhere, but everyone seems to suspect something anyway. Maybe it is just that they, like most of their friends, have been married for years, but, unlike most of their friends, they have no children to show for it.
Everyone seems to have advice:
There is a hag in Knockturn Alley who brews a potion of yew sap and cobwebs guaranteed to affix a fetus in even the most unwelcoming womb.
Hannah and Neville should make sure their bed is turned to lie north-south—or is it east-west?—to improve the flow of their qi.
There is a tea/potion/charm that somebody's aunt/cousin/neighbor swears by.
Hannah should quit working, not lift anything, never raise her arms above her head, lose weight, gain weight, always be on the bottom, always have an orgasm, never have an orgasm, elevate her hips, and just relax and let it happen.
She grits her teeth and keeps working.
It is Hermione—someone Hannah has always liked but, seeing her standing there with a toddler on one hip and a baby on the other, now kind of hates even though she tries not to—who first suggests they see a Muggle fertility specialist.
Science not magic. It's an arresting thought, now that magic has failed them. She can see new hope shining in Neville's eyes, but he lets her make their decision since she, as a half-blood, already has more experience with Muggles.
~nh~
Hannah always thought she was comfortable with the Muggle world, but nothing in her experience prepares her for fertility treatment. She hates the invasiveness of the procedures and the pain as they draw vial upon vial of her blood. The grinding bureaucracy of the NHS baffles her. The doctors' questions make her feel stupid, and she knows they are frustrated and suspicious over her lack of medical history, but it's not like she can refer them to the mediwitch who supervised her care. She longs for her mother with a fierceness she hasn't felt in years. Maybe she could help her understand all this. Neville tries, comes with her to her appointments, but he's even more clueless than she is.
He understands his part easily enough, though it makes him blush: a cup, a skin magazine, and a little time in a private room. Hannah can't believe they've come to this.
The doctors use unfamiliar words like "morphology" and "motility," but the bottom line is there is nothing wrong with Neville.
This is all Hannah's fault, though that is one word everyone is careful not to use. Everyone except for her, in the privacy of her mind.
~nh~
After the battery of tests, her diagnosis is simply "Recurrent Pregnancy Loss, unknown causation." Considering she and Neville had already figured that out on their own before they saw a doctor, Hannah is not impressed.
Because they don't know what is causing her RPL, they treat her for everything. Her cycle is swiftly taken over by Muggle medicine. She takes drugs to time her ovulation and to control her hormone levels after ovulation, and every pill seems to have the inconvenient side effect of either killing her libido or making her feel completely enraged at the slightest provocation.
Poor Neville walks on eggshells and would probably avoid her if he could, but there's no escaping their doctor-prescribed sexual schedule. When she catches him sighing after looking at the calendar, where "Sex tonight!" is written in block letters, she manages not to snap at him because she understands.
What used to be fun, passionate, spontaneous, and wild is now a chore.
~nh~
It is a relief to be pregnant, this time under the watchful eyes of the doctors, though her heart doesn't quite believe this pregnancy will be any different than any of the others.
Neville and the doctors are more hopeful. Her hormone levels are tested weekly and are within normal range. They get to see the baby's heartbeat via ultrasound, and the doctors tell them her chance of miscarriage after that is less than 10%.
They walk home hand-in-hand, not wanting to risk Apparition or travel by Floo. Neville kisses her temple while they window shop in front of a Muggle travel agency decorated with pictures of sunny Spain. Maybe someday the three of them could go there for a family holiday, he suggests. He also suggests telling friends and family the news when they reach the second trimester.
Hannah doesn't want to make plans for the future. Hope is painful.
And when they learn their baby stopped developing at eleven weeks, she thinks she was right not to believe.
~nh~
She Apparates away from the car park, hearing Neville cry her name as she leaves him behind. She can't bear to be near him, not when her traitorous body has hurt them so badly once more.
She ends up at the edge of the Black Lake, miraculously unsplinched. She trips over a rock and kneels in the mud where she falls. She should have had Neville's faith; she should have been brave enough to be happy like him. She is a witch. Maybe it would have made a difference.
She fumbles through her purse for the printout of the ultrasound, and her hand closes around something hard instead: her DA galleon. She weighs the scratched but still shining circle in her palm and pushes herself to her feet.
They were both so proud to have fought, so sure that everything would be easy after the hardship of war. Neville carries his galleon everywhere, every day, but Hannah usually leaves hers on their bedside table. At night, when he empties his pockets, Neville always stacks his galleon on top of hers, and she likes the way they look, nested one atop the other. They're often the last things she sees at night and the first things she sees in the morning. It's a nice reminder of how they triumphed and how they fit together.
It's only lately that she has begun carrying her galleon everywhere, too. For luck.
Her hand curls into a fist, and the edges of the circle bite into her palm. Whoever would have thought that she and Neville would end up fighting a private battle that is taking an even greater toll on them than the War did? She screams, her voice echoing over the still waters, and hurls the galleon as hard and far as she can.
She regrets it immediately.
Someone from the school must contact Neville and tell him his wife is running along the banks of the lake screaming Accio Galleon! like a madwoman because he Apparates in and catches her in his arms. He tells her they're okay, and things will be all right, but she's hysterical and begs him to recover her galleon since he's better at summoning charms.
He doesn't have any luck.
That night, they lie fully dressed on top of the blankets. Neville spoons her while she weeps, and cries his own tears with his face pressed against her hair. Hannah stares at the bedside table where her galleon used to be and crosses her arms over her abdomen where her child used to be. She feels Neville raise himself up on so he can study her face in the dim light. His free hand covers hers where they are clasped against her belly.
"Let's go to Spain," he rasps, his voice breaking.
~nh~
On their last day in Spain, they linger.
Their bags are half-packed, and there is an international portkey that must be caught at 11:00, but they dawdle over their breakfast and sit side-by-side on their balcony looking out over the water.
The doctors talked about more aggressive treatment, and she doesn't want to think about what that means. More appointments, more drugs, more sessions with the transvaginal sonogram, perhaps, or other things no wizard ever dreamed of like genetic testing, donor eggs, and surrogacy.
And after all of it, no guarantees.
"Time to go," she says abruptly, and Neville flinches. They move slowly around the room, arms held close to their bodies, not saying much. Already he seems a thousand miles farther away than he did yesterday. How much more of this can they take, she wonders.
In the privacy of her own mind, she thinks, I want off this ride.
~nh~
They are home and back at their jobs for a week, then a month, then two months, and Hannah still does not walk out the door into Muggle London and down the street two blocks to the pay telephone to make her appointment.
The card with the reproductive endocrinologist's phone number, which has been tacked to the memo board in their kitchen, is slowly covered by postcards, recipes, notes, and receipts.
They don't talk about it until she catches him looking at her, his head cocked to one side, as they make dinner.
"I'm not ready," is all she says, and he just nods and continues stirring the risotto.
"Neither am I."
She's relieved and feels guilty. She's just so tired of being sad. Maybe Neville feels the same way.
~nh~
The best word Hannah can use to describe what it is like the first time they make love after deciding to stop trying for a baby is "weird."
They're so cautious with each other at first, almost tentative. It's not like either of them fears rejection, she thinks, but more like they each desperately need a little tenderness.
Their reserve doesn't last long.
They are no longer ruled by a doctor's schedule. There's no calendar to be obeyed, and the space on their bedside table where her drugs used to sit is now occupied solely by Neville's lonely little galleon. They turn to each other with a voraciousness and intensity they haven't felt since the start of their relationship. Nighttime, daytime, morning, afternoon…it doesn't matter.
Hannah's skin feels hypersensitized, and she longs for Neville all the time. When they lie pressed together, he places soft kisses along her shoulder and neck with the same care and precision he uses to plant seedlings in his garden. He whispers how much he loves her, and she holds him tight and whispers it back.
~nh~
They decide they have to tell their friends and colleagues. Too many people know they have been going through fertility treatment. So many people sustained them in their grief after the last miscarriage. It will be better just to tell them there will be no baby, Neville insists. It will be less painful in the long run.
Hannah hopes so because it is certainly painful right now. She makes Neville spread the news and spends the day in bed, staring at the ceiling and rolling his galleon between her palms.
One week later, Tom announces his retirement, and Luna Lovegood shows up at the Leaky Cauldron with an orange canary named Perry Winkle.
She travels too much to keep a pet, she explains, and it was irresponsible of her to forget that. Would Hannah take care of him for her?
She smiles and accepts, but she hates the bird on sight. Is she supposed to fawn over him and make him her replacement child or something?
She places his cage behind the bar, thinking maybe the customers will enjoy him, but Perry Winkle seems just as unhappy with his new living situation as she is. He hunkers down at the bottom of his cage, pulling out his own feathers, and watching her balefully as she pours drinks and counts the till.
She buys vitamin drops from the Menagerie—she doesn't want people to think she can't even keep a bird alive—and loads his cage with toys. It works, and as she settles into her new role at the Leaky, Perry Winkle settles into his new life, and they start to grow on each other. He begins to chirp when he sees her in the morning and soon sings whenever anyone approaches the bar.
By the time she loves him enough that she wishes he lived upstairs with her and Neville, he's a fixture behind the bar. She buys another canary for upstairs and also a pair of lovebirds who coo and cuddle with each other as she and Neville do the same in their bed.
She feels a little better every day.
~nh~
She has her business and her birds to fill her time. Neville has Hogwarts, his roses, and something that takes him away for hours whenever he has a day off. She worries, briefly, but he doesn't come home smelling of another woman's perfume.
He smells like lake water. Neville hasn't forgotten her lost galleon any more than she has.
She finds topography maps of the Black Lake covered in swirling black lines and an official-looking letter—stamped with "From the desk of Hermione Weasley"—that analyzes the currents and contains warnings regarding grindylows and merpeople politics. She discovers he has dedicated part of his rooftop greenhouse to growing gillyweed.
He is on the sofa reading Learn Mermish in 10 Minutes a Day! She sits on the coffee table and pulls the book out of his hands.
"You don't have to do this."
He shrugs. "I want to." She climbs onto the sofa with him and rests her head over his heart.
Soon, their home is filled with things found in the lake: love potion vials, bracelets and charms, butterbeer bottles, spectacles, knuts, sickles, and galleons.
But no special DA galleon once thrown there by a grieving woman who wished she could throw her pain away as easily.
~nh~
Their infertility defines them, in a way, and she doesn't like it, but it is part of how they are seen, for good or ill. She's known as a savvy businesswoman, an honest, hard-working woman, still a quintessential Hufflepuff, and Neville is a great teacher and a war hero. Sooner or later, though, the question comes up, and they have to answer "no, we don't have children." She sees the unasked questions in strangers' eyes, but she becomes less sensitive about their curiosity as she grows older.
Their friends show them many small, awkward kindnesses. Pregnancy and birth announcements reach them second- or third-hand, rather than shouted through their Floo or thrust in their faces by an owl. When George and Angelina have a pregnancy scare when their youngest is 11, the Longbottoms are welcome, but not really expected, to attend their raucous "Hey, We're Not Pregnant…Huzzah!" party.
Hannah sends a case of Old Ogden's in their place.
When Neville wonders aloud if they'll need bail money, like they did after their last party, she's able to laugh and mean it.
~nh~
On her 40th birthday, Hannah opens her eyes and sees two galleons nested together on the bedside table. She scrabbles for it while Neville watches and smiles.
The lake water has given it a greenish patina, and there's a distinct bite mark where some creature tried to take a nibble, but she recognizes the pattern of scratches that she must have run her thumb over a thousand times. It's unmistakably hers.
She squeals and clasps it to her chest as she leans over and gives Neville a smacking kiss on the mouth.
"I never thought you'd find it!"
He brushes his knuckles against his chest in a show of nonchalance. "I wasn't going to stop until I did."
She still thinks, sometimes, about the question Augusta asked so long ago: What do you think marriage is for if not children?
Marriage, Hannah decides then and there, is the daily expression of a love that can last forever. Sometimes, that love is expressed through the creation of children; sometimes, it is expressed through a tarnished coin salvaged from a muddy lake bottom.
She kisses her husband again, this time slow and deep, and they don't leave their bed for a long time.
~nh~
When Hannah is 43 and Luna Scamander is 42, the Scamanders welcome twin baby boys.
It has been years since anyone in their immediate circle of friends had a baby—leave it to Luna to be different—and she is cautious about her own reaction to the news. She feels like she has spent half her life smiling in her friends' faces as they became parents and then crying behind closed doors, but now…she is all right. The little ache she feels, somewhere under her heart, is nothing more than the memory of old pain, scars long healed and fading into something unremarkable. It doesn't have the power to hurt her anymore.
Neville whistles as he tends to his plants, and she catches him watching her and smiling when he is supposed to be grading papers, so she suspects he is feeling the same peace she has found. The closest they come to discussing it happens one night when she is standing at the sink washing dishes, and he wraps his arms around her from behind.
"Are we good?" he murmurs against her throat.
"Yeah," is all she says, but it is the way she says it, like of course, we're good—why would we be anything else? that makes them both smile.
"Good." He turns her in his arms and kisses her, and she holds him close, her wet, soapy hands leaving dark prints on his shirt.
The next day, Hannah sends the Scamanders a gift and gets on with her life.
~nh~
For their 25th anniversary, Neville patents a hybrid rose he names "Hannah's Heart." Its showy, fragrant buds are pale pink in the center darkening to deep pink on the outside. When they open, the innermost whorl is a pale yellow that almost exactly matches the color of her hair.
She is delighted and they plant them along the backside of the Leaky Cauldron. Under Neville's tender care, the entire back of the building is covered in brilliant roses within a few years. George and Angelina swear they can smell them all the way down in their shop. After fielding multiple inquiries, Hannah urges Neville to sell the rose through one of his catalogs. She keeps a copy of the ad under the bar so she can look at it from time to time:
HANNAH'S HEART (Rosa venia) – Bountiful and beautiful, shading from yellow
to darkest pink with a sweet, memorable fragrance. Strong, determined climber.
Resilient, cold hardy, drought resistant, thrives in all soils under all conditions.
Neville says it makes him happy to think of Hannah's Heart all over Great Britain, blooming wherever it's planted.
Neville makes Hannah happy, and she is quick to tell him so.
They put their flower money in their retirement fund. She can imagine their future…she with her birds and he with his plants, together in a rose-covered cottage by a lake somewhere.
It is a peaceful image and a joyful one.
~nh~
When she runs errands in Diagon Alley, she passes the office of the mediwitch who treated her so many years ago.
For a long time, she went out of her way to avoid it. She didn't want to stand on that corner right out front, the place where she once stood on the verge of collapse, wailing and hiding her face against Neville's chest, after learning their first baby had stopped developing at seven weeks. As the years pass, however, her memories lose the ability to hurt quite so much, and, well, the bakery that sells Neville's favorite sweet buns is just two doors down.
Sometimes, she spots young couples leaving the office, giddy, jubilant, so overcome they can't help beaming at total strangers, and when they smile at her, she smiles right back. One time, though, she sees a different sort of couple, tear-stained, grieving, barely holding each other up, and for them, she says a prayer before hurrying home and hugging her husband.
If she sometimes holds her breath when she stands on that corner, or wraps her hand tightly around the galleon in her pocket as she walks by, it's her secret, and she never lets on.
She wants to be someone who is always happy for what she has rather than sad for what is out of reach.
~nh~
On their 50th anniversary, Neville brings her tea and waffles in bed before leaving for Hogwarts.
The tea is brewed dark and the waffles burnt around the edges, just the way she likes them both. A pink and yellow rose in a water glass adorns the tray. He sits on the edge of the bed, and she takes the opportunity to slip one hand into his work-roughened palm.
"Happy anniversary." He watches her pick up the teacup in her free hand and take a sip. "Everything all right?"
She smiles at him over the rim. "With the tea or the marriage?"
"Either. Both," and his thumb brushes over the golden circle of her wedding band, a familiar caress.
She takes another sip. "I wouldn't change a thing."
End
A/N2: The title is taken from a quote by Rose Kennedy: "Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?"
Written for
-The Multi-Ship Challenge: Neville/Hannah, circle
- Things I'd Do For You Challenge: Dive into the Black Lake to retrieve your lost/stolen possession
- Monthly One-Shot Exchange (June): Neville/Hannah, romance & hurt/comfort, "scars." Written for ChatterChick.
- Prompt Relay Challenge, Section 1: better
- Getting Around Challenge