Teaser: The Waiting Place Chapter 18

Hello, everyone!  I hope you're all having a great week, & if not, at least tomorrow's Friday! ;)

Anywho, here's a little excerpt from Chapter 18 (Chapter 19 counting the prologue) of The Waiting Place that I hope you'll enjoy.  Please keep in mind that the chapter isn't nearly complete, but I'm hoping to have it completed & posted within the next week:

She tucked her head down and picked up her pace while passing scattered handfuls of gossiping students dressed in casual weekend attire that littered the passageways—including one hot and heavy couple tucked into an alcove behind a suit of armor, hands invisible beneath each other’s clothing.

They paid Hermione no mind as she passed, which suited her just fine. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have hesitated to scold the couple and to exuberantly deduct house points, but she’d never felt less inclined: Her own intimate experiences were all too fresh on her mind, and she felt the heat rising in her cheeks as she became aware of the dull ache that still lingered between her legs despite the potions she’d been given at the hospital. The ache that she didn’t actually want to go away, because it was proof undeniable that it had all been real. That it had actually happened.

Her heart speeding up as she realized quite abruptly that she’d reached the closed double-doors to the infirmary, she took a calming breath, pulling the doors open just enough so that she could slip inside the semi-darkened hospital wing. Her heart seemed to stutter in her chest when she immediately caught sight of a small, all-too-familiar group of redheads, and the unmistakable head of black hair belonging to Harry, clustered around the single occupied bed.

A knot formed in the pit of her stomach as she caught a glimpse of his prone form in the gap between Fred and Ginny, and the only thing she could think was, It’s his birthday. He was poisoned on his birthday, and I wasn’t here.

Hermione made the decision then and there to trust her heart—to choose faith over logic and to trust that she’d somehow misinterpreted what she’d seen outside Trelawney’s classroom.

And she realized, quite suddenly, that she’d known it all along.

There was no going back after this moment.

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Chapter 16

Okay, so I'm not nearly through with this chapter, but I plan on hashing out the majority of it in the next few days.  In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy this small excerpt:

Harry froze as he stared back at him, unblinking, in an expression that would’ve been a bloody riot if Ron hadn’t felt like his insides were being chewed up by a flock of angry Cornish Pixies.

In the meantime, the locker room was so damned silent that it was as if the world around them had ceased to be; time itself had stopped, this very moment ballooning and swelling until nothing else mattered. Well, at least that’s how it would’ve seemed if it hadn’t been for the steady pattering of the rain on the rooftop and the distant howling of the wind, a reminder that the world went on as usual. Why would the cosmos care if Ron Weasley’s heart was slowly but painfully fragmenting into tiny, jagged pieces?

A ricocheting thunderclap broke the spell, and Harry blinked at him behind his rain-smeared spectacles. “Wh-what?” he finally managed to stammer out. “She’s…what? Are—are you sure? Why—I mean, who—how d’you know?”

“’Cause I’m the one who bloody did it,” Ron declared miserably, unable to hold his friend’s gaze any longer.

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Ch.15

So this is a small except from the chapter I'm currently working on, but I'm nowhere near finished, FYI:

She had only been witness to the scene for a moment or two before the nausea had overwhelmed her and she’d been forced to make a mad dash for the toilet, but it had been enough. She hadn’t wanted to see any more than that. If she had…well, she might have reacted far worse than the time she’d caught them previously…and then McGonagall would have been forced to expel her, and that simply would not do.

Hermione had therefore made the decision to request to leave, if only through the weekend so that she could get her head on straight and refrain from doing anything rash. Before leaving school, she had calmly collected her assignments from her professors, and she took pride in the fact that she hadn’t shed a single tear. She hadn’t told anyone save Professor McGonagall where she was going, not even Harry. She hadn’t been able to face her best friend because there would be awkward questions that she wasn’t yet ready to answer. Furthermore, she feared that she wouldn’t have been able to hide the strongest of her emotions from him: her humiliation, rage, regret, grief.

She felt as if happiness had been a rug beneath her feet, and it had been snatched out from her so abruptly that she’d fallen and landed on her arse—hard.

I will not start crying. I will not start crying, she chanted to herself as a sob worked its way into a painful lump in her throat. If she started crying, she would likely never be able to stop—and she’d spent the past several months shedding far too many tears for Ron Weasley, who apparently had no true feelings for her, despite his pretty words. Apparently he hadn’t meant anything that he’d spoken in that hospital room, and his mother didn’t know him as well as she liked to believe.

She supposed that people said and did barmy things in the heat of the moment; what a clever, convincing, cruel actor he’d turned out to be, and when he’d said that he wanted to right a wrong, apparently he’d meant that he wanted to ditch her, Hermione, to be with that…that moronic tart.

However, despite it all, despite her dark thoughts and what she’d witnessed with her own eyes not more than a couple of hours ago, it somehow didn’t feel right, did it? There was something about the entire incident that didn’t ring true, yet she couldn’t deny what her senses had told her, could she? After all, she knew what she saw; there was no deceiving her own eyes, so what other rational explanation could there possibly be? Had Lavender fed him one of Fred and George’s love potions, perhaps? Had he been whacked over the top of his head? Hexed stupid?

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Ch.14: Faith Versus Logic

“You know can talk to me about anything, love.”

“Am—am I making the right choice?” Hermione finally said, a tremor in her voice as she met Molly’s eyes.  “About…the babies. What if…what if You-Know-Who…?”

Molly smiled tenderly at the girl that her son had been in love with for years, considering her response before replying, “I think that going with your heart is always the right decision. Making choices based on ‘what-ifs’ can only lead to heartache.”

“Even if what my heart wants isn’t necessarily the most logical choice?”

“What the heart wants rarely is the logical choice,” Molly replied with a laugh. “If I’d made the logical choice about whom to marry, I would likely be sitting in Trevor Dawson’s mansion right now; true, I would have all of my wants and needs met, but I wouldn’t have seven children that I would happily die for and a husband who adores me—which is all that I really want or need.”

Her smile faltered when she thought of Percy, but thankfully Hermione didn’t seem to notice as she grinned in return—and it reached her eyes. “I’m scared,” she finally admitted in a whisper, the smile fading from her face.

Teaser: The Waiting Place, Chapter 13: Caged Animal

She stared at the Healer, watching as her lips moved while gesturing at the clipboard in hand, but the sight and sounds were strangely distorted, garbled, as if Hermione was watching the scene from within the depths of a murky pool; in point of fact, that was quite an accurate analogy, since her throat had closed up, and she was finding it difficult to breathe as she clawed her way to the surface, struggling to no avail with all of her meager strength.

She was drowning, and those at the surface—Ron, Healer Thorson, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley—seemed to be completely oblivious.

The words that had propelled her into this state repeated themselves incessantly in her mind, clawing at the edges of her brain like a desperate, caged animal: Fertilization successful. Two viable embryos in their very primitive stages. Fraternal twins.