In The Balance

Author's Note: This chapter really did take forever to post. What happened was, shortly after I posted chapter 3, my sister went into labor 7 weeks early, and I ended up taking her 5 year old daughter for almost 2 weeks. Let me tell you, that put a real big cramper on personal time, which includes writing time for me. After she had the baby (Baby Ruth, 3Ibs 15oz, 16 ½ inches long!), I still had her other daughter off and on for another week while she went back and forth to the hospital, since the baby wasn't able to leave yet. And now that things have gotten somewhat back to normal, I've been dealing with the largest case of writer's block. However, a whole lot of help from a few friends (Jordan, Ash, and Justasoliloquy) I was able to write it over the past few days. Hopefully, now that I'm back in the groove, I'll be able to punch out more chapters in a relatively timely fashion.

Now, without further ado, Chapter four!

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"What the hell is going on here?" Ron shouted, his pale face turning an unhealthy shade of red as he took in his two best friends and their compromising position. Behind him, Ginny showed a mixture of shock and revulsion as she raised a hand to cover her mouth. A strangled sob echoed in the silence, causing both Hermione and Harry to blanch and look away in shame.

"It's not what you think," Harry mumbled as he fell out of the bed and scrambled around for his clothes. Hermione, for her part, was blushing furiously as she pulled the blankets tighter around her body.

"Oh really? It sure as Hell looks like what I think!" Fists clenched at his sides, Ron took a step forward and glared at the two scantily clad teens.

"Ron, please!" Hermione cried out, a desperate look on her face. "We can explain!" Harry nodded vigorously in agreement as he struggled into his pants. Ron scoffed and folded his arms over his chest. Hermione was about to continue when Ginny stepped into the room and walked straight up to Harry.

"Harry... How could you?" Searching his face, Ginny couldn't help but let a few tears escape and slip delicately down her pale cheeks. "I thought you loved me."

"I did! I do!" Harry protested, running a shaky hand through his disheveled, black hair. "Just not how you want me to... Not anymore."

"You bastard!" Ron charged forward, drawing his fist back as he came at Harry with alarming speed. Hermione grabbed her wand from the bedside table and with a well-placed spell, froze the angry redhead before he could hit Harry. Shaking his head in shock, the dazed Boy Wonder caught his fuming friend before he could fall to the ground. As he maneuvered him to the other bed, Hermione turned her wand on Ginny.

"Ginny, am I going to have to freeze you too?" Mutely, the livid girl shook her head and sat stiffly beside her frozen brother on the bed opposite Hermione. Harry sat across from Ginny, silently handing Hermione her clothes that he'd picked up moments before. With much noise, and blushing, she managed to get dressed under the covers. When she was finished, she stood and walked over to the other bed. Looking down upon Ron, she smiled sadly. "Harry and I really can explain. Can I trust you to stay still and remain calm if I unbind you?" Ron blinked twice, which Hermione took to mean yes, and with a soft sigh, she released his bindings.

"That was a dirty trick, Hermione. Casting a spell on a man when his back is turned," he muttered furiously as he sat up and punched the lumpy mattress.

"Well, if you hadn't been barreling toward Harry with the intention of giving him a rather nasty black and blue, I wouldn't have had to!" she shot back in exasperation, resuming her seat next to Harry.

"He cheated on my sister and broke her heart! He deserved it!" Ron spat, aiming a glare toward Harry, whose gaze was glued firmly to the floor.

"We haven't been together since the beginning of summer, Ron," Harry grumbled defensively, still refusing to look up and meet the other boy's gaze.

"Now is not the time," Hermione cut in, sending both boys a sharp look that was meant to quiet them immediately.

"And you just couldn't wait to shag Hermione, could you?" Ron continued despite Hermione's attempts otherwise.

"Just let them talk, Ron," Ginny said, placing a restraining hand on her brother's arm as he moved to lunge at Harry once more.

"Fine," he muttered, huffing and folding his arms across his chest.

"Well," Hermione started, letting out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, "as you know, Professor McGonagall asked Harry and I to join her in the kitchen. Little did we know, the meeting wasn't just for the two of us." Here, she paused for dramatic effect, wanting both Weasleys to know just how serious the situation was. "The entire Order was there."

Ginny's eyebrows shot up at this, and Ron grudgingly looked up from his inspection of the floor.

"I don't know how much we're allowed to tell you, but they all should have figured that once they told us, you'd end up knowing anyway." Snorting to herself, Hermione shook her head ruefully. She took another deep breath to steel herself. "Another prophecy has been foretold concerning Harry and the Dark Lord."

"Why is that not surprising?" Ron mumbled, shooting Harry a brief, concerned glance, before resuming his glare on a spot some ten feet beyond the other boy's head.

"Apparently, it's more of an update on the original prophecy," Hermione continued as if deaf to Ron's comments. "It revealed the means as to how one will defeat the other."

"What, exactly, did this prophecy say?" Ginny asked, her anger slowly dissipating as she began to understand the severity of the situation, though she had no idea how this related to why she and Ron had caught Harry and Hermione in such a compromising position.

"What does it matter what it said?" Ron questioned with a surprisingly happy gleam in his eyes. "The point is, Harry now knows how to defeat You-Know-Who!"

Hermione and Harry exchanged an uneasy look that did not go unnoticed by the other two teens in the room. Before either could comment, Harry opened his mouth to speak. At first, only a nervous squeak came out. When the words finally came, they were in a quiet, shaky voice uncharacteristic of the normally proud and confident boy.

"You see..." he began, tossing an apprehensive look toward the young woman seated beside him.

"There's a catch, per say," Hermione supplied when Harry could not find the words. "A third... and fourth party are now involved."

"What do you mean... who do you mean?" Ginny whispered, attempting to ignore the sinking feeling she now felt in her gut. There was a nagging suspicion in the back of her mind, but she pushed it away. She refused to let any more assumptions cloud her judgment. There was far too much at stake, and any petty squabbles could mean the difference between life and death in this war.

Hermione squirmed in her seat. The penetrating gaze Ron was giving her told her he knew exactly whom one of the new parties involved was. His strategic mind was putting all the pieces together and, by the look on his face, coming up with all the right answers. Ginny, Hermione noted, looked like she might know too, but was in a growing state of denial.

"Just tell us exactly what the prophecy said," Ron said at last, leveling his heavy gaze upon Harry, who also squirmed under the heavy weight of the other boy's brown eyes.

Hermione, ever the studious mind, already had it memorized, and was able to recite it perfectly for the other two teens. Their eyes grew rounder by the second, and by the time she was done, both Ginny and Ron looked like they had swallowed something sour.

"So that means," Ron began, pausing to swallow a lump in his throat, "that what we walked in on was you and Harry trying to... to... you know." He screwed up his face, not wanting to use the words baby, pregnant, and sex in the same sentence as 'you and Harry' when talking to Hermione.

"Yeah," Hermione whispered in reply, her face turning a bright shade of red as she wrung her hands in her lap and stared penitently at the floor.

"So... are you... you know?" Ginny spoke up in a small voice that broke Harry's heart. He locked gazes with her, begging her with his eyes to understand. She offered him the ghost of a small, reassuring smile; the best she could do since her own heart was breaking.

"I don't know." Her reply was a whisper again, but Hermione finally found the nerve to look up and meet her friend's eyes. "Even in the wizarding world, with all the wonders we have at our disposal, it takes a few weeks for the embryo to develop enough to be detected."

Ron shuddered and looked away.

"So what you're saying is, you have no way of telling if you're p-p-pregnant," Ginny stammered over the word, still having a hard time accepting what Harry and Hermione were telling her, "so if You-Know-Who captures you, you could still end up with his... his spawn," she spat out, obvious distaste written across her features.

"But You-Know-Who doesn't know about the prophecy, so that won't happen!" Ron exclaimed, looking back and forth between his two friends with an oddly optimistic look on his face. "Which means, we win the war!"

"Voldemort knows, Ron," Harry said, ignoring the customary flinch of the two Weasleys when he spoke the cursed name. "Apparently, Wormtail overheard the prophecy being divined and hurried right to his master's side."

"Curses! Foiled again!" Everyone gave Ron a funny look at that, to which he shrugged and looked away sheepishly. "So what do we do now?"

"I honestly don't know, Ron," Hermione replied softly, shrugging helplessly.

"I still plan on searching for the remainder of Voldemort's Horcruxes," Harry supplied with a shrug of his own. "But I don't think it would be safe for you to come anymore," he spoke to Hermione, who nodded in understanding.

"I'll go in her place," Ginny, who had been silent for the past few minutes, finally spoke up.

"No, Ginny," Harry spoke adamantly as both he and Ron shook their heads in the negative. "You're not of age yet. I can't risk bringing along someone who can't legally defend themselves."

"Harry, you and Ron know as well as I do that if I'm with two legal wizards, my magic will not be detected as underage," she countered with a self-satisfied smirk. Hermione could only nod in agreement to this fact.

"Still!" Harry tried, searching his brain desperately for a valid defense. "Your Mum will slaughter me if I let you come. She doesn't even know that Ron is coming. Heck! None of them know that I'm going!"

"I don't care, Harry. Hogwarts is useless without Dumbledore right now. We can't be sure of how safe it really will be. If the Death Eaters were able to get in while he was still alive, what makes you think they won't now that he's gone?" Her face was turning redder by the moment as her famous temper floated to the surface. "I still think the school governors were insane to keep Hogwarts open!"

"That's because, despite it all, Hogwarts is still the safest place to be in wizarding Europe," Hermione piped as she stood and walked over to the window, folding her arms over her stomach in an unconsciously protective way.

"That doesn't matter. Harry and Ron can't do this alone, and you most certainly can't risk getting caught by You-Know-Who. I'm going, and that's final." No one could find the words to dispute this, so after a few tense moments of silence, Harry finally nodded in consent.

"Fine. You'll disappear with Ron and I in the crowd on Platform 9 ¾. From there, we'll go on to our first destination. The orphanage."

"Right. And I'll just sit here and incubate," Hermione muttered, wishing she were still able to go with her friends.

"Hermione..." Harry's voice held a slight warning tone that surprised even himself.

"I know, I know!"

"I still don't like this. Any of it," Ron voiced with a slight grumble.

"None of us do, Ron." Ginny faced her brother and leveled a solemn gaze upon him. "But what other choice do we have?"

Ron was about to say something when a soft knock sounded on the door. Furrowing her eyebrows, Hermione walked over to the door and opened it just enough to peek out and see who was there.

"Oh! Hello Mrs. Weasley," she murmured, opening the door wider to admit the Weasley matriarch. The short, round woman entered with a sad smile on her face, taking in the four somber teens before her.

"I gather the two of you have been informed of Harry and Hermione's... situation," she said in a slightly shaky voice. Ginny and Ron only nodded as an uneasy silence filled the room.

"Well!" Molly spoke after a few moments, clapping her hands together in a 'down-to-business' manner. "I came here to retrieve you two." She nodded toward the only two in the room that weren't her children. "The Order wish to speak with you again."

Nodding silently, Hermione and Harry followed the older woman out of the room with drooped shoulders. Ron and Ginny watched them go with interest, wondering what the Order could want with them now.

*&*&*&*

"Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, welcome back." McGonagall acknowledged the two teens as they entered the kitchen with Molly. "I trust you have... taken care of business?"

"Yes Ma'am," Hermione replied with a deep, crimson blush that Harry mirrored next to her.

"And you took the potion?" Snape added with a slight sneer, sure that two hormonal teenagers wouldn't remember such a detail.

"Of course," Harry spat, glowering at the greasy man with contempt.

"Well, now that that's settled," Minerva began, trying to diffuse the tension in the room, "we have been discussing our options and we have something that we would like to ask you both."

Harry and Hermione exchanged quizzical looks before returning their gazes to the woman at the head of the table.

"We have the upper-hand as far as this prophecy is concerned. You-Know-Who is not aware of our knowledge of his plans, or even that he knows about the prophecy. Therefore, we think it might be advantageous to insert another spy into his lair." She leveled her gaze upon Hermione. "You, Miss Granger. If you agree to be captured, you will be the eyes and ears of his operation and be able to pass on whatever information you overhear to Severus, who will then pass it on to the Order."

"No! Absolutely not!" Harry yelled vehemently, moving in front of Hermione as if to shield her from their preposterous suggestion.

"Harry, please consider the possibilities," Remus pleaded, but was once again interrupted.

"I refuse to allow you to send my best friend, who could very well be pregnant with my child, into the hands of that monster!" he continued, and would have gone on had Hermione not placed a hand on his shoulder to quiet him.

"Harry, I know this is difficult for you, but we do have to consider both sides of this plan. Ultimately, it is my decision to make." She looked up at the members of the Order then, slowly taking in the expressions on each individual's face. Some, she could tell, were obviously against this idea from the very beginning. Others saw some merit in the idea, but were too wary of the possible downfalls.

The whole room sat in a tense silence as Hermione weighed her options in her head. It felt like an eternity to Harry that she stood there, gazing blankly into the distance, her brilliant mind working overtime to come up with a decision.

"Well, I've made a rather lengthy list of both the pros and cons in my head, and I think I've made my decision," she spoke at last, her voice calm despite the tremors running through her body. "This is going to be hard for some of you to accept, but I've decided to..."

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What has Hermione decided? What is Harry's next move? And is Snape really a good guy? Stay tuned to find out!