RHEA | I | ↠ S. BLACK (o.h)

PROLOGUE

【 FEBRUARY 】

【 1960 】

【 TWENTY-THREE YEARS BEFORE 】

0 2 : 5 7

FLEAMONT POTTER WAS PACING AGAIN.

It was the ninth of February, early morning in the remaining days of winter. It was so early that the sun had yet to peek out from behind the mountains, and the moon had still been high up in the clear sky that anyone who looked out of the windows could see the clusters of stars right above the hospital. It was also cold, cold enough for the families gathered in the waiting area of the hospital were wrapped in thick layers of clothing so that they wouldn't freeze while waiting for their loved ones. Amongst these said wrapped-up muggle families were wizards, more specifically, Fleamont and Euphemia Potter.

While Euphemia had sunken into the uncomfortable seat with her half-lidded eyes, Fleamont had been pacing back and forth in front of her, his eyebrows scrunched together in anticipation as the heels of his shoes continued to monotonously click against the tiled floor. Even though many families had wanted to tell him to stop and sit down, they also pitied him, understanding why he and his very-pregnant wife had bothered to rush to the hospital at such late hour, despite Euphemia being so irritable and exhausted while Fleamont was even more exhausted with taking care of his wife and coming home from a funeral.

The baby was coming.

Of course, it wasn't their baby, as it was still too early for the little thing to be born, but rather Fleamont's nephew. Or niece. He had a feeling it was a boy, though. Whatever the case, its mother was still in the emergency room of the hospital, the fourteen hours of labour passing long ago as they were only waiting for the child to be born.

"I wonder what Mariah is going to name him," Fleamont thought out loud, referring to his sister-in-law. "If it's something horrible like what my parents named me and Thaddeus, I will disown her."

"You can't disown your brother's wife, darling," Euphemia reminded him sleepily, her words slurred by the exhaustion that had overwhelmed her. "And you're not even sure if it's a boy or a girl yet. James and I think it's a girl so that he'll have an older sister-figure, won't you, baby?" she had murmured the end of her statement to herself, rubbing the top of her bulged-out stomach.

Fleamont turned to her with a playful glare. "First of all, I'm going to have a nephew, not a niece. I can feel it in my bones. Second," he walked up to his wife then, gently placing his hands on top of hers that were rested on her stomach, as not to startle her, "we're going to have a daughter. She's going to have your hair and my face since it would be a curse that no child deserves to inherit my mane of a hair."

He was kneeling now, crouched down in front of his wife so that he could gaze at the gigantic bulge in her stomach. He looked at it so lovingly, so excitedly that, for a moment, Euphemia could not remember how she deserved to be his wife in the first place. He caressed the spot where he could feel a heartbeat.

"You're going to be daddy's girl, okay? You're going to be daddy's girl because boys are too reckless and I'm too old to handle that kind of stress."

Euphemia rolled her eyes at this, even though she had found it adorable how he was already wrapped around the baby's finger when it wasn't even born yet. In truth, she had a lasting feeling that their miracle baby was going to be a boy, thus the piles and piles of baby boy clothes hidden away neatly in the empty periwinkle blue bedroom. She had consulted Mariah and Thaddeus about it, both who had agreed that the younger Potter child was going to be a boy. She didn't tell her husband about this, though.