| SERENITY |

Chapter 11- [Halloween]

Much later, and a bit shorter than I wanted, but I finally finished this chapter :)
-3.6k words

WARNING: Harry gets morning sickness in the final scene [12th November]

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October 31st, 1997- Friday

Today, Harry noted, was Halloween. If Tom hadn't had the date circled on their calendar, he doubted he would have remembered, or even taken note until he was in the Great Hall, where the Halloween Feast was currently underway.

The festivities of the day had long lost their spark to him the past few years, but he wondered how his Mum and Dad were celebrating it with Dylan and Peony. He could imagine their enthusiastic reactions to all the decorations and fancy dress, his dad always going all out with piles of cobwebs and bowls filled with sweets. Harry mourned not being there to see what would likely be his baby brother's first memory of the holiday or to see Peony's now that she was a little older.

Still, he was sure his parents would take lots of photos, as they had for him and his sisters when they were younger. There were books full of them, although they had become scarce once Harry became a teenager and began to shy away from the camera, as his sisters currently were.

Today also marked Harry's third week of pregnancy, or twenty-one days since he conceived. It felt insane to him that he was already nearly a month along, especially since he'd recently been reading up on entries about Creature pregnancies to gain more knowledge. Harry knew he really should have started doing so before he got pregnant, but his heat cycle had been so unexpectedly fast that he'd barely noticed the few months go by.

Studies and personal accounts showed that Creature born children of the sturdier species, the Dragonborn and wixen, could be born as early as five or so months nowadays due to advancements in technology and medicine. That was a terrifying thought to him but relieving all the same.

He could give birth in a matter of four months to a lifelong commitment that he felt wholly unprepared for. That would be around early March, so he'd have a newborn or more to take care of during his exams. But it also meant a closer date to viability, one of his worries with the increase in miscarriages and stillbirths in the Creature community, especially in the longer-lived species. It was one of the main reasons their population was decreasing so rapidly over the past several hundred years or so, despite their lifespan.

A few hundred years ago, the average Fae Submissive, no matter which species they were mated to, barring shorter-lived species and Vampires, had over, or on their way to one hundred children by the time they were ten thousand. In contrast, it was predicted nowadays that Fae born after the year 1700 would have less than fifty.

Harry hoped that fate was on his side, and he had just the one baby for now, preferably one with a gestational period that would take him past graduation, but that he would have many more in the future. The sound of a large family was always a dream for him, although perhaps not as large as Creature families were. Did Elian even know all his Nieces and Nephews?

"Are you ready to head down for the feast, Harry?" Elian gently shook his shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts. He resumed tying the laces of his shoes.

"Yeah, let's go. Where're the others?" He noticed abruptly the silence of the room, looking around to spot the missing shoes of his mates.

"They headed down when you were thinking. I didn't want to startle you, but they wanted to make sure there was enough food left." He explained, huffing in amusement when Harry grabbed him and jogged out of the room. "I'm sure there's plenty, they're just in a mood. If they understood more about Fae, they'd know you won't get too violent with them."