black and white ✰ g.w.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The ongoing war was stressful enough without everything else going on.

After Ben and Adeline had dropped their bombshell of an announcement on the Wood family, it seemed it was all anyone could ever talk about. The family had just over a month to prepare for the fairly last-minute wedding, but thankfully, it wasn't going to be anything like that of Bill and Fleur's. It was going to be held at the Village and the guest list was pretty small, including only the Wood family and the Dubois family, the latter of which consisted of just Delia and her parents. Everyone was crazed over preparing for the baby as well, even though they weren't due to be born until April or May.

Even with everything being chaotic back at home, Evelyn, Fraser, and Duncan, all of them being at Hogwarts, had no idea what was going on. They were unable to contact anyone outside of the castle, and it was the same the other way around. As a result, Fraser and Duncan would have no idea that they had a sister-in-law, or that they were going to be uncles before the school year ended, until they came home for the Christmas holidays. Although, it seemed the students of Hogwarts had enough to deal with as it was.

From what they could gather from the little bit of information they had received, Dumbledore's Army had been started up again and the members were doing everything they could to oppose the new regime. The most extreme example of this so far was when Neville, Luna, Arabella, and Ginny and sneaked into Snape's office and attempted to steal the sword of Gryffindor. Snape had caught them and assigned them detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest. And while everyone back at home knew that Hagrid was on their side and would not have allowed anything bad to happen to the teens while they were with him, the adults seemed to think it was a close call and that the next time the four decided to do something like that, they wouldn't be as lucky.

Of course, they knew why the students had wanted to steal the sword in the first place. They were likely keeping up with the Potterwatch broadcast and had heard the bit about Harry possibly looking for it. Naturally, they would have wanted to help him. But now that they had tried and failed to retrieve it for him, Snape would likely have the sword moved, probably making it even harder for Harry to get his hands on it, if he was indeed searching for it.

Speaking of Harry, other than that small tip, there was no news as to where he was or what he was up to, and the same went for Ron, Hermione, Faustus, and Rosalia. None of them had been sighted or heard from, which was actually a good thing; if Harry had been found, the Death Eaters would be happy to announce it, and in that case, Harry would likely be dead, so no news was good news, though it certainly did not help to ease the anxiety of those that cared for him.

Despite everything going on, everyone had to go about their normal day-to-day activities as if nothing was happening at all, including Olivia. The paranoia caused by her mother's interaction with her father at Bill and Fleur's wedding still had not subsided, even though nothing like that had happened since, and it had been months. She still felt as if she were being watched all of the time. Her friends and family were always trying to distract her, either coming to the flat to visit or inviting her over to their place in hopes of taking her mind off of it, at least temporarily, but it never worked. She was always on alert, even if she presented herself as calm to others. This reigned true the first time she spent time with Angelina and Alicia in Angelina's flat after Ben and Adeline made their announcement.

"Didn't they just start dating again like a year ago?" Angelina recalled. "And now they're having a kid? During a war?"

"To be fair, I don't think it was a planned thing," Olivia reasoned.

Angelina laughed. "Definitely not."

"Wait," Alicia said, "Liv, how far along did you say she was?"

"Like 11, 12 weeks," Olivia answered.

Angelina gave her a look. "We don't speak Healer," she said.

Olivia rolled her eyes. "It's not Healer talk. It's simple maths," she said. "11 weeks is about two months and a week."

"Two months and a week ago was July," Alicia said, a grin growing on her face.

"Aren't both of their birthdays in July?" Angelina asked, a grin growing on her face as well.

Contrary to both of her friends, the look on Olivia's face was one of disgust. "Oh, Merlin, that's when Adeline moved in, too," she remembered. "Ugh. I was a lot happier when I didn't know that."

"Oh, Fraser and Duncan are going to have a field day with that information," Alicia said, laughing.

Angelina and Olivia joined in her laughter. That was until they heard a tapping sound on the window, startling Olivia greatly and causing her to instinctively grab her wand off of the table. However, upon looking behind her at the window, she realized it was just a tree branch hitting the window due to the wind outside.

"It's just the tree," Angelina said. No one was laughing anymore, and instead, she and Alicia were watching Olivia slowly set her wand back down with worried expressions. "It does that a lot."

When Olivia had finally turned back around in her chair, Alicia said, "Liv, you really need to relax a bit."

"Yeah, and I soon as I do that, I'll be murdered by my own father," Olivia said, not realizing just how much she sounded like her grandfather. "Not happening. Better paranoid than dead."

Angelina and Alicia just exchanged a look, realizing that there was nothing they could do to help their friend this time. She would likely be this way until the day Jack died.

"Okay, David," Angelina sighed.

[word count: 1074]
[written: 2/22/21]
[published: 2/22/21]
heyyy it's been a while! i realize i've been gone a long time, and that's resulted in a huge loss of interaction on my other hp fic. i feel like i'm just putting out content to a wall and it kinda sucks bc the break i took was necessary. hopefully that's not the same here. interact if you're still here pls