Author's note - Many thanks again to all reviewers. I'm sorry about the delay.

Chapter 9 - The Lovegoods' Files

When the house-elf told me it was my turn to see the Healer, I hadn't made up my mind yet. So I told the Healer, who was a scary-looking old woman, that I had come to end my pregnancy but that I was having second thoughts.

She told me I should think it over and that, if I was having second thoughts, I probably shouldn't do it. Then she asked me to lie down on a bed and placed a small silver instrument on my stomach. The instrument had what looked liked the hands of a clock; they turned when they touched my body and stopped to point at some symbols I wasn't able to read. The old Healer looked at them and informed me that the baby was a healthy girl.

That meant that at least part of what the Seer had told me was right.

There was a question I just had to ask the Healer, because I remembered what the Dark Lord had looked like when I saw his true form. Red with embarrassment, I asked her: "Is she human?"

The Healer lowered her glasses and gave me a very strange look. I averted my eyes, wondering what she must have thought of me.

"Yes, she's human," she said.

There was one more thing I needed to ask.

"If the baby's father is an evil man, is she going to be evil too?"

"So that's what's been worrying you?" the old woman asked. "No, no child is destined to be evil because of its parents. Evil is not in our blood. Good and evil are choices we make for ourselves." She said all this very firmly, without any hesitation.

That was what I had believed myself, but I needed to hear it from someone else too. I paid her and quickly left her office. Aware that my time was slowly running out and that the Dark Lord might request to meet me soon, I returned home and took the things I had packed. It was time to leave for good.

I took a room in an inn in a small village; the Leaky Cauldron or any other place in London would not do because he would look there for me first. But because of the disturbing thoughts I was having I needed to return to London that very day, so I made sure the inn had a fireplace connected to the Floo network. As soon as I left the luggage in my room, I went through the fireplace to the Main Magical Library in London.

I needed to consult as many books about the Dark Arts as I possible to try and find a reason for the Dark Lord to want me to give birth to his child. Once I discarded the possibility of his wanting an heir, the only other explanation I could think of was that there was Dark Magic involved.

When I arrived at the library I saw that reading these books was much more complicated than I'd imagined. It was a time of war and restrictions on books about the Dark Arts were worse than ever. Anyone who wanted to read them had to have their wand checked as a means of identification, and then sign a magical contract ensuring that the books were read for research purposes only. I couldn't do that if I wanted my whereabouts to remain secret.

I stood there in despair, not knowing what to do, and then I met Theodosius Lovegood.

I remembered him from Hogwarts: he was a Ravenclaw boy one year older than me. I never actually spoke to him at school, and the only time I had had any kind of contact with him had been the time when I had joined a group of friends in making fun of him, in retaliation for Ravenclaw being ahead of Slytherin in the House Cup.

There was one thing I knew about him: he'd always had strange theories and strange connections. It was possible that he could help me.

---

Wormtail watched Arthur Weasley shake hands with the man with long dark hair, and then introduce Harry, Ron and Hermione to him. A blond girl, who must have been that Luna they were talking about on their way there, appeared behind the dark-haired man. She was probably his daughter, Wormtail thought, although she didn't resemble him very much.

He noticed that Harry Potter and his friends greeted this girl very kindly. That was important; no detail about young Potter's life was insignificant to his master, not even the fact that he kept company with these eccentric-looking people.

Wormtail watched the company enter the train carriage and close the door. He would have followed them, but he had a similar problem to the one he had with the Burrow: there was a magical circle of protection around the strange home. He thought he could recognise the spell; it was a very old and simple one, allowing only those who were invited by the owners to approach the home.

In a moment of anger and frustration, Wormtail wished he could just transform back into his human form and perform a counter-spell. He knew a Dark spell that would undoubtedly do the trick. But that would have been a very foolish thing to do. His goal was to observe as much as possible without being seen, not to attack.

He calmed down and remembered what he had learned from the other Death Eaters. These protective spells often had weak spots. It all depended on the exact words the person who performed the spell had used. For example, if the words were "may no uninvited creature walk through this door", it might be possible to enter the house in another way - not through the door, or not by walking.

Wormtail found a comfortable spot in the hollow of a tree and waited. He had plenty of time.

---

The Lovegoods led their guests to the office through what was once the corridor of the train carriage. Harry noticed that the woodwork was covered with carved ornaments, beautiful although a bit shabby. It was obvious that this carriage was once part of a luxurious train. A few of the compartments were turned into small rooms; the others were demolished to make room for the kitchen, through which they passed, and for the office.

The office was impressive. There was a large desk crowded with pieces of parchment and a printing press in it, and elves wearing green robes were running around, reading something from roles of parchment and assembling type pieces into frames.

"You have so many house-elves?" Ron asked Luna incredulously, and then glanced at Hermione with a worried expression. Harry was worried what Hermione was going to say, too. But Luna answered in a nervous whisper:

"Oh, no! They are not house-elves, and they don't belong to us. I hope they haven't heard you, because it would have offended them. They are free elves."

"Free elves?" Hermione asked, her eyes suddenly glimmering with delight.

"Yes. They were house-elves once, but they hate talking about it. They work for our magazine."

Hermione was beaming.

"Would you mind if I went and talked to them?" she asked Luna.

Luna shrugged. "I think it would be all right. They aren't working on anything very important now."

Full of enthusiasm, Hermione hurried to the nearest elf and bent down towards him to ask him something. Ron watched her with a miserable expression on his face.

"There she goes again! Just when I thought it was actually possible to talk to her!"

Ginny put her arm on Ron's shoulder to comfort him, but Harry noticed that she couldn't help twisting the corner of her lips into a small smile.

Meanwhile, Theodosius Lovegood had opened a large wooden cabinet that stood alongside one of the walls. It was full of small wooden drawers. Lovegood opened one of them; it was full of neatly stacked rolls of parchment.

"All my files are here," he said. "Take as much time as you like. You can use our office desk; we'll manage without it today. The files are organised according to the type of mystery involved."

He pointed to small metal plates on the drawers, with inscriptions such as "monsters", "government conspiracies" and "missing wizards".

"If you'd prefer them to be organised differently," Lovegood continued, "you just have to use a spell." He took a small piece of parchment and scribbled something on it. "This is the spell that will arrange them chronologically. And this," - he wrote down another spell - "will sort them out in alphabetical order."

"Thank you, Lovegood. This is brilliant," Mr Weasley said with respect. "You're really being very helpful."

Theodosius Lovegood waved his hand as if to say it was nothing. "We are at war," he said. "I'll be glad if my files can be of use in the fight against You-Know-Who."

Mr Weasley took out the drawer labelled "Missing Wizards" and sat down at the desk. Harry was going to ask if he could help in any way, but at that very moment the elf Hermione was talking to shouted:

"Hey! Do you know who this young lady is? She's Hermione Granger! You know, the one Dobby was talking about!"

All the other elves stopped whatever they had been doing; now Harry could see that there were only eight elves in the office. They had been moving around so swiftly while they were working, it looked as if there had been at least twelve of them.

Now they all gathered around Hermione with excitement, eager to shake her hand. Hermione was blushing. She seemed a little bit embarrassed by all the attention, but pleased at the same time. Ron was watching the scene incredulously, far too surprised to say anything.

Harry glanced over Arthur Weasley's shoulder to peek at the document he was reading, not sure whether he was allowed to do so, when something else on the desk caught his attention.

Two wizard photographs in silver frames were propped on the desk. One of them showed a very pretty girl wearing green robes a pointy black hat. She was laughing and turning around to pose in different ways, adjusting the hat and tilting it coquettishly to one side. She resembled Luna a lot in appearance, having the same dirty-blond hair and large eyes, but she seemed much more confident and cheerful. Her movements were graceful and flirtatious, which was something that could never be said about Luna.

The second photograph showed the same woman, but clearly after some time had passed. She looked much calmer and more serious, but very happy. She was sitting in a meadow and holding hands with a man easily recognised as Theodosius Lovegood, and a small child, maybe three years old, was standing between them.

"That's mother," Luna said. Harry hadn't noticed that she had approached the desk quietly and was now standing beside him.

"I know," Harry said. "You look a lot like her."