TW: Mention of miscarriage but no current or descriptions.




The sun was almost completely set in the sky as the Hogwarts Express chugged to a slow and steady stop at King's Cross Station with a wheeze and a whistle. Throngs of parents surged forward as an almost equal amount of students came pouring out of the carriages to greet them for the Christmas holidays.

One EmmaLee LeDames yawned and bid her train companions goodbye as she dragged her trunk out from under her seat and rolled it out of the carriage. A tall, broad shouldered man with short, red hair and beard stepped forward through the crowd as he saw his daughter's white hair appear out of the train car. The man opened his arms and EmmaLee leaped from the train into them with a giggle.

"Papa Victor!" She called as he caught her in a bear hug and twirled her around.

"Lee-Lee!" The man called, laughing as well as his circle ended and he placed her on the ground to pick up her trunk. The same blue butterfly covered case that the small girl had struggled with, even though it had wheels to roll it along, was easily picked up by her large parent. With red hair that could be mistaken for a Weasley if not for his VERY American accent, tan skin, and towering height, Papa Victor was a stark contrast to the ghostly, clearly French EmmaLee who only came up to his waist. Victor LaChance lifted the trunk onto his shoulder with one hand, gingerly took the girl's hand in his other and walked a ways away from the crowd so they could apparate.

"Where is Maman?" EmmaLee asked, looking around for her mother, who she had been expecting to pick her up along with her stepfather. Victor made a thoughtful chicking noise by sucking in his cheek as he thought about how to answer her question.

"Ah well. We've got a bit of a big surprise for you. Your Mom didn't really want to say anything until we were sure and then it just didn't seem right to tell you over owl." The man said, rubbing the back of his neck with his burly hand. "She's on bedrest, but tha - "

"Bedrest?!" EmmaLee exclaimed, worry already filling her blue eyes with watery tears.

"Ah, no I mean - "Her stepfather spluttered, waving his hands in front of her and patting her shoulders sympathetically. "Ah. I shouldn't have said that first. She's fine. She will be fine. Oh." He groaned, covering his face with his hand, kneeling on one knee to meet her eye level, and then cupping her face with the same hand. "She having a baby." EmmaLee gasped, the worry not leaving her face.

"A baby?.... Having? A baby?" The girl asked, raising a pale eyebrow skeptically.

"Having." Victor emphasized. "She's due on January 1st, but she has had some of the same complications as before, so the doctor put her on bed rest about a month ago." Victor laughed a little. A deep belly kind of laugh. "She is going bonkers and can't stand it for the boredom. She's very glad you are coming home to entertain her a bit." EmmaLee cracked a wide grin. Her mother was finally, really having a baby. Celeste LaChance had become pregnant twice since she married Victor, but for some reason she was unable to carry the pregnancies to term. Both had been girls and she had lost them at 25 and 28 weeks.

"I can't believe this! A baby! Is it a boy or a girl?!" She asked excitedly, grabbing her stepfather's hand and shaking it. He laughed his belly laugh again. "Well, it's probably not a boy considering what Maman 'as said." Victor shrugged.

"We don't know. We will find out when they get here." He said, putting a hand on his knee to push himself up to standing, picking the trunk back up, and taking EmmaLee's hand again.

"Have you thought of names?" EmmaLee asked, practically jumping with joy at the news. This was the best Christmas present she could have ever hoped for. As far as she was concerned, she didn't need a single other thing. Victor shrugged again.

"We've thought of a few, but thought that you should ultimately pick. I'm pretty partial to Moondance Ravenqueen." He said with a wink and a laugh at EmmaLee's bewildered face. "I'm just kidding. Now hold on." And before EmmaLee could say another word, they apparated out of King's Cross station.

EmmaLee and Victor arrived on the lawn of their cottage in Glasgow with a pop and were greeted by a white, fluffy cloud bounding down the cobblestone stair to greet them. Minx, EmmaLee's cat, leapt into her's arms and purred as the girl snuggled her face into her soft fur, then placed the cat on the ground so that she could run inside to greet her mother. The small girl took the stairs three at a time as she rushed up to her mother's room, almost colliding with a nurse who suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.

Both woman and girl yelped as they danced around each other to avoid a collision.

"Watch where you're going, child!" The woman bellowed with a small chuckle. She was a stout woman with graying hair and a kind face. She swayed and side-stepped a little, carrying a bundle of laundry towards a metal door in the wall next to the stairs. The woman placed the pile into the hole behind the doorway and watched it fall down the chute before turning with her hands on her hips to continue chuckling at the girl as Victor's head came up the stairs at a much slower place than his charge.

"Désolé!" Sorry!EmmaLee called, not bothering to stop but twirling to avoid the nurse and dashing straight into her mother's room.

Celeste LaChance lay in a very large bed, propped up by innumerable pillows, covered with a large green and pink floral quilt, and looking more tired than EmmaLee had ever seen her. She was thin, despite her bulging belly and while she looked happy, she looked like she hadn't slept in quite some time, her blue eyes hollow with light purple pools underneath them.

"C'est mon étoile?"Is that my star? She called out with a wide smile. Her confident, strong voice would have been a wonderful disguise to her state of health if her daughter had not seen her first.

"Je suis à la maison, Maman." I'm home, Maman. EmmaLee said, worry furrowing the excitement from her face. The little girl crawled into bed next to her mother like a toddler and cuddled into her awaiting arms. "Victor m'a parlé du bébé." Victor told me about the baby.

"Oh, ce crapaud." Oh, that toad. Celeste said, with a fake scowl and a laugh. "He wasn't supposed to tell you without me." Victor appeared in the doorway sheepishly and shrugged at her playful scowl.

"She asked why you didn't come and the truth just came out." He said with a chuckle, taking only a couple of steps to move across the room and sit on the edge of his wife's bed. He pet her leg affectionately as they continued to speak.

"Victor says that you're going to name her Moondance." EmmaLee said, sticking her tongue out with a disgusted look across her face and a small laugh. Celeste laughed as well.

"You told me you wanted to name her Starshine." Celeste said, turning to Victor and weakly nudging him with her foot before turning back to EmmaLee. "Why do you think it will be a girl, mon étoile?" EmmaLee looked at her mother with a pointed expression.

"You told me that there hasn't been a boy in the LeDames family in ten generations. Also, Amile and Mariette where girls, so I don't think that is going to change any time soon." She said matter-of-factly, twisting her skirts in her hands nervously and suddenly growing serious. "This baby is healthy, yes, Maman?" Celeste cupped her daughter's cheeks in her hand and kissed her on each one.

"Yes, mon etoile. We have made very sure of it. I have been very careful and considerate this time and we hired Elaine, who has taken very good care of me." Celeste assured her daughter. Gesturing to the kindly old woman who had appeared in the doorway. "She stays with me from dawn till dusk, and another nurse, Angelique, stays with me from dusk till dawn." EmmaLee smiled shyly at Elaine, who gave a small curtsy and smiled widely back.

"Shall I go and fetch dinner for you all to eat in here, Madame Celeste?" Elaine asked, straightening up and clasping her hands in front of her daintily. She reminded EmmaLee of a grandmother. She probably was someone's grandmother. Celeste nodded and Elaine pulled out a wand and conjured a small wooden table with two seats, table settings, and cups, then headed downstairs. EmmaLee waited until the nurse came back with an assortment of food, drinks, and desserts before moving to sit at the small table with Victor. Elaine conjured another table to lay the food upon and began to prepare a plate for Celeste with all the needed nutrients for her growing baby and herself. Once Maman was fed, Victor, EmmaLee, and Elaine got their own plates and Elaine took hers to eat elsewhere to that the three could enjoy their dinner together.

The three talked into the night about what the baby would look like, how EmmaLee was doing in school, creative baby names (Runs-with-diapers, Étoile, Sylvia, and Riverrun were thrown around), and EmmaLee's new friends. Somewhere around midnight, Victor picked EmmaLee up from where she had fallen asleep on her mother's shoulder and tucked her into bed.

Early Christmas morning, EmmaLee was gently nudged awake by a very excited Victor LaChance. The girl sat up, rubbing her eyes and looking around the dark room as Victor summoned a light into the few lamps around her room, illuminating that dark night. It had to be about four o'clock in the morning.

"What is going on?" EmmaLee asked blearily, looking around the room and out the window at the dark, snowy night.

"Your mother is about to have the baby." Victor whispered with hushed excitement. "Both Elaine and Angelique are here to help her, but she wanted you to be there as well. We let you sleep as long as we could." He explained, pulling her covers off of her gently and handing her a pair of fluffy blue socks to put on against the freezing floor. EmmaLee pulled the socks on, still not quite comprehending what was going on through the haze of being woken up in the middle of a comfortable winter's sleep, but she got up and took Victor's offered hand to be led to the other room.

As they padded down the hallway, EmmaLee was shocked fully awake by the sound of a very loud wail that probably could have been heard through the whole house. EmmaLee's eyes widened as she looked up at Victor in realization and turned to bolt down the hallway. Victor laughed and walked at a much calmer, but quick, pace after her. The house wasn't very big, so it wasn't like it would take her all that long to get across the house to her mother's room.

In fact, EmmaLee skidded into the room just a mere seconds later as Angelique, a thinner, dark skinned woman with a Ugandan accent, was turning away from Celeste with the wailing, red bundle in her hands and putting the baby in a shallow basin of water to clean it. EmmaLee ending up not being able to stop very well in her 3/4ths asleep state and fuzzy socks and landed with a thud on her rear as her feet were swept under her. Comically, she slid across the room and skidded to a stop just short of toppling the water basin.

"I'm ok!" She called with a laugh, before any of the older ladies in the room could inquire about her safety.

Celeste laughed along with her daughter. "Be careful, mon étoile. You almost upended the baby." Celeste herself was rosy-cheeked and slightly damp from the effort of the birth. Apparently it was a quick and easy one for her, thank the ladies, but that did not keep her from flopping back onto her pillows in a very undignified manner of exhaustion. Victor came in and laughed cheerily at his exhausted wife in her moment of vulnerability. She was always so dignified and refined that he loved these moments where she was just a woman, letting herself be exhausted. Celeste wrinkled her nose at him in playful annoyance. "You missed it."

"I'm sorry, my dear. I didn't think that it would take you all of the two minutes it took me to get our girl." Victor said, holding his hands up in a shrugging gesture and moving over to sit next to her on the bed. He smiled sweetly at her as he pushed her damp hair out of face and kissed her forehead."But she is finally here." Celeste nodded with a sigh and smiled towards EmmaLee and the baby near the basin as EmmaLee got to her feet, careful not to continue sliding on her socks and thinking about just abandoning them. Actually, that's just what she did, standing on one foot each as she took of the apparently dangerous socks one by one and placed them neatly on a nearby table.

"So it is a girl?" EmmaLee asked, peering over the water basin as Angelique cleaned her new sister. Angelique nodded.

"She is, little one." The nurse said, kindly. "Would you like to help?" She offered. EmmaLee nodded and Angelique pointed towards a different water basin for EmmaLee to wash her hands. Elaine was bustling around cleaning up the area, taking used laundry to the laundry chute, and tending to Celeste with a few healing and cleaning spells.

EmmaLee came back to the basin and Angelique showed her how to wash the baby and take care of it.

"Your mother says that you will be naming her?" Angelique said as she showed EmmaLee how to carefully draw water over the baby's head. "Have you come up with anything good?" EmmaLee had not gotten to know Angelique very well over the past couple of days as the nurse usually arrived about two hours before EmmaLee's bed time and left long before EmmaLee woke up. Her accent was thick and from what EmmaLee knew of her and the care she took of her mother, she liked the Ugandan woman.

EmmaLee thought for a moment as she copied Angelique's movements, pouring warm water over her sister and observing her. The baby had quickly settled to quiet mewlings as her lungs became accustomed to air and the warm water washed her clean. Angelique helped EmmaLee lift their small charge as Elaine bustled over with a fresh basin of water and expertly switched the dirty water with the clean. The baby had fluffy white hair like EmmaLee's that would probably feel like ducklings feathers when dry and pinky pale skin like cherry blossoms now that it had also become accustomed to being outside its womb and aired out so to speak.

As the baby began to make quite, snuffling, growling sounds, Angelique produced a soft, white towel and instructed EmmaLee to place the baby in her arms. The whiteness of the baby and her wrap was a stark contrast to Angelique's almost black brown skin. EmmaLee watched with quiet astonishment as the woman carefully patted her sister's skin with the towel and the little hands came up to swat and prowl as the fabric moved across her face and body. EmmaLee just couldn't take her eyes of her sister and how precious she was. Her heart swelled a little more every time she thought the words my sister.

"Chlo." Pronounced 'Klo'.EmmaLee breathed finally. Then turned to look over at her mother as Angelique handed the child to her. Celeste put the baby to her chest and began to feed her with ease, as if she had raised twenty children before.

"What was that, mon étoile?" Celeste said, tearing her eyes away from her new daughter to look at her older daughter. EmmaLee's face split into a wide grin.

"Her name is Chlo." EmmaLee said as if coming rapidly out of a trance. She moved quickly over and then sat gingerly down next to her mother. He mother smiled softly and pat EmmaLee's cheek.

"Chlo, it is." Celeste said, petting the baby's already dry duckling hair. EmmaLee crawled up into the bed next to her mother and leaned her head on her shoulder to watch the baby eat. She felt like she could watch Chlo do anything forever.

"Ma fleur. Ma douce petite fleur." My flower. My sweet little flower.EmmaLee whispered with a yawn. "Merry Christmas."

~~~~~~

The next few days flew by in a whirl of feedings, changings, and general helping take care of the baby, but EmmaLee didn't mind one bit. She also didn't mind that for the most part, all Chlo did right now was sleep. She would lay in the sunroom for hours watching little Chlo sleep on a pad and blanket on the floor. She had never loved anything or anyone so much, not even Minx. As a matter of fact, EmmaLee almost cried, ok she did cry a little, as the days drew nearer for her to return to Hogwarts and she definitely thought once or twice about absconding away with Chlo in her trunk. Not that she would, really. Honest.

To ease EmmaLee's heart, Celeste organized a photoshoot in their home so that EmmaLee could have a picture to take with her to Hogwarts instead of the whole baby. They dressed her in a cute, little, pink dress and fluffed up the considerable amount of white hair that she had grown over the past days. EmmaLee brushed a strand of hair to the side of Chlo's face as the photographer took picture after picture.

The older girl raised an eyebrow as she noticed a dark patch of skin on her cheek in the camera light flash. It looked like a starburst and when she called her mother over to look at it, she laughed and said that it was a birthmark. A simple mark that she would either always have or would grow out of as she grew older. EmmaLee nodded and rubbed it a little with her knuckle as Chlo began to stir, waking up from all of the camera flashes, and was whisked away by their mother for another feeding.

Later on, when EmmaLee boarded the train back to Hogwarts, her whole family would wave her goodbye, Chlo aided by their mother, and she would spend most of the ride staring at her new picture of her new baby sister, Chlo.