Who: Berkeley & Amelia Doge
What: Late night hospital stays and big name decisions
Where: St. Mungo's
When: Tonight
Hospitals were really boring at three in the morning.
Berk had his fair share of late night admittances, it would have been strange for him not to, but it didn't help him get used to the eerie quiet that bounced off the corridors of St. Mungo's. He supposed not many people were out gaining hospital-worthy injuries this late in the night (or early in the morning), so maybe this quiet was always the case and he was just too beat up/under too many potions to notice. This time, however, he was as sober and as healthy as he could hope for, and it was his wife that was lying in the hospital bed, miserable.
They had been having one of their late nights in Amelia's offices, racking their brains and flipping through gigantic tomes of law books to find loopholes or old forgotten rulings that would help put this M.A.G.I.C. business to an end. The late hours, the stress, the exhaustion, they all piled onto the pains Amelia found herself having, and it took no time to realize that they needed to get some help.
Thankfully it was a false alarm, but it didn't go without a proper lecture from one of the pediatric healers, making sure that it was drilled into both of their heads that their work ethic was unhealthy for the baby. Berk felt as if he was specially delivered the verbal wrist-slapping, because he was the husband, and didn't appreciate the extra reminder that he'd tagged along willingly while his wife managed to work herself up into a hospital visit.
But, that didn't mean he actually saw this as a reason to stop their work. And Berkeley had a feeling Amelia was thinking the same thing.
"
Look what I snuck in," he said as he opened the door to her room. The night guards at the ministry were his buddies and had seen him taking Amelia out before. Berk waved the last law book they were looking through and came over to sit on the side of his wife's bed. "Some light reading."
Amelia needed to get out of here.
Her hands wrung the too-thin hospital sheets gathered around her, trying to keep herself from screaming out in frustration. She was a calm woman, she really was, but she could not be
doing this right now. She could not be sitting around in a hospital, being forbidden to do anything, when there were so many critically important things that she should have been taking care of. So she'd been scared to death thinking she was going into labor, and it was because she had been doing so much work lately. Alright, but she
hadn't actually gone into labor, it had just been abnormally strong and early Braxton Hicks, and that didn't stop the fact that, baby or no, she needed to get back to work.
Ugh, Merlin's beard, she sucked as a mother, but---surely any daughter of hers would have understood, right? And---she would cut back a little, of course (not that she didn't expect a healer to be breathing down her neck about it after this little event), and it would be fine.
Fine. She just needed to read. How could reading hurt?
Amelia glanced up at hearing the door open and regarded the sight of her husband with relief. She would have been
so angry if he had been gone much longer, she couldn't take these four white walls much---
The sight of the book cut her thoughts off short, and her eyes widened, a smile forcing its way onto her face. "Is that what I think it is?" she asked, pushing herself up a little further into a sitting position. She scooted over to make room for Berk to sit down. "Oh, you
brilliant man."
Berkeley grinned and opened the rather large book, lying it---well no, Amelia's belly was too big for a flat surface, so he pulled his knees up and propped it against them. If it wasn't for the late nights and long hours, Berk really wouldn't mind all the legal documents and talk. It was interesting, he liked reading up on how the current administration came to be, how officials fought to maintain the rights of the people. Well. Used to. It was sad that Amelia was one of the few that actually had a conscience on the Wizengamot.
At least she was good at her job.
"I figured I could always charm the cover to be like---the world's largest collection of baby names, if anyone starts reprimanding. Though why you would reprimand a pregnant woman you just told needed to lighten her stress load, I have no idea..." Berk shrugged, opening up to the bookmarked page. Something about the definition of 'beings', they were hoping that it made a specific statement as to what
was a magical being, other than what wasn't----or maybe that would help too, he wasn't sure. Berk tended to underline and highlight a lot of things that looked like they might be helpful.
"I should give you a bedtime, though," he teased, turning to Amelia with a sly grin, "I'd be a horrible husband if I continued to feed your addiction to truth and justice."
Amelia reclaimed just a little of her space from before, scooting back over towards Berkeley once he was situated so that she could get a better view of the book. She pursed her lips in thought as he brought up the cover of the book, which, admittedly, did not seem very conspicuous to be reading just hours after being told that this was the sort of thing she needed to give herself distance from.
Which was completely hypocritical of them, by the way. She wondered how many of those nurses and healers that she had seen tonight were halfblood or less, and how happy they were with the current situation. There was real ammo there, if she caught the right one. Amelia stored that thought away for later, and tuned in again on what her husband was saying.
"I think looking through a book of baby names that large would put me through more stress than work does." Not that they'd seriously looked at baby names yet---at all, actually, which was kind of troubling considering that Baby Doge was quickly proving that she didn't exactly possess the patience of her parents. "But I think we could still argue that we're looking up names," she said, and reached over to point out the first name she found on the page.
Iphigenia Bulstrode. Quickly, she retracted her finger, scrunching up her nose. "--Okay, well, I'm sure there are better ones than that."
Berk grinned, "I dunno, I mean, I
do have brothers named Mycroft and Elphias, maybe Iphi--Iphi---well fuck it I can't even pronounce it," he laughed, leaning forward to squint at the name. That was real wretched, naming your kid something nearly unpronounceable (Amelia clearly had better linguistic abilities than he) in addition to the rough sounding surname. "At least it's somewhat formidable, probably terrified her opponents with her broad shoulders and deep resonating voice."
His eyes skipped a few paragraphs, looking over into charts with loads of dates---oh, Wizengamot members.
"Hey, you're going to be in the latest edition of this book," he said with a snooty tone, nudging her shoulder gently. It
was rather cool, being the husband of a Wizengamot member. He could get used to be a politician's spouse, to be honest. Smiling and nodding, going to those big events. Smearing the opposition with his passive agressive words. Berk was
very good at that. "Along with...Honoria Nutcombe...that's...that name is quite...honorable?"
He tried to keep a serious expression, but dissolved into laughter a second later, shaking his head. "I can't even make a decent joke out of it."
Reluctantly, a grin--followed by what could have been a blush, but she'd never admit it--tugged at Amelia's lips in response to his comment about her being in these law books soon. Well, that was just weird to think about, wasn't it? Being written down in history forever, so that in a hundred years some new generation of Wizengamot members could study about her? The things she had done? Well---she'd have to
do things first; the Big Three thing had been small, as far as the pages of history were concerned, and it would surely take more than that to get her some real notoriety. Not that she was in it to be well-known, but wouldn't it be amazing to have done something--or many things--so revolutionary and so important to the growth of government that kids were writing papers on you in Hogwarts for years after your death?
Oy, she was getting ahead of herself, and she knew it. First things first, she would have to be that lowly, forgettable politician and read up about people who had
already made their way. You had to study the changes others had made first, if you ever hoped to make changes yourself.
Amelia laughed at Berk's failed joke, and turned her eyes down to the names again. Good Merlin, there were a lot of them, many more than they had today, and she wondered if there was something behind that. Were those extra Wizengamot members liberals like herself, who had been pushed out along the way or had been to discouraged to continue fighting the losing battle? She couldn't say she blamed them, if she'd been an
ounce less outraged by---
"Imogen," the name came out suddenly, cutting off her train of thought. "
Imogen. That's--different, isn't it?
Imogen--it's... interesting, though, don't you think?"
He tilted his head back and forth, regarding the name in his head. It was interesting, it was a pretty kind of interesting, too, but he wasn't sure if he could allow himself to name his daughter (because that's what Berkeley assumed Amelia meant, by mentioning it and calling it 'interesting) something that could potentially be the next generation's 'Elphias' or 'Mycroft.' No, no, he'd decided long ago that his parents loved him the most because of his normal name, and he needed his daughter to know that he loved her fully and completely, with no weird first name to ever have her doubt it.
"Middle name?" he said with raised eyebrows, a smile twitching on his lips. This was a definite good feeling, this was a definite good start. A start they probably should've begun a few months ago, but eh. Berkeley was also sure that his parents hadn't picked out names for his brothers and opened up 'World's Dumbest Baby Names' and randomly pointed at a name.
His eyes flitted down to the pages, turning them slowly. Maybe he could find a winner. Berkeley knew a thing about normal, nice names, he'd made lists upon lists of them for his brothers for when they became of age and decided to change their legal first names accordingly.
"Lucille's classic. Clarice is pretty, too---" His finger poked the names, as if they were buttons that would reveal which were the perfect one for their daughter. "Josephine----Mara. Mara's nice! Mara's very nice. Look---Mara Ward, she fought for werewolf rights, trying to make them beings, that's
awesome, in my book..." He waggled his eyebrows. He knew that this could be a long shot, that Amelia might not like the name at
all, but she had been rather keen at this name picking business, and Berk hoped that his judgment was just as good.
"Mara?"
It sounded like she was asking a question, but Amelia was only taking the opportunity to roll the name around on her tongue. It had sounded lovely coming out of Berk's mouth, the syllables washing over her like a soft breeze following all of the stiff, formal names that he'd rattled off before. But how did it sound out of her own mouth, to her own ears? "Mara.
Mara. Mara."
The simple beauty of it surprised her. And the more she said it, the more beautiful it seemed to become. "Mara," once again, just for good measure. Amelia shook her head, as if coming out of a personal trance, and tilted her head to look up at her husband, her lips quirking up. "I love that. Mara Imogen Doge."
Merlin, had they just named their child? And had it really been as easy as picking up a law book and scanning a couple pages all along? Suddenly, Amelia was finding the thought of these parents that spent months trying to pick out the perfect name very funny---didn't they realize that the best ideas came when you weren't looking for them? They'd just named their daughter in under five minutes, and Amelia was convinced that there was no name more perfect than the one they'd come up with. Mara Imogen Doge--how
right it sounded all put together like that astounded her.
