Every single time Ginny Weasley has sex with Harry Potter, she tells herself it’ll be the last time. It wasn’t always this way, of course. When they were dating, for example, she had no intention of stopping. But her reasons for breaking up with him had been better than the sex — no small feat because the sex was earth shatteringly good. It still is incredible, actually, and she tells herself that’s what makes this particular habit so difficult for her to break. If she were being honest, she’d confess that the only real way for her to stop entirely would be if she never saw Harry again. And of all the things that Ginny Weasley knows, chief among them is that her life is and always will be — somehow, no matter what she does — inextricably tied to Harry Potter.
She supposes she could blame her brother Ron for that one. Being Harry’s best mate, he brought Harry into the fold. Her mother loves to collect people — not in the creepy way that their old professor Slughorn does, but in a wholesome way of taking in strays and giving family to people who don’t have any. And Harry was always Molly’s favorite member of the Weasley People Collection. So Ginny breaking up with Harry was not enough to get him disinvited from Sunday lunch or to stop Molly from throwing him elaborate birthday dinners. And why would it be? As much as Ginny hated to admit it, Harry had long ago graduated from cherished member of the People Collection to full-blown honorary Weasley; this would not be a big deal were it not for the fact that Ginny’s feelings toward Harry had never been particularly sisterly.
Though they never really discussed how they’d handle it, they instinctively started by taking turns begging off of family dinners. Harry would be on a mission for the aurors one week, Ginny would have intensive training in Holyhead the next. That was never sustainable, though; they should have known it was only ever a temporary fix. Because Ginny’s mother was nothing if not persistent, and it was inevitable that she’d insist on having her whole family at dinner — and that’s exactly how she’d said it, tone laden with guilt. And so they made it nearly four months before having to see each other after the breakup. With the madness of Ginny’s niece and Harry’s godson and all of the rowdy Weasley brothers, it really was all too easy to slip away unnoticed for a quick shag in her childhood bedroom. That’s when the backsliding began.
Despite Ginny’s better judgement, this continued for roughly three years, basically every time they saw each other. She told herself that it was fine — she needed release and sleeping with her ex had to be healthier than having casual flings with unknown men, didn’t it? And between her quidditch schedule and her obligations to her family, it wasn’t like she had much time to date; neither did he. And his status as Harry Potter would have made that difficult for him anyway. So Ginny told herself it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. She told herself she could give it up whenever she wanted. She reassured herself that as long as it didn’t go on forever, no one was getting hurt.
For three years, she ignored the way she clung to updates about him from her brother, every little piece of his life he didn’t share with her in the course of a hookup. She disregarded the tightening in her chest and the fluttering in her stomach when they were together, noticing that he never stopped noticing her, anticipating her desires and giving them to her without her having to ask. And she refused to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t only about sex — not for her, and maybe not for him either.
And that’s, of course, how she ended up here: huddled over a cauldron in the bathroom of her tiny flat, trying to work up the courage to prick her finger and pinch a drop of blood into the potion.
A weird thing about sleeping with someone you once seriously dated is how easy it is to become negligent. Of course, she’d always been careless when it came to Harry — certainly where her emotions are concerned. Still, if she were dating someone new, she would confirm, for example, if he cast a contraceptive charm before they had sex. She knew Harry, though, and Harry was always prepared; besides, she was on the potion and it served her well. The warning she got from her healer every year, that even magical birth control can fail, barely registered to her. She was never worried. She knew with a sense of (she knows now, misguided) certainty that between the two of them, she was safe.
She knows the answer the potion currently swirling in her cauldron will give her before she pricks her finger. The symptoms are too clear to ignore. She could tell herself that it feels like any other stomach flu or time where she overworked herself on the pitch to the point of being fatigued and nauseated, but she knows that would be a lie. This time feels different, and that’s why she knows in the pit of her stomach that it’s real.
A Gryffindor, she’s supposedly brave — that’s why she professionally plays a sport that involves flying in the air and having heavy metal balls racing at you at top speed, isn’t it? — but it takes her a full half hour to work up the nerve to use the potion. For a moment, she tells herself maybe she’s overreacting, and once she proves that she isn’t , well, you know, the nausea and the bone-deep exhaustion and the sore breasts will go away. Psychosomatic, Hermione once said muggles called things like that — you get it in your head that you have an injury or illness, and suddenly the symptoms appear. So she mutters the spell, letting a zap of magic prick her finger; turning her head away and squeezing her eyes shut tight, she squeezes a drop of blood into the liquid swirling before her.
She’s never actually used this potion herself, but she knows how it’s supposed to work: the potion would not change if she wasn’t, and would turn a shimmery gold if she was. From what she’d been told, the results would be more or less instantaneous, but could take up to a minute. She unscrews her eyes after ten seconds and is relieved to see the same dull orange from before swirling around the small pewter cauldron she’d rarely used since her school days. But as soon as she registers it, something has changed: the potion has turned metallic, undeniably gold. If she weren’t so freaked out, she’d acknowledge that the color was beautiful.
As despondent as the result makes her feel, she can’t bring herself to cry. In the muggle movies she’d seen with Harry (when they’d been dating) and Hermione (once they’d broken up), the instinct is always to take more tests, but she doesn’t think there’s much use when the test itself is magic. She accepts that the potion is correct. She’s not much of a crier, anyway, if she’s honest. She’d much prefer to dive into action.
Though she loves her niece — will certainly love any future nieces and nephews her brothers may give her — and has always known she wants to be a mum one day — it’s clear to her that she can’t have a baby right now. The time simply isn’t right. She’s currently the best quidditch player she’s ever been, and she knows deep down that she’s not even reached her peak. She’s only getting better. That, and she’s not married, not even in a relationship with the father of whatever is growing inside of her; he’s just her ex-boyfriend-turned-fuckbuddy and he barely has time to have a conversation with her when they’re alone, let alone be a dad.
She pulls out a piece of parchment to write to him. We need to talk, she imagines scrawling in red ink. But she thinks about it a second too long, and wonders if he even really needs to know. Ginny isn’t quite sure whether Harry will be thrilled with this development or angry at her and himself — it could really go either way, knowing him — but regardless, she’s going to break his heart. If she’s not having a baby, anyway, it occurs to her that maybe she can just keep it to herself. A little secret that never hurt anyone.
Her first instinct, instead, is to write to Luna — understanding and unfailingly progressive, Luna would absolutely be supportive of Ginny’s choice — but she’s off chasing wrackspurts or nargles in Iceland at the moment. She won’t be much help from there, if Ginny manages to reach her at all. Her mum is out of the question; Molly would be too thrilled at the prospect of another grandchild, especially if she managed to learn that Harry was the father of said child. No, her mum would try to convince her to have the baby, once she got over the shock that Harry and Ginny had sex out of wedlock (or any relationship at all, really). Fleur, her sister-in-law, isn’t the worst idea, except that she is often too exhausted by her toddler to keep a secret from her husband, Ginny’s brother Bill. And Bill can’t know, for obvious reasons.
Sighing, Ginny realizes she has maybe one other woman she can count on to be helpful and sympathetic. Setting quill to parchment, she hastily scribbles: Can you come over? Need advice. Xx, Ginny. P.S. Don’t mention this to the boys. She walks over to her owl Mammoth (the smallest owl of the bunch when she got him, she thought the name rather clever), and ties the parchment to his leg. “Bring this to Hermione Granger.”
…
Hermione’s reply tells Ginny that she needed an hour to finish up at home and then would be right over. By the time Ginny receives it, she figures it’s really more like thirty minutes. She cleans up the mess she made in her bathroom, brewing the potion. Then, she spoons some of the potion into a vial, in case Hermione needs proof, pouring the rest down her sink. When she only has a small vial of the positive potion, she can almost pretend everything is still normal, like there isn’t a clump of parasitic cells currently infiltrating her body. She almost feels better.
Then, the wave of nausea hits and she’s on her knees, bare legs against the cold tile in the bathroom when Hermione enters her flat. “Ginny?” Hermione calls from the fireplace. The apartment is small enough that Ginny can hear her brushing off the soot from her clothes.
Before Ginny can call that she’ll just be a mo, she’s retching again, and loudly. So Hermione finds her in the loo, her eyes widening with perfect clarity as she takes in the scene. There’s the unmistakable sound of Ginny’s gags, the stale stench of vomit, and Hermione — always the most observant of the bunch — notices the vial of the shimmery gold potion next to the sink. “Oh,” she remarks, obviously at a loss for words following the realization.
Ginny didn’t know it was possible to so thoroughly surprise Hermione, who had always been about forty steps ahead of everyone else. “This wasn’t really how I planned this conversation,” she admits as she wipes her mouth and flushes the toilet. Hermione doesn’t respond, and Ginny is worried she’s stunned the older girl silent. “I’m not really sure I planned it, actually,” she rambles. “The conversation, I mean. I definitely didn’t plan the — well, I guess my healer always told me the potion wasn’t 100% effective? But I — I didn’t think that I’d be one of the people it failed…”
“It’s…” Hermione trails off, clearly struggling to find the right way to phrase the question she wants to ask. “It’s Harry, isn’t it?” She says finally.
Ginny bites her lip. She’d thought they’d been more than subtle enough, but then again, she and Harry together were about as subtle as a Hippogriff that’s been insulted. She gives a small, tight nod and, swallowing, feels guilty she admitted out loud. Finally, tears are prickling her eyes. Admitting that to someone is what’s finally gotten her to cry. “You can’t tell him,” she sniffles, trying to hold back what will undoubtedly become full blown sobs if she loses control.
“I won’t,” Hermione promises, hoping Ginny won’t ask her how she figured it out. “You can tell him in your own time,” she reassures her friend, sinking down next to her on the bathroom floor and throwing an arm around her.
“I don’t…” Ginny stammers, furiously wiping the tears from her eyes before they can reach her cheek. She doesn’t know where to start. Is it best to lead with her not wanting to tell Harry? “I don’t want to be pregnant,” she hiccups instead.
Hermione nods slowly. “Well, do you know how far along you are?” Harry had told her mere hours ago that his rendezvous with Ginny happened fairly often, so it’s not like Ginny would necessarily know when the conception took place, but pregnancy was dated from the last period anyway. Hermione could help with that.
Ginny shakes her head. “I don’t exactly know when…I mean, I was on the potion, so it’s not like I can point to a time we weren't careful?” That makes her feel stupid all over again. She sniffles.
“Okay,” Hermione nods. “Well, when was your last period?” She tries instead.
Ginny shrugs. “Literally, no clue. Sometimes during the season…we all kind of use potions to make sure we don’t have it for games,” she explains weakly. The season had just ended. She stops trying to stop the tears by now, letting them roll onto her cheeks.
“Ah,” Hermione presses her lips into a thin line. “Well, those potions can, uh, interfere with the birth control potion. Best to double up with the charm.”
“They should tell you that,” Ginny mumbles. She doesn’t have the energy to yell at Hermione for giving her that piece of advice after it was past the point of usefulness.
“Well.” Hermione nervously plays with a strand of her curly hair. “Uh, you could maybe get an appointment with your healer?” Her voice goes up at the end like a question. “They’d be able to figure it out.”
Ginny shakes her head. Her healer is the team healer for the Holyhead Harpies, so it’s not that simple. If she involves her healer, she’s also involving her workplace. That’s a little too much, Ginny thinks, for a simple abortion.
“You need someone to tell you how far along you are,” Hermione points out. “You have a lot of options, but to know which one is right —”
“I can’t have work finding out,” Ginny points out with a hiccup. “And going to St. Mungo’s means…well, the press will see me, won’t they?”
Hermione nods. Working under the assumption that Harry is involved in this scenario, she knows he wouldn’t like that either. She furrows her brow in concentration until the answer comes to her. “My mum’s cousin, she’s what the muggles call an obstetrician. A doctor for pregnant women. I bet she’d see you? Talk to you about your options?”
Ginny considers this, knowing that muggle medicine is more invasive than she’s used to. Still, it’s the best option she’s got. She nods her assent.
“I’ll call her when I get home,” Hermione promises.
“You’ll come with me, won’t you?” Ginny locks eyes with Hermione. Hermione can’t help but notice that Ginny’s brown eyes are bloodshot and fearful, almost like they were in the weeks following the end of the war.
Hermione hesitates. “I’m sure Harry will want to go with you,” she says instead. Harry would feel responsible, and he never shies away from uncomfortable responsibilities.
Ginny shakes her head. “I’m not going to tell him,” she informs Hermione resolutely. The older witch opens her mouth to respond, but Ginny speaks before she can. “I think — he’d either be ecstatic about the prospect of being a dad or lash out that he can’t do it and it’s his fault, yeah? So either way, it would break his heart…like if he wants the baby and I don’t? Or if he’s upset and blames himself? Like he’s the reason I have to do this? So it’s better if he doesn’t know.”
“Ginny…” Hermione trails off, unable to find the right words without betraying Harry’s trust. She lets he loves you die on her lips. “I’ll be there for whatever you need me for,” she says instead. She knows better than to push the subject. It’ll only make Ginny retreat further. “If you tell him, you can make him pay for it,” she says, one last effort to get her to come clean.
Ginny shakes her head. “I make more than he does anyway,” she says. Aurors don’t make as much as quidditch starters with endorsements, after all. Still, it’s mostly to make a point. They both know Harry is very well off financially.
Hermione doesn’t bring up the fortune in Harry’s vaults, however. She just nods and promises she’ll help.
…
Time is of the essence, as Hermione reminds Ginny no less than four times, and a few days after she finds out she’s pregnant, Ginny finds herself in the exam room at Hermione’s mum’s cousin’s office. She’s completely naked under her paper gown and shivering in the cold sterility of the place. She’s seated at the end of a strange leather table with little metal arms on either side of her. She asks Hermione what they’re for, and Hermione looks up from her book for long enough to tell Ginny that they’re for her feet. Ginny’s image of how the table is used becomes completely clear and there’s dread in the pit of her stomach. She’d thought the first part — where she’d had to pee in a cup, get prodded with needles for an entire vial of her blood, have her arm squeezed in a strange fabric sleeve for some reason, and get weighed — had been bad, but she swallows realizing it will get even more demeaning, and soon.
Hermione notices the way her breath quickens and stands to grab her hand. She rubs soothing circles on the back of Ginny’s hand, murmuring in a calming voice that it will all be okay. “Soon, this will all be a memory,” she reassures Ginny. They both know better than to hope that they may discover this is all a nightmare, and she was never actually pregnant after all.
She doesn’t actually see Hermione’s mum’s cousin, who is apparently at the hospital delivering babies. Instead, she sees a younger doctor who works for her. Hermione intercepts a number of questions, making sure to replace Ginny’s magical facts with suitable muggle replacements.
“Were you using protection?” The doctor asks plainly.
“I was on the po—”
“She was on the pill,” Hermione pipes in, expertly covering. She even drops the name of a muggle birth control pill, never one to show up without having done her research.
“And we I guess had gotten careless about the c—”
“Condoms,” Hermione intercepts effortlessly. Ginny makes an effort to appear emotional as she explains this, as if to explain why her friend needs to answer for her.
Admitting all of this makes Ginny’s stomach turn, but that’s at least not unusual these days. She’s constantly nauseated.
The feeling doesn’t dissipate as she tells the doctor about the positive pregnancy test, about the fact that she’s pretty sure she wants to terminate the pregnancy and just needs to know the next steps. The doctor is kind and nonjudgmental. She’s also apologetic about needing to do an ultrasound, but explains that, all things considered, this is the only way to date the pregnancy.
Ginny doesn’t know what an ultrasound is, or why it involves sticking a giant rod inside of her, or why Hermione offers to watch it so that she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t know why the doctor says neither of them have to watch it at all. Even so, Ginny figures there must be a reason if the doctor is suggesting it, so she doesn’t protest when the screen is turned away from her. Whatever it is she might learn from glancing at it is likely something she is better off not knowing.
The doctor tells her she’s only about eight weeks along. “It’s early, the procedure is straightforward at this point,” she explains. “You have a lot of options.” But Ginny doesn’t see how a lot of options would be a positive thing: she’s already stuck making a choice she never anticipated needing to make.
When Hermione tells her with relief that it’s still early enough for a potion, she agrees that they should get the ingredients. The other option would be the muggle procedure and while that sounds appealing in some ways — she could literally take a nap and wake up not pregnant — she trusts what she knows more than what she doesn’t. Magic is what she knows.
Going to an apothecary for a pre-brewed potion would require a prescription from a healer, so Hermione offers to brew it; it’s a relief, because it’s complicated and Ginny was always crap at potions. They start the brew that night, and 36 hours later, Hermione pours it into a vial for her.
She’s not nervous as she brings the vial to her lips, but she does feel a twinge of something like nostalgia and regret when she swallows the foul-tasting purple liquid. Maybe she should take an anecdote before it’s too late and have the baby, she thinks fleetingly. She would be a good mum. But then she remembers that she only wants to be a good mum if the kid has a good dad, too. She’s always known Harry Potter would one day be a good to excellent father, but she doubts his readiness to take it on right now, given his job and the trauma he still bears from a lifetime of fight or flight. She pushes the thoughts out of her mind as Hermione hands her a painkiller, intended to make the process of miscarrying more comfortable for her. It feels like only moments have passed before she begins cramping, her body working with haste to release the clump of cells that might have become her child. Even with the pain relief potion, she’s uncomfortable, but it’s nothing she can’t tolerate after her sixth year under the Carrows. And, anyway, it’s definitely nowhere near as bad as childbirth.
Hermione stays with her throughout it all. They lay on Ginny’s couch, sharing a blanket and eating what Ginny describes, scientifically, as a fuckton of biscuits. Calories don’t count at a time like this, after all. Hermione puts on the kettle to refill both Ginny’s teacup and the hot water bottle that lays across her lower abdomen. And hours later, when the worst of Ginny’s cramping and bleeding and accompanying nausea has passed, Hermione stays in case her friend needs someone to talk to.
“It’s weird,” Ginny muses with chocolate on her fingers from the packet of fudge they’d broken into after running out of biscuits. “I woke up this morning pregnant and now I’m not?”
“I suppose it’s like that when you have a baby, too,” Hermione shrugs, though she hasn’t yet had one herself and likely won't for a long time. “It just takes longer and hurts more and you gain a lot more weight and then you have to be a mum.”
“Yeah,” Ginny nods. “I didn’t expect to feel sad?” She doesn’t like admitting that she does, because it was the practical choice, the responsible option. Still, there’s a peculiar sort of emptiness, a loss of what could have been even if it was never something she wanted at all. It feels pathetic.
“It’s probably the hormones,” Hermione responds confidently, as if she’s an expert. “You won’t always feel sad. Like one day you’ll be married to someone — and it might even be Harry — and your dynamic will be healthy and mature. And then when you get pregnant, you’ll be happy you waited until you were both ready for it.” And Ginny nods, because she knows that, per usual, Hermione is right. Even as a little voice in the back of her head tells her she might never be really ready for it.
Ginny feels sad months later when she realizes that it would have been her due date, but it passes quickly and, in time, she finds Hermione had without a doubt been correct. When Fleur gives birth to Ginny’s second niece, Dominique, a few months after that, it makes her even more certain that she made the right choice. She sees the work that goes into being a mum to a newborn, and she’s ill-prepared to handle that. A baby deserves so much more than she’s able to give: more than her tiny one bedroom flat, and more than a mum and a dad who are both married to their jobs and the accompanying travel schedules.
...
She stops requesting Harry’s company and stops obliging his requests for hers. So maybe it was worth having the unpleasantness of the unplanned pregnancy and subsequent abortion if it means she’s making healthier, more sensible decisions about her sex life. Of course, Harry’s practically a member of her family, so it’s impossible to avoid him entirely, but he follows her lead and keeps it cordial. They always maintain a comfortable distance, but make chit chat about work and the weather when needed. Most importantly for Ginny, he remains ignorant to the reason a massive gulf formed between them in the first place. He’s always been more sensitive than he appears, so she’s sure that bothers him — a lot, if she’s being truthful. But she kind of likes that, hurting him because he hurt her so much over the years. Anyway, he’s never tried asking her, so how badly could he want to know?
Ginny gives herself permission to date other people, and when Neville owls her saying that the new defense professor at Hogwarts is a young American bloke named Bradley who he thinks she’d get along with, she allows her old friend to set them up on a date. Because, if nothing else, Ginny thinks she needs more friends — preferably friends who do not come with a comorbid risk of running into Harry Potter.
Bradley Hoch, Neville’s friend, is hot, and that’s something she wasn’t prepared for before she meets him. He’s not attractive in the same way Harry is to her, which is sort of adorable in the older brother’s best friend sort of way, an attraction that comes just as much from knowing him forever as it does from his handsome features; Bradley is quite possibly one of the most attractive men she’s ever seen, period. He’s the kind of guy who gets famous for his looks alone, and she doesn’t understand why no one warned before she’s at a bar drinking with him.
One drink turns into two turns into five, and somehow that turns into them hanging out together most nights. Bradley isn’t sporty or sarcastic, or even particularly funny, which is her typical type; rather, he’s intellectual and careful and thoughtful. He doesn’t really understand quidditch, which might be a snag long term if he doesn’t learn, but in the short term she enjoys learning about American culture, his childhood growing up in California, and his special research in healing wounds inflicted by dark magic. He challenges her in a way she finds enticing, so she allows herself to pursue the relationship. He’s open with how he feels about her, which is a refreshing change from Harry. And when he asks her to be his girlfriend, officially, he’s the one who brings it up. It feels like this is how it’s supposed to be, even if there’s also something about it that feels off and wrong.
Her abortion comes up after they’ve been official for a month, and she’s expecting him to be disgusted by it — by her — but he isn’t. He tells her she made a brave choice, that he would have liked her even if she had a kid but that he can’t lie and say he’d give up what they have now. His acceptance fills her with relief because she knew anyone she dated would eventually have to know, and she’s just happy it came up early and he doesn’t care.
It’s almost immediately after that she brings him to the Burrow for his first ever Weasley Sunday lunch, and though Harry is a regular fixture of these gatherings, she’s still surprised to see him there. Bradley doesn’t know who Harry is to her — that he’s Ginny’s first love and the father of her abortion — and she’s not sure she ever wants to tell him. So Bradley doesn’t know why the Harry Potter — a person he’s very excited to meet — is short and very clearly harbors disdain toward him. When Harry looks at her after she introduces Bradley, the heat in his stare makes her feel prickly all over. She’s more aware of his presence than she’s ever been of Bradley’s and he spikes her heart rate in a way that she doesn’t think Bradley ever could, no matter how handsome he objectively is.
Bloody hell, she finally found a new boyfriend who is able to have a healthy, emotionally mature relationship with her and she’s still in love with Harry Fucking Potter. Because it’s no use — deep down, Ginny Weasley has always known there was no escaping it. What she has with Harry is simply too strong to move past. Moments later, when Victoire begins throwing a tantrum, Ginny eagerly volunteers to hold Dominique while Fleur deals with her elder daughter. It’s a good enough excuse to avoid Harry, as long as she ignores the pit in her stomach that forms while holding the baby, reminding her of what Harry doesn’t know.
During dinner, she goes to retrieve another bottle of wine from the scullery, and finds Harry in the corner, sipping a tumbler of firewhiskey. “Bradley seems nice,” he comments lamely. He’d been offered the defense post at Hogwarts and turned it down, which was the opening for Bradley to move to the UK in the first place. So, he supposes, it’s really his fault that the only girl he's ever loved is here with her new, sophisticated American boyfriend. And, given his track record, he’s sure that whatever reason she stopped their liaisons is his fault, too.
“He is,” Ginny chirps. It occurs to her that maybe she can only move on if she stops icing him out, so she tries adding: “Hermione told me you were promoted. Congratulations!”
“Wow,” Harry’s eyes go wide behind his glasses; he hadn’t expected her to respond. “I literally didn’t think you’d say anything to me.”
“What can I say?” Her tone is sarcastic as she lowers herself to the floor, kneeling next to the cooler George brought over and selecting a bottle of chardonnay that looks fine. “It’s the spirit of Sunday lunch! I’m in a giving mood.”
“Well, it’s been more than a year since you were generous with me — I can’t seem to even get the gift of words from you recently.” Harry can’t resist the comment or the bite in his voice. He’s just returned from a mission, and he’s too tired to censor himself.
“Being generous with you was bad for me,” Ginny explains calmly. “I didn’t think you’d care? You never seemed to care.” Even as she says the words, she knows they aren’t fair. The problem was never that Harry didn’t care; the problem was that Harry cared too much about too many things and he had a difficult time prioritizing those feelings, which led to him stretching himself too thin and losing sight of the things that mattered.
“One day, I was in your flat and the next day you didn’t talk to me anymore, and you never told me why,” Harry points out. That hurt, a lot, and he still feels definitively bitter about the lack of closure. He’d been miserable when they’d broken up the first time, and at least then he’d known that it happened. This time, she’d simply disappeared — as much as she could disappear from him, anyway.
Ginny rolls her eyes and stands. She’s significantly shorter than him, but she can still meet his eyes. She doesn’t know what possesses her to come clean, but she’s filled with a sudden sense of clarity. She has no regrets about her decision, and she won’t apologize for it, but Harry deserves to know what happened. “I was pregnant and I didn’t want to tell you about it, so I didn’t talk to you at all,” she tells him softly in as even a voice as she can manage.
Harry blinks in disbelief, certain she’s fucking with him. It simply doesn’t make sense otherwise. “What?”
“You heard me,” she shrugs, reaching for her wand to open the bottle of wine.
“So…” He’s still confused; he has so many questions, and he’s not sure he wants the answers. “Did you, er, have an abortion?” He cards his hand through his hair as he asks, his fingertips lightly tugging on the untidy ends, like he always does when he’s processing something heavy.
Ginny glances at him with naked boredom. “No, I had a secret baby, it lives in the attic with the ghoul,” she rolls her eyes. He just stares at her. “Obviously I had an abortion.”
“Why didn’t you, er, tell me?” He asks dumbly. This certainly isn’t a conversation he anticipated having, and he isn't sure how to proceed. The discomfort of it is written all over his face, his tone laden with it.
“Would you have wanted something different?” She raises an eyebrow. Ginny knows that she doesn’t want the answer, because she wishes he would want to have a baby with her even if she would also feel like crap if he tells her he would have liked her to make a different choice. Still, the question has been asked. The words are out there. She can’t take them back.
Harry takes a sip of his whiskey to steady himself and tugs the ends of his unruly hair even harder. “I would have wanted whatever you wanted,” he tells her without hesitation, as if the answer required no planning or thought. “I would have supported you no matter what, Gin. It just, erm, would have been nice to be a part of the conversation. To have a chance to be there for you.”
It’s unbelievable, really, that she hadn’t predicted the answer. It’s exactly what the noble git would say. She scans his face for signs that he feels guilty, because that would logically follow as well; instead, his face just looks hurt and confused and deeply sad. Her resolve is cracking with every second she spends here with him. “There wasn’t much of a conversation to have, Harry. Neither of us are fit to be parents at the moment. I didn’t have much time to, you know, take care of it, so I made a choice and acted on it.”
Their eyes meet, his vivid green orbs seeing straight through her in a way that makes her feel exposed and raw. “Ginny…” He says, and there’s so much emotion in those two syllables. He’s saying nothing but she can hear everything running through his mind clearly, because she knows him: he’s sorry she felt she had to go through it alone and he’s hurt that she kept the knowledge of the pregnancy from him, but he could never be angry at her. Not really. She can hear the unspoken I love you that’s on the tip of his tongue too, the promise that he cares so deeply for her that she’s already forgiven. She hates how that makes her feel all fizzy inside, like she guzzled a bottle of cheap champagne.
Biting her lip, she breaks the silence. “Look, Harry, I need to get back to the table before everyone wonders where I am. But…we can talk about this later. You can come over later,” she offers, though she isn’t sure what compels her to say it. Distantly, she’s sure it’ll beg some questions from her new boyfriend, but she can’t spare Bradley a second thought. As he always has, despite everything she’s gone through because of him, Harry comes first.
When dinner is over, Ginny follows Bradley out of the Burrow and directs him to the apparition point. Her plan is only to tell him that she wants to be alone tonight, but as he goes to kiss her goodnight, she finds the motion of Bradley’s lips on hers feels wrong in a way it hasn’t in the past. Instead of lighting desire in the pit of her stomach, she feels mildly revolted and stifles a gag. She hadn't planned to break up with him that night, but that’s what she does, on the lane outside of her parents’ home. She tells him that he didn’t do anything wrong — she simply realized during this dinner that she couldn’t see this working longterm. Bradley protests that he thought he got along just fine with her parents and brothers, but Ginny shakes her head. “It’s not that,” she tells him. “It’s not you. It just…made me miss someone else, that’s all.”
And Bradley doesn’t want to be with someone who is in love with someone else so he nods with solemn acceptance and gives Ginny one last hug. “It was fun getting to know you,” he tells her, sounding resigned to knowing that’s all it’ll ever be.
“You’ll make some witch the luckiest,” Ginny promises him with a reassuring squeeze. As he walks away, she finds she can’t muster any feelings of regret or guilt or sadness for breaking his heart; she only feels relief that hers is finally free to love Harry again.
…
Harry meets her at her flat a couple of hours later, having given her the space she needed to prepare for the conversation. She suspects he needed space for the same reason. When he arrives, he’s wearing the same outfit from earlier — khaki trousers, a rugby stripe jumper — and his hair is messy as ever, like he’s been running his hands through it incessantly for hours. Which, she considers, he probably has. She, on the other hand, has changed into tracksuit bottoms and an old Gryffindor shirt that once belonged to her brother.
She paces in front of him for a few moments, watching his long leg bounce rhythmically up and down, before he breaks the silence. “I, er, think I should start by saying that I’m not…I’m not angry with you, Gin.” His eyes look so sincere that hers almost well up with tears. “I’m…” He hesitates, looking down at his hands; unconsciously, he’s begun wringing them. “I’m just shocked. And I’m sad that you didn’t, erm, think you could talk to me about it. I’m sorry for making you think I wouldn’t support you or — well, whatever it is you thought. But I’m not angry at you.”
Her lips quirk in a lazy, morose way. She notices that he’s still staring at his hands, so she kneels in front of him where he sits on her couch, and places two fingers below his chin to lift his gaze to meet hers. “I’m really sorry that I didn’t talk to you,” she apologizes, meaning every word. “I don’t expect you to believe me — I wouldn’t believe me if I were you — but I was just scared. I was terrified, Harry. I was terrified of all of it: the prospect of being a mum, the way you might look when I told you, and how you might react when I told you I couldn’t do it. I — I wasn’t very much of a Gryffindor, I'm afraid. I took the coward’s way out and I should have trusted you to —”
But Harry’s shaking his head aggressively, so she cuts herself off to let him speak. “You had no reason to trust me,” he tells her. “I never — after we broke up the first time, I never let you in enough to show you that you could. That’s on me. I should have — I’ve been working on it, you know? All the things we fought about the first time — I guess I’ve been trying to make myself, er, worthy of you, but that’s ineffective if I don’t show you, isn’t it?”
They never break eye contact, green eyes locking with brown, heavy with things that go unsaid. Summoning all of the courage she’s got left, Ginny asks with a level tone: “Did you say you’ve been trying to be worthy of me?” She’s certain she must have heard him wrong, because for years, she told herself that the reason Harry had stopped trying to improve was because he’d long been too bogged down by the world to care about her the way he should; now, she’s realizing that she’s equally at blame, because she never gave Harry any indication of what she was asking for before she broke things off. She’d never given him a chance to try, and then never left an opening for him to show he had.
“Yes,” Harry responds without hesitation. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Gin. Since I was sixteen, you're all I've wanted and I've been trying to show you that there was a reason you were the last thing on my mind before I died. Before you stopped talking to me last year, I was trying to work up the nerve to tell you.” He pauses, takes a deep inhale, and more confidently than he’s ever said anything, he announces: “Ginny, I love you.”
So Ginny leans in and presses her mouth hungrily against Harry’s; he reciprocates enthusiastically, if not particularly gracefully. This — this feels right. This feels like how forever begins. When they break apart, she whispers against his lips: “I love you, too.”
Ginny remembers what Hermione told her as they sat on her couch, eating cookies and fudge: how one day, she’d be married — maybe even to Harry — and she’d thank her younger self for giving her the chance to do this right . Or, at least, that was the spirit of what her friend told her. And she’s starting to think that it was absolutely right — because Hermione always is. Because Harry is the right guy, after all. Maybe there was a world in which last year could have been the right time, too, but that’s not the world in which she lives now. She doesn’t regret any of the choices that she’s made to bring them here, to this starting point that gives them a solid, healthy foundation. She knows without a doubt that Harry is going to be a great dad, and when it happens, she’ll be a good mum.