FOUR
Hermione is reviewing a policy proposal at her desk when there’s a sharp rap on the door of her office. “Come in,” she calls, not looking up. Her eyes are still glued on the parchment in front of her, a quill between her teeth, when the door opens.
Harry stands at her door, hair messier than ever and glasses askew, two paper cups balanced precariously in one hand. He doesn’t bother asking if she’s busy. He kicks the door closed behind him and sits down at her desk across from her, setting one of the paper cups in front of her.
They used to do this all the time, especially before Ron left the auror department — tea and sympathy, impromptu sessions for them to gripe about work and the Ministry and anything else that might be bothering them. Now, they mostly stick to scheduled lunch dates. And Hermione knows that if Harry is popping in midday unannounced, there’s something on his mind. She looks up from her parchment and raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Harry offers her an uncomfortable half-smile before tipping his tea and sipping it rather than talking to her. She sighs. It occurs to him that they’ve just had a whole conversation with no words at all: she asked what was wrong, he said it was hard to talk about, and she said that was very predictable for him.
“If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?” Harry asks her suddenly.
“This again?” Hermione quips. “It’s only been a week since you last asked that, you know.”
“Well, did you tell anyone about Ginny?” Harry asks, and for a second, Hermione almost can’t remember what Harry’s told her and what Ginny’s told her. They all blend together.
But she finds herself again and plays her role well. “Of course not,” Hermione scoffs, eyes rolling so far they may as well get lost behind her fringe.
“So I talked to her,” Harry begins.
Hermione sits up straighter, suddenly more alert. “You did?”
Harry nods. “But I didn’t exactly get to tell her, er, how I feel.” She throws him a stern look. “Because she said she wanted to tell me something, and I kind of thought we were going to say the same thing, you see. I’m a little worried I was a bit of an arse about it, actually.”
Hermione’s stomach sinks; she can see what’s coming now, and she doesn’t know how much of her role in the whole thing Ginny has divulged. “Oh?” She asks, voice going higher than she’d like. She isn’t going to tell Harry more than he already knows.
He’s clearly too wrapped up in the news from Ginny to notice that every telltale sign of his friend lying — the blushing, the high voice, the inability to make eye contact — is currently on display. “Yeah, I thought she was going to say she has feelings for me, too? And then….she said something else.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Hermione swallows, trying very hard to appear like anything being said is entirely new information.
Harry hesitates. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, like he’s going to tell her and then thinks better of it. Finally, he reminds her: “You told me you wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“I did,” she agrees.
“So if Ron finds out about this — you have to understand, he will not just be angry with me, Hermione. He will murder me.”
“Well, he might try, but you’re pretty hard to murder, I hear,” Hermione jokes to distract him.
That elicits a weak smile. “Ha bloody ha,” Harry deadpans. He takes another sip of his tea, looks pensive. Hermione just waits patiently. She’s about to return to her policy paper when Harry announces: “Ginny’s pregnant.”
She widens her eyes, feigning surprise. “That’s not funny, Harry,” she admonishes, as if she doesn’t believe him.
“I promise it’s no joke,” he responds, raking a hand through his already messy hair.
There’s an expectant silence between them as Hermione waits for Harry to elaborate and he waits for her to ask more questions. He eventually wins as she asks: “How were you an arse about that?”
He goes to drink more tea, but finds the cup is empty. He, instead, starts tearing at the cup. “She kept asking me what I wanted and I couldn’t tell her,” he admits in a small voice. “Because she said she was thinking about having an — well, about not going through with it.”
Hermione's eyes soften. She lowers her voice gently. “But you were happy about it, weren’t you?”
Harry considers this and, uneasily, he nods. “And, I know what you’re going to say, Hermione: I swear it’s not like I think this is an easy way of getting her to be with me, or something.”
And it all clicks for her. Harry is never going to be able to express what it is, not without help, but she knows: Harry doesn’t want to go at life alone anymore. He wants the chance to have the first blood relative he’ll ever get to remember loving. Oh, Harry.
“I told her that I support whatever she does, obviously,” Harry adds hastily, voice thick with an emotion he’d never dare name. “Didn’t want her to feel like she was, I don’t know, letting me down.” He crumbles up the cup and tosses it in the waste bin next to the desk. “But I think…I mean, if she wants to have a baby, I’m ready for it. I can do it. It would be a good thing.” He’s done nothing but think about it since she told him, truthfully. He’s good with babies, and he’s practiced a lot with Teddy. He’s about as ready as he could ever be.
And Hermione doesn’t know what else to say, because if she’s going to have both of them confiding in her, she has to keep meddling to a minimum. So she gets up and gives her friend a hug. For once, he doesn’t stiffen at the touch; he relaxes into it and lets her.
…
Ginny Weasley is someone who, typically, operates on pure nerve and gut feelings. Considering that this behavior is arguably how she ended up pregnant in the first place, she decides that if she’s going to have this baby, she should probably map out what comes next. She finds a crisp, aubergine-colored journal that Percy bought her last Christmas — pushed to the back of her bookshelf because all these years later, even a beautiful, new journal gives her the creeps — and takes it out. She grabs a quill and writes in her neatest script at the top of the page: To-Do (Baby).
She deduces that the two most important things are to tell Harry that she’s actually going to have their baby and find a healer. The second seems easier than the first — if she has proof that everything is okay, magically, it’s easier to tell Harry, isn’t it? — so she decides to tackle that first.
Her healer is not an option. For one, she’s pretty sure she should have a special healer, one who deals specifically with pregnant women, kind of like the muggle doctor Hermione took her to. There’s also the thing about involving her work: the Harpies will have to know about it eventually (and probably soon, because practices will start again and quidditch is dangerous), but why tell them before she’s sure everything is okay?
When she hadn’t had time to adjust to the news, and it was just her and Hermione sitting on her bathroom floor, she thought the team healer and St. Mungo’s were the only options. Now that she’s thought about it, though, she remembers that there are healers who have private practices — and what’s the point of having quidditch money if she can’t use it to take advantage of the discretion those sorts of healers can offer? She thinks back to the last time one of her teammates had a baby, and remembers Persephone saw someone called Healer Harris in London. That’s all Ginny has to go off of, really, so she writes a letter requesting an appointment and sends it with Mammoth to Healer Harris, hoping that whoever the owl finds will work out.
Of course, Ginny is still not convinced she found the right Healer Harris until a few days later when she finds herself in the soothing, almost spa-like exam room in Healer Harris’ tranquil office. There are pamphlets on general women’s health for witches and posters on magical fetal development all about the office, alerting her that she’s in the correct place. The warm, comforting environment of this place is in stark contrast to the healers she’s seen at work and St. Mungo’s, as well as the muggle doctor she saw with Hermione, where it feels sterile and unnerving.
Healer Harris is a kind witch, younger than her mother, but definitely older than her. It occurs to her that the healer is, actually, probably the same age Harry’s parents would be if they were still alive, and that realization hits her unexpectedly hard. She’s currently only a bit older than his parents were when they had him, herself.
Ginny feels comfortable with Healer Harris right away, as the older witch stares at her with kind eyes and patiently listens to Ginny talk about her complicated feelings toward the pregnancy before even getting started on the examination. Ginny is relieved to see that there’s no need for an internal exam at the moment either, further relaxing her when compared to the muggle doctor. Healer Harris simply asks her to lay down — the exam table here feels more like a bed than a sticky leather torture device — and performs some complicated spellwork.
By the time it’s over, Ginny has more information about her future child than she knows what to do with. Both their heart and magical core are strong, and Ginny’s able to see the golden glow of the magic developing inside of her and hear the fast, rhythmic beating of her baby’s little heart. She knows she can expect her little bean to arrive at the beginning of May, which means Harry likely got her pregnant around his birthday; she wonders if he’ll ever work that one out and, if he does, how that will make him feel. She also learns that by the next visit, Healer Harris will be able to tell her whether her baby is a boy or a girl.
Similar to the ultrasound in the muggle office, Healer Harris uses a spell to show Ginny the baby, and is even able to turn that little moving image into a pocket-sized print Ginny can take with her. “Muggles inspired that,” Healer Harris admits with a laugh as Ginny sits up. “I can replicate this so you can give a copy to the father,” she offers. And then, as if remembering Ginny’s confession of mixed feelings toward the baby, she backtracks. “If you think he’d be interested, of course.”
Ginny’s eyes are still wide with awe as she looks at the little moving picture, the flicker of motion. She’s never known a world without magic, but she imagines this is how Harry felt the first time he learned magic actually existed. “I think he’d like that,” Ginny breathes, realizing that Harry would . This is exactly the right thing to give him when they talk about it.
“He’s welcome to come for the next appointment,” Healer Harris tells her softly. “If you’d like him here.”
That’s the part that’s difficult, though, Ginny muses. She puzzles over it on her way home — she can still floo and apparate, at least for now, but she walks back to her flat. She always thinks better while she’s moving. Because Ginny did tell Healer Harris that the father is supportive, that she trusts him to be involved; what she didn’t tell her healer was who the father is. Then again, it wouldn’t be that difficult to find out that Ginny was Harry Potter’s last serious girlfriend; and, she reminds herself, discretion is the whole reason she took this route to begin with. As she lets herself into her flat, she decides that she will give Harry the option to come along.
Since she found out she was pregnant, Ginny has felt the urgent need to act before she can lose her courage. She doesn’t feel that now, as she pulls out a sheet of parchment and a quill.
H - we should talk about what comes next. Feel free to floo straight in when you can. G.
…
Harry forces himself to wait ten minutes between getting the note from Ginny’s owl and flooing into her flat. He’s at the office, but he can’t focus on work anyway, and he’s positive no one will come looking for him today. Nothing else he’s ever done has required quite as much self-control as waiting those ten minutes. He finds her on her couch, looking up from a purple notebook she appears to be writing in. He can’t help it — the sight of Ginny with something like a diary sends a shiver down his spine.
“Faster than I imagined you’d be,” she notes, her voice sounding hoarse.
“I’ll admit I’ve been curious.” Harry brushes the soot off his clothes and pushes his hands into his pockets.
“Curious?” She asks with a raise of her eyebrow.
“Anxious, more like,” he divulges self-consciously.
She scoots over so she’s no longer in the center of the couch. “You can sit,” she offers, patting the cushion next to her. It feels strangely formal, given that the last time he was on this couch, he was inside of her.
He perches himself at the very edge of the couch cushion. She may feel at peace and resolved, but he has no idea what she’s decided. He’s full of nervous energy, his lanky leg bouncing as he taps his long, slender fingers against his thigh.
Ginny opens her notebook and extracts the copy of the picture of their baby from its place, pressed between the pages. She passes it over to him. “I’ve decided to have the baby,” she tells him plainly.
His eyes widen, expression blank as he reaches out his hand to take the photo from her. He’s unreadable, but she knows that at least that means he isn’t angry; anger is Harry’s most visible emotion. He contemplates the picture in his hands, opening his mouth and closing it again.
She came up with the next part on the walk home. “This doesn’t mean we have to, like, be a couple again or anything.” She doesn’t know if she would mind that, really, but she wants it to be clear that they don’t have to force anything. She doesn’t know what Harry wants, after all, and he doesn’t seem eager to tell her. “If we’re just parents to the same kid, that’s fine. Between the two of us, I reckon they’ll be a really cool kid,” she jokes. He looks up at her, then, his vivid green eyes bearing into her warm brown ones, and she can tell they’re shining with the threat of tears. It makes her heart feel fuller for reasons she can’t quite articulate but can recognize all too well.
“Really?” He asks, his voice low and thick with emotion.
Ginny knows Harry, and she can understand the question he’s asking: he wants to confirm that they’re really doing this, that he’s really going to be a dad, that the little bean in the picture, with their twitchy movements and flickering heartbeat, is his just as much as they’re hers. But she can’t resist having him on a little bit. “Yeah,” she nods. “If you think I’m revolting, now’s your chance to get rid of me.”
Harry snorts. He could never find her revolting, but right now isn’t about whether he wants her or loves her, is it? Right now is about the little shape on the picture he barely understands, “I think what’s going on between us is less important than what’s going on here,” he turns the picture toward her, tapping it for good measure. “This is them?” He asks.
Ginny nods, scooting closer to him. “That little flicker is their heart,” she informs him. “The healer let me listen. It was…bloody incredible.” She laughs lightly. She simply has no other words for it. “And their magic is developing well, and next month, the healer will be able to do the spell to see if they’re a boy or a girl, if we want.” She can’t help it; now that he’s indicated he’s happy, she can’t help but tell him everything, talking a mile a minute like she did as a little girl.
“You went to a healer?” He asks, still staring at the flicker of the baby’s heartbeat on the picture.
Ginny hesitates, and then nods. “A private one,” she hastily modifies. Privacy has always been of the utmost concern to Harry, for obvious reasons. “She mostly treats high profile witches, one patient at a time, all that. So we don’t have to worry about anything.” She pauses. “I wanted to make sure everything was okay, but if you want to come next month, you can.”
“I’ll check my calendar at work, but I’d like to be there,” he answers immediately. “When—”
“Three weeks from today, at 9,” Ginny recites faithfully. She’s made a note of it in her notebook of baby things, like a responsible mum might do. She’s going to have to be someone’s responsible mum come May, after all.
Harry laughs. That should have been the question he asked next, logically, but what he meant was: “When will they be…here?”
“Oh,” Ginny laughs. “Guess I should lead with that, yeah? First couple weeks of May.”
Harry swallows. “That’ll make the first couple of weeks of May a little brighter then.” He tries to sound happy, but thinking about that time of year always brings everyone a bit of pain; even though Victoire’s birthday now softens the blow, May’s early days will always remind them of profound loss. But with two early May babies in the family, Harry thinks, it might remind them of what they’ve gained, too. Because if being able to happily build families isn’t what they fought for, he doesn’t know what is. Ginny nods her agreement. She, truthfully, had avoided thinking about it.
He looks around her flat, appraising it in a way he never has before. It’s too small for a baby. He makes a note of that, something he’ll need to fix, as he tells her: “I want to be there for everything. All of it.” And it’s true — he doesn’t want to miss a second of his child’s life, not knowing what he does about not having your parents there at all.
“Start with the next appointment,” she tells him.
And that’s it: they’re doing this. In the coming days, weeks, and months, they’ll have a lot of people to tell, decisions to make, and plans to arrange. Neither of them are naive enough to assume there won’t be conflict along the way or that it’s all easy from here. But they can allow themselves, just for now, to be happy with the knowledge that come May, they’ll be parents.
Long after Harry’s left her flat, clutching the picture of their baby inside of her and promising that he’ll bring dinner for her this week, Ginny finds herself in the bathroom. She examines herself in the mirror, noting that so far, her boobs are really the only part of her that’s changed. Her still-flat stomach belies what’s happening beneath the surface; there’s a little thrill in that, the secret bubbling up her spine and feeling fizzy like champagne as she drums her fingertips lightly across where she imagines the little bean rests. She opens her medicine cabinet, and finds the vial of the abortion potion. She almost regrets asking Hermione to make it, knowing how difficult it was to brew and how expensive the ingredients were. Then, she uncorks the vial and pours the purple potion down the drain. She doesn’t feel any guiltier about wasting the potion than she would have felt about taking it — which is to say, she doesn’t feel guilty at all.
Choice, after all, means you get to choose.