EIGHTEEN
It’s more difficult for Harry to negotiate being at weekly healer’s appointments than monthly ones, but being there for Ginny’s appointments seems more important than ever. After all, were anything to change, he wants to know first and be able to support Ginny through it all. So Healer Harris schedules the new appointments around his trainees’ lunch break. Using his auror stealth skills, he slips away under the guise of getting a meal and returns with no one any the wiser as to where he’s gone. Or that’s the plan, anyway; it doesn’t last more than a single appointment.
He returns to his office after the first in Ginny’s new regiment of weekly appointments, planning to have enough time to write a few assessments before the trainees finish shadowing qualified aurors for the day. Instead, what he finds is Hermione sitting in his desk chair, looking more than a bit peeved as she stares down at a massive tome of some kind; he’s positive she didn’t find the book in his office.
He’s about to greet her with something cheeky — fancy seeing you here, maybe — when she looks up. “There you are! I was worried sick.”
“Er, why?” Harry can’t help but ask. “Is something the matter?”
Hermione blinks at him rapidly. “We were supposed to have lunch,” she reminds him, tone somewhat harsh. She pulls her date book out of the pocket of her robes and turns to today’s date. She turns the page back to him and taps a line with her wand. Lunch with Harry: Noon .
“Fuck,” Harry sighs. “Hermione, I’m sorry,” he winces. “I had to go to the healer with Ginny, it completely slipped my mind. I should have reached out.” It doesn’t occur to him that this could clue Hermione into anything he promised Ginny not to speak about; after all, it seems innocent enough that he had to go to the healer with Ginny, as long as he doesn’t have to cancel on Hermione for the same reason the next week.
A look of panic immediately paints itself across Hermione’s features. “The healer? Oh — Harry, is everything all right with Ginny and the baby?”
Harry keeps his face neutral as he scoffs. “‘Course it is. She’s pregnant. Pregnant witches go to the healer. I’m her boyfriend, so I go with her.”
“But she just went last week, didn’t she?” Hermione asks. Harry curses himself for forgetting that he ended up rescheduling another meeting with Hermione when he called out following Ginny’s last appointment.
“Well, you know,” Harry lies, waving his hands in such a way as to make himself seem unaffected. “It’s nearing the end, now. She has to go more.”
“Not every week,” Hermione points out. “The book I gave Ginny said it should only be weekly if something’s wrong or she’s past her due date.” He should have known Hermione would have read the book she gave Ginny on pregnancy. “Harry?”
Harry glances around to make sure no one is at the door. Confident that they’re alone, he closes the door and locks it, casting a muffliato for good measure. “I’m going to tell you,” he tells her firmly. “But I promised Ginny that her family wouldn’t find out, okay. So if you tell Ron…”
For her part, Hermione straightens, giving off the appearance of steadiness even as her face continues to look worried. “For heaven’s sake, Harry, if I were going to spill one of your Ginny secrets to Ron, don’t you think it would have happened by now?”
And he has to admit: she’s got a point. So he tells her everything, starting with Audrey’s appearance at their previous appointment to the longterm effects of the Cruciatus to the potion regiment and restrictions meant to keep Ginny and Snitch as safe as possible. He ends with a weak explanation that now, there are weekly appointments, as if that was the point of the thing all along. When he finishes — nearly panting from the speed at which it all rushed out of him — she stares at him blankly.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone, Harry?” She asks him finally, sounding as if she’s pained by it.
He chews on his lower lip, shrugging helplessly. “I wanted to, Hermione. But Ginny — well, I can’t say I blame her, to tell you the truth. But the healers say she’s supposed to stay as relaxed as possible, and she knows that if her mum finds out, someone will always be hovering. So she said it would reduce her stress to keep it to ourselves and I had to respect that for her.”
For her part, Hermione looks torn. “I get that,” she says slowly. “But — I mean, Harry, were the two of you ever going to tell me and Ron?” For a minute, Harry doesn’t know what kind of a question that is. But she elaborates: “I’ve sustained the Cruciatus at length, too, you realize.”
Guilt bubbles up inside Harry’s chest, both familiar and nauseating at once. Of course Hermione and Ron deserved to know at some point; how could he have forgotten that this also affects them? But he can’t say he agrees that they necessarily deserved to know immediately, all things considered. “Well, I can’t say I’d thought much about it. I — er, I’m rather preoccupied worrying about Ginny and the baby, to be honest. But I do think we’d have told you eventually, yes. After he’s born. Especially if he does come early.”
Hermione nods, though Harry doesn’t know if this is understanding or really that she has no choice but to accept it when the stakes are so high. “Does that — does it look likely? That he will?”
Yet another question to which Harry has no answer. He shrugs. “Dunno. Audrey was in procedures today, so she’s going to review the scans later and come over to discuss them,” Harry informs her. “Healer Harris said Ginny is healthy and Snitch's lungs look more developed. So that’s good. Means the potions are working, anyway.”
Hermione presses her lips into a thin line, considering this thoughtfully. “Is it weird?” She asks finally. “Having Audrey be a part of it, I mean?”
“A little,” Harry admits with a laugh. “Neither of us really wants to talk about it. But we know she can’t, er, say anything to anyone and she’s clearly very competent as a healer, so.”
“I’ll admit I wondered. If she was any good at it, I mean.”
“Mm,” Harry agrees, with a cluck of his tongue. “That general air of nervousness. But no, she’s rather confident in her skill as a healer.”
“In fairness, penetrating the Weasley bubble can be…” She trails off, trying to find the right words. “Well, I’m marrying in, so I love them, obviously, but they can be a bit intense? Intimidating? I don’t think you and I really notice it because we’ve been around them for so long.”
“I got the feeling that she thought that she’d get in with Ginny and use that to unlock the puzzle.” Harry’s always been good at reading people, even if he’s sometimes willfully unobservant or not always charitable with the interpretation he takes. So of course he has an entire narrative for Audrey built in his head already. “But we both know how difficult it can be to win Ginny over.”
There’s a lot Hermione could say to that — namely, that Harry never needed to win Ginny over, because the youngest Weasley was in love with him before she’d ever met him — but she doesn’t. “Molly is skeptical of her too. She told Ron that she’s worried that Audrey will go back to America and that Percy will follow her.”
That anxiety — whether warranted or not — is understandable. Molly Weasley lost one son; she doesn’t want to lose Percy, even by proximity, when she feels she only just got him back. There was once a time where Harry would have been concerned that Ron might say something like no real loss, if Percy goes, but not even Ron would dare let something like that unthinkingly pass his lips now.
“For what it’s worth, I think that even if she and Percy break up, she stays,” Harry offers.
“How do you figure?”
Harry shrugs. “They’re alike — Percy and Audrey, I mean. They like accolades, beam under the attention of others, yeah? In the States, she’s one of many fertility healers, but here, she has this much-needed expertise that our healers lack. You should hear Ginny’s healer talk of her — like she’s completely brilliant and vital.”
Harry’s thinking about this when he opens the front door of Grimmauld Place to welcome Audrey that night. The witch looks frazzled, wearing a pair of pink scrubs embroidered with her name and specialty as she did in Healer Harris’ office during their last appointment, a muggle-style puffy coat over them; her blonde hair is haphazardly tied in a knot on the top of her head and her trainers look scuffed and dirty; her big blue-grey eyes are bloodshot. Even still, she manages a huge smile as Harry takes her coat. He assumes this is another skill of healers that aurors could stand to learn: acting cheerful when you look and feel like shite after a rough day.
“So good to see you, Harry,” Audrey chirps, although Harry suspects she’d much rather be at home, enjoying a bath or — Merlin forbid — shagging Percy for a bit of stress relief.
“Thanks for coming,” Harry responds in turn, directing her up the stairs toward the drawing room. “We’ve got tea and biscuits upstairs, but if you’d like anything else, we can ask Kreacher —”
“Oh, no, tea is fine,” Audrey chatters as she follows Harry to the room where Ginny is already sitting, staring intently at an animation of a quidditch play in a book her coach sent over. Ginny slams the book shut when Audrey and Harry enter, looking as though she was caught looking at something embarrassing.
“Audrey’s here, love,” Harry announces as goes to sit next to her on the couch.
“Thanks, never would have worked that out myself,” Ginny responds cheekily. The cheek is directed almost entirely toward Harry instead of Audrey, which must be an improvement. She turns to Audrey and, eschewing a greeting, offers: “Help yourself to tea and biscuits.” She performatively gestures to the teapot in the center of the coffee table and the platter of prettily arranged cookies.
Audrey helps herself to a shortbread, which she nibbles on a bit before starting. “I reviewed Healer Harris’ scans from your exam and her notes. I’m really pleased to see that the little guy’s lungs are developing ahead of his current gestation — it’s really encouraging — and that your blood pressure and overall health are looking perfect, Ginny.”
“But…?” Harry can’t help but cut in.
Audrey giggles nervously. “I’m sorry?”
Ginny and Harry look at each other, doing the thing they do where they communicate wordlessly and alienate others. “Well,” Ginny cuts in. “It’s just that it sounded like you were going to say but and follow it up with the bad news.”
“We're familiar with the setup of a good news, bad news conversation,” Harry jokes humorlessly.
Audrey looks taken aback, blinking a few times before speaking. “Right. Well I don’t have any bad news, per se,” she says slowly. “I guess it’s more, shall we say, a development we need to monitor. I’m sure you were a bit surprised by Healer Harris examining you internally today?”
“Not my favorite bit,” Ginny wrinkles her nose. “But I saw a muggle doctor when I first found out I was pregnant, actually, and I guess I’m glad I’m not a muggle because I made it this far with that being my only internal exam.”
This elicits a genuine laugh from Audrey. After receiving a questioning, unamused stare from Ginny, she elaborates. “I’m no maj-born — I think I’ve told you that? And my mom is a no-maj OBGYN — obstetrician and gynecologist, I mean. So I’m very familiar with no-maj medicine, especially in this specialty. Those exams are not pleasant; magic’s definitely improved on it. That’s all I was laughing about. I understand what you’re referencing.”
At this explanation, Ginny softens a bit. It’s harder to be annoyed with someone when you can explain their behavior, after all. She wonders what Audrey’s mum thinks of her daughter’s profession — is she proud that Audrey took after her even in the magical world or is she disappointed that she didn’t do things the muggle way? She’s not going to ask. That’s not the purpose of this visit, after all.
“Er, as you were saying? The internal exam?” Harry is the one to bring them back to the topic at hand. He hadn’t been at the appointment with the muggle doctor, so he had been surprised when Healer Harris had instructed Ginny to undress from the waist down and examined her. He wasn’t bashful about it, really — he reckons if he were, it would not bode well for the birth — but he somehow had never realized it was an option, either.
“Right.” Audrey nods methodically. She’s not using her healer voice, not entirely; Harry assumes she knows it would have been strange to do that in their home. “Healer Harris was looking for two things during that exam. First, she wanted to see if your cervix was at all dilated. Good news there: you’re not. If you were, we might worry that labor was imminent. She was also looking to see if your cervix has begun to thin — which is a natural process of the body preparing for labor. That’s where the concern is: it’s not much, but it has started. That, coupled with the fact that your baby is in position — it means we’re right to be giving you the fetal development potion and we’re right to be monitoring.” She reaches into her bag, and produces a bright blue potion that Ginny recognizes as the fetal development potion.
“Oh, I already took that.” Ginny looks over at Harry, who nods to confirm that he saw it, too.
“Yeah, I know. Healer Harris told me.” Still, Audrey uncorks the potion and hands the bottle over to Ginny. “Because I’m worried things might progress, I’d like to increase your weekly dosage of this by twenty percent. This is just that additional dose for this week.”
Looking and feeling uneasy, Ginny wrinkles her nose and takes a deep inhale before tossing the potion back. She winces at the aftertaste; it was unpleasant to do this twice in one day, but she’s happy to, of course. She’d do anything to keep Snitch safe, and he’s not even here yet. She finally understands — on an emotional rather than intellectual level — why Harry’s parents died for him, why her mother stepped between her and Bellatrix Lestrange. Because she chose to grow this boy in her body; she will do anything in her power to bring him into the world safely and keep him safe once he’s here.
Audrey’s visit is a quick one. She leaves within thirty minutes of arriving, reminding Ginny no less than ten times before she goes that she’s willing to come over at the smallest twinge to examine her if needed. Even a week ago, Ginny would have classified this as a bit much, but now she feels a rush of gratitude, and maybe even affection, toward Audrey. While Ginny is sure Audrey is being extra careful because Ginny is the sister of someone she cares for, Ginny also can tell Audrey cares deeply about all of the patients she encounters. She feels responsible for her patients and their babies. And Audrey had said that she thinks she’d have been a Ravenclaw had she gone to Hogwarts, but it occurs to Ginny that Audrey would have fit in as a Hufflepuff, or even a Gryffindor, too.
Ginny, on the other hand, is finding her Gryffindor courage hard to come by; she knows Harry isn’t feeling very brave, either. Harry, she recognizes, feels even more helpless than she does. At least Ginny can take the potions and eat healthfully and pay close attention to the sensations in her body. Harry is merely an observer, someone who can only ask questions and offer support and try to be strong while he’s nervous and doesn’t even have the comfort of knowing the situation is happening inside him. And inaction has always driven Harry spare.
He draws her a bath, which he’s been doing a lot lately — it’s something he can do, anyway — and brings her a mug of hot chocolate to the tub. “Can you sit with me?” Ginny asks when he turns to leave. She gestures to the floor of the bathroom. Many times, Harry will climb into the tub with her — they can’t have sex but not all intimacy leads to sex for them, not anymore — but they’re both wound too tightly for that tonight, and they know it.
Obligingly, Harry sinks to the floor, stretching his long legs in front of him and resting his arm on the side of the bathtub. He lets his head lull down to rest on his arm and smiles. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She takes a sip of the hot chocolate and something like relief floods over her, like a natural calming draught. That’s better. “How are you feeling after all that?”
“Fine, I guess.” He pauses. “I should probably tell you I told Hermione today. She’s not going to tell Ron but — I apparently ditched a lunch date with her for your appointment and she caught me trying to lie about it.”
Try as she might, Ginny can’t bring herself to feel cross about that. “As long as she doesn’t tell Ron.”
“We’re going to need to tell Ron after Snitch is born,” Harry points out flatly. “Hermione made a very good point that this, er, will probably affect her, too, when they…”
Ginny takes in breath so sharply that it sounds like a piece of bacon hitting a hot skillet. “Yeah. I reckon so.” She raises her mug to her lips again and silence descends between them as she drinks. “We were really too young to be dealing with all of that, weren’t we?”
Harry nods. “I think about that all the time,” he admits. “It was a war and it was fought in large part by actual children. Now that we’re going to have a child…”
“It’s unfathomable,” Ginny agrees with a shake of her head. "Except that we lived it."
“I’m not ever going to let him take on battles he’s too young to fight.” He applies a bit of pressure to where their hands rest on her stomach, driving home the point that the him in question is Snitch.
“Well, if he’s anything like his parents, you might not have a choice,” Ginny laughs humorlessly.
“That’s why —” He pauses, bites his lip. “To be honest, I’ve loved teaching this class of trainees. And I don’t miss the field at all, which — well, it’s surprising, really. But I can’t shake this feeling that if I don’t do everything I can to stop dark magic before it can rise, I won’t be doing right by Snitch.”
They hold eye contact for a few minutes after that, the air heavy with the weight of the things neither of them can say.
“Snitch doesn't need you to save the world,” Ginny says finally. “I think — the best way for you to do right by him is to be there for him, Harry. For you to be his dad. You’re going to teach him how to ride a broomstick and hug him when he’s upset and tell him stories and make him his favorite lunch. And it’s the sum total of all those ordinary things that make up what kind of a father you are, Harry; not the grand ways in which you can protect him from existential evil.”
“How do you know?” And there it is again: Harry is a grown man, but he looks as scared and small as he did that first day on the platform.
This is where it’s tricky, because this is a tough question to answer without reminding Harry — very unnecessarily — that he grew up without a dad. Especially when the only legacy his father left him was dying to protect him from existential evil. Still, it’s not something worth sugarcoating, either; throughout the pregnancy, she’s been reminding him that they’re meant to figure out being parents together. “I guess I don’t know for sure. But I know what I needed from my dad. Even though there was definitely evil he wanted to protect me from, the main thing I needed was love and support and the occasional advice on why boys — namely, this messy-haired one who ran around with my brother — were so clueless.” At this, Harry chuckles, just a bit. “When I think of why I love my dad, him warding our house from Death Eaters is honestly toward the bottom of the list. Toward the top is all the times I fell asleep while he read me a book at bedtime. It’s all relative.”
“I didn’t have that.”
“I know.”
“I want Snitch to have that.”
“He will.” Ginny rolls her head over the edge of the tub, turning so she can catch Harry’s gaze. “You’re never going to be able to rid the world of all evil, and I reckon you’ve done more than your fair share already. But you’re going to be able to make our son feel as safe and loved as I always do when I’m with you.”
He pulls her hand toward his face, kissing her knuckles lightly. “I love you,” he mumbles against her hand.
…
There’s still so much to do to prepare for Snitch’s arrival, and it’s difficult to comprehend how to get it all done when they no longer have any reasonable timeline for when to expect him. At first, Ginny finds herself most worried about the physical things. For example, Snitch’s nursery is mostly finished, but they don’t have a bassinet for him to sleep in their room at the beginning; they’ve barely purchased any clothing and since they don’t know just how early he’ll be, they don’t know what sizes they’d even need. This is where Harry is nonplussed.
“Worst case, we send Hermione or your mum or even Fleur to the shops to buy some clothes,” he tells her soothingly. “I’ll give them money, they’ll get us whatever size he needs. Andromeda can bring some of Teddy’s baby clothes, and she probably still has his bassinet. Those are just things. Those are easy.”
What isn’t easy, Harry thinks, are the things that are less tangible. Like the fact that Snitch is going to be named James , but they haven’t even discussed middle names at all. They know Ron is going to be his godfather, but haven’t quite worked out how to tell Ron about it quite yet — let alone how they’re supposed to ask Ron and Hermione to be his guardians if anything were to happen. They don’t even have a pediatric healer lined up for him, because they put off interviewing those healers until the third trimester.
“Maybe Healer Harris has a recommendation,” Harry suggests as he glances through the thick directory of healers associated with Mayfair. He’s already determined to keep Snitch’s life as private as possible, which means just as St. Mungo’s wasn’t an option for Ginny’s pregnancy, it’s also not an option for Snitch’s pediatric care. “Or even Audrey.”
“I doubt Audrey even knows many of the pediatricians,” Ginny shakes her head dismissively. She points to a picture in the directory. “Her name looks familiar.”
Hlr. Mary Macdonald, Pediatrics is the name she’s pointing to. The woman looking back at them is a kind-looking witch with dark hair and a warm smile. Harry recognizes her face, too, though he can’t recall from where . “Hm,” he agrees noncommittally, circling her name with his quill. As he’s scanning he sees another name he recognizes: Hlr. Cho Chang, Pediatrics. “Cho is a healer?”
“Our son is not going to see your ex-girlfriend as his healer,” Ginny scoffs.
“I don’t know if you can even call Cho my ex-girlfriend,” Harry laughs. “We snogged, like, twice — both times were awful, by the way — and went on one disastrous date.”
“When you’re fifteen, that counts,” Ginny informs him hotly. “And she will not be Little Potter’s healer.”
Harry smiles dumbly. “So we’re officially decided on Potter, then? You're positive you don’t want to do Weasley-Potter?”
“I don’t see why I would,” Ginny shrugs. “I’ll be a Potter eventually, too.” She doesn’t think anything of saying that; they’ve already agreed that marriage is an eventuality rather than a possibility.
Still, when he hears it, Harry drops his quill. “You’ll — I mean, when we get married, you want to take my name?”
Ginny blinks, cocking her head to the side. “Yeah, I reckon so,” she agrees easily.
“I didn’t think you would.”
“Me either,” Ginny admits. “And maybe if we got married before I got pregnant, I wouldn’t have. I can’t say for certain. But I want Snitch to have your name and I do like the idea of all of us being the Potters. The Potter Family. Y’know? It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think so?”
Harry sits with this for a bit, looking and feeling overcome. He feels like he’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted: a family , and with Ginny Weasley, to boot. And still, he feels like maybe it’s come at a cost to her. “I think you should pick his middle name.” He says it as unthinkingly, as freely, as she told him she plans to take his name one day. “I chose James and he’s getting Potter as his name so — whatever middle name you choose, that’s his middle name.”
“Deal,” Ginny agrees, with only a little bit of hesitation. “George asked me not to use Fred’s name,” she admits after a few moments. “On Christmas Eve. And, of course, that was the night we landed on James and all I could think was that James Frederick Potter would be such a nice name.”
“It would,” Harry agrees with a sad smile. “But you don’t have to decide right now. You can have a think on it.” He taps his quill against the healer directory again. “We’ve still got to get through this.”
Ginny shakes her head and gestures to Harry to put the directory down. “We can just ask Healer Harris next week who we should choose. As long as it’s not Cho, I’ll go with whoever she says is good.”
“But what if we don’t like that person? What if they’re weird about treating Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley’s son?”
Ginny shrugs. “Then we go to the next person on the list. I doubt Healer Harris would recommend someone who would be, though.”
He’s easily convinced to abandon the directory after that. They snuggle on the couch and throw suggestions for middle names back and forth instead. Harry suggests that maybe instead of using Frederick, they use a different name starting with an F to honor him.
“Like what?”
“Dunno,” Harry shrugs. “Er, Francis?”
“James Francis Potter sounds like a ponce,” Ginny declares. “Absolutely not Francis.”
“Finnian?”
“That’s a no as well. What if he gets my red hair?” Ginny says this as though she thinks this is a brilliant argument, but for the life of him, Harry can’t imagine why.
“What if he does?”
“James Finnian Potter sounds like a leprechaun, Harry,” she rolls her eyes at him. “I’m not giving that name to a child who might have red hair. That just makes it worse.”
They go through every F name they can think of, Ginny declaring them all unsuitable. Harry suggests Arthur, but Ginny vetoes that as well. She can’t explain why naming her son after Harry’s dead father and her living one feels wrong, but it does.
“If you weren’t Harry James Potter, we could do James Harry Potter,” Ginny muses. “As is tradition.”
“Yeah, that’s the one name I’ll have to say no to. Sorry, love.”
So then they’re back to having no ideas at all.
It isn’t until the next morning that it comes to Ginny. She almost doesn’t bring it up to Harry, certain he’ll say no and claim that the whole point of insisting she choose the middle name herself was so that she could choose a name that meant something to her. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Because a person can mean something to Harry and her at the same time.
“I’ve got it, by the way,” Ginny tells her boyfriend as he gets out of the shower. She’s drinking tea in bed, something of a new ritual now that she’s spending most of her time off of her feet. She thought the mandated rest would drive her mad, but she finds it’s actually quite nice, being forced to rest, at least for the time being.
“Got what?” Harry walks into their bedroom naked, using his towel to thoroughly dry his body before he gets dressed. It’s crazy to think that they were once only naked around each other when they were in some phase of sexual activity, when nudity is so casual for them now.
“Snitch’s middle name.”
“Oh?” Harry drops the towel on the floor, apparently satisfied with his level of dryness, and pads over to the drawers where he goes to get a pair of pants. Ginny can’t help but enjoy the view of his adorable arse that it affords her.
“His name is James Sirius Potter,” Ginny announces happily.
Harry freezes and turns around slowly. “Ginny, the whole point was that his name would mean something to you, too.”
She gets that look in her eyes — the blazing one that’s always made him want to snog her senseless — and she corrects him fiercely. “Sirius does mean something to me. I got to know him pretty well the summer before my fourth year, you know. And I learned a lot from him. He gave you this house — the one where we’re raising our son. And in the little time you had together, he tried to be a father figure for you. I dunno. I think of how you got here — a wonderful man who’s about to be a wonderful father — and I think we have Sirius to thank for a big part of that. He taught you how to access that part of yourself, I guess, and if he hadn’t — well, you mean the world to me, Harry. I want to honor the people who made you since everything else feels like a testament to the people who made me.”
Harry stares at her for a while, his eyes growing misty. “You don’t have to do this,” he tells her, his resolve weakening.
“But I want to, Harry.”
“James Sirius Potter,” Harry repeats, holding the name on his lips like a sacred oath. “I love it. I love you.”
And just like that fateful day in the Gryffindor common room all those years ago, they stride across the room and meet in the middle to seal their decision with a passionate kiss.