NINETEEN
There’s a muggle expression Harry seems to recall: March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. This year, he’s not quite sure if it’s true. It really feels like March came in like a lion and is going out like one of those tiny, nervous dogs posh women carry around in their handbags: it looks innocent enough, but its cuteness belies the anxiety under the surface.
Outwardly, he and Ginny have gone about their lives as normal — save for the increased frequency of healer’s appointments — and to others, they appear to be a normal couple eagerly awaiting their son’s arrival. If anyone notices Ginny’s hypervigilance, they just chalk it up to the nerves of being a new mom in her final trimester; similarly, if anyone notices Harry being increasingly clingy, they just attribute it to a new dad falling more in love with his girlfriend because she’s carrying his child.
“Your father was like that too,” Molly tells Ginny knowingly, when they all gather at the Burrow for Mother’s Day toward the end of the month. Harry left her alone for only a moment while he went to the loo, and her mother saw that as an opportunity. “He was always so affectionate when I was pregnant.”
Ginny forces a smile. “Harry’s sweet,” she manages to tell her mother finally. It is sweet, and it feels very comforting to have him so attentive toward her. She knows it should feel overbearing — and in any normal circumstance, it would be — but right now, it just makes her feel safe and cared for. It makes her feel like everything’s going to be okay because Harry won’t let anything get to the point of being dangerous, not where she and Snitch are concerned.
“Always has been,” Molly agrees with a sigh of nostalgia. “Even when he was that poor little dear on the Platform — do you remember that? He was so skinny,” she tuts. “Makes me sick to think of how those muggles treated him, even to this day.”
Ginny swallows silently and nods. It makes her sick, too, and she knows it still bothers Harry, though he tries to act as though he’s over it. She sees it in the way his jaw sets protectively in every single appointment they have with the healer — his vow to raise Snitch differently from how he was brought up; she hears it in the tender, fond tone he uses when he talks to Snitch through her belly at night.
“He’s going to be a wonderful father.” Ginny’s mum’s voice snaps her out of her reverie.
“I think so,” Ginny admits, resting her hand affectionately on her stomach. “He already is, really.”
Molly presses her lips together. “I hope you don’t think I’ve been too hard on you both.”
The snort that escapes Ginny in response is incredulous but hardly unexpected. Her mum’s been very hot and cold throughout her pregnancy: one minute, Molly Weasley is thrilled at the prospect of her first grandson and the next, she’s berating Ginny and Harry for being unmarried; she offers advice on pregnancy and motherhood while also implying that Ginny is not accepting these states with the mute decorum she thinks they require. She’s both supportive and critical, and it isn’t until now, really, that Ginny has realized this is how her mother has handled everything her whole life.
“I don’t love the way this happened —”
“You’ve made that clear, Mum, thanks.”
“— But I love you and I love Harry,” Molly continues, undeterred by her daughter’s interruption. “And I love my grandson, and I think you’ll be wonderful parents.”
Ginny doesn’t know why she says it. Maybe it’s just that she wants to get a rise out of her mum; maybe it’s guilt, because she’s been wondering if she’d been more enthusiastic from the start, maybe Snitch wouldn’t be in danger of coming too soon. But nevertheless, the words escape her lips before she loses her nerve to say them: “I almost ended it.” Molly looks startled at this revelation, which is enough of a reason for Ginny to keep going. Shocking her mother has never lost the satisfying edge it had when she was a child. “When I found out I was pregnant, I thought I would. But Harry made me feel like we could do it — be parents, I mean, good ones. He made me feel like it wouldn’t be some massive mistake that could end my career or our relationship.”
A thousand unspoken thoughts flash across Molly’s face and Ginny braces herself for the inevitable scolding. She’s never discussed the issue of abortion with her mum, but Ginny can only imagine Molly is against it. Certainly, she can’t imagine that someone who is open to an abortion would have seven children, including a few babies born smack in the middle of a war. But the admonishments never come. “I always liked him,” Molly says, instead. “I didn’t know you’d considered…” And maybe there’s disappointment in the way she presents it, a sniff here and sigh there. But Molly doesn’t say it outright, and that means a lot.
“We’d just gotten back together,” Ginny lies; she thinks it’s a permissible one. She’ll never admit that she and Harry were not together at all (unless, of course, you count being connected below the waist, which she is still not sure she does) when Snitch was conceived. “And I wanted — I want — us to work so badly. I didn’t want to put an unnecessary burden on it when we were just finding our way back to each other. But Harry — he never thought it was a burden. For him, it was just a dream come unexpectedly true.” Ginny pauses. “You know we will get married eventually, don’t you? It’s just a bit out of order, but that doesn’t make it bad.” She won’t tell her mum about the ring or the ongoing discussion of having Snitch stand up with them at their wedding, because those are best shared between her and Harry for now. But she feels it’s important to assert this part for herself, to have the last word.
“No,” Molly sniffs, looking pained by the effort of accepting that Ginny is correct. But at least she’s trying. “I don’t suppose it does.”
Even though Snitch has — blessedly, happily, thankfully, all things considered — yet to make his entrance, Harry buys her a gift for the holiday. “It’s your first Mother’s Day,” he whispers to her, his lips just barely brushing her ear. It occurs to her that Harry has never gotten to celebrate the day before, not really, so even though she doesn’t feel like she’s earned her first Mother’s Day yet, she decides to let him have it. They’ve scarcely a chance to break from their worries, lately, so she reckons it’s good for her, too.
The gift is enclosed in a velvet jewelry box; just for a moment, Ginny wonders if this is Harry’s grand plan for a proposal. If it is, it’s a bad one: Happy Mother’s Day — because I knocked you up — and hey, maybe we should make sure our child isn’t a bastard after all. But she opens the box and instead of seeing the diamond solitaire she can still picture vividly in her mind’s eye, she sees a necklace with three letter-shaped charms dangling from the chain: a G, a H, a J. Their little family, represented.
“D’you think it’s bad luck to wear it now?” She asks, running her fingers lightly over the charms in their box. She reckons it might be: something about counting her chickens before they’ve safely hatched; there’s also the fact that no one else knows that Snitch is named James, and certainly spotting that initial will give it away. Saying his name to anyone else before he’s born also feels like potentially jinxing everything they’ve worked so hard to protect.
Harry grimaces. “Maybe we save it for, y’know, after.” Harry is superstitious and ritualistic, to be sure, but the hard earned lesson of his life is what’s guiding him here: nothing is over until it’s over or a victory until it’s won.
March, by all accounts, should be a happy time for them. They’re finally together, with their relationship in the healthiest place it’s ever been in all their years of knowing each other; they’re building a home together and talking about marriage; and most importantly, they’re getting ready to welcome a son. A son who, while unplanned, is very much wanted and loved and cherished — and growing more so every single day. But they can’t be overjoyed because of the dark cloud of uncertainty that hangs over all of it. Harry, for whom happiness has always been hard to come by, is willing to make do with whatever fraction of it the universe is willing to give him. But Ginny, for her part, feels robbed of the excited anticipation she expected during these weeks before Snitch’s arrival.
On the Wednesday after Mother’s Day, they see Healer Harris and Audrey for yet another weekly appointment, during which the pair of healers — the “care team” as they’ve taken to calling themselves — declare everything is holding steady. As Audrey carefully analyzes an in-depth scan of Snitch’s anatomy, she seems to exhale a sigh of relief. “He’s in a good spot developmentally,” she tells Harry and Ginny, who visibly relax when she says it. “If we can get even a week into April, he’ll be as good as full term.”
But when Harry and Ginny ask if that’s a likely outcome, both Healer Harris and Audrey seem unsure. “I think even if he came tomorrow, he’d be in a good spot,” Audrey tells them brightly, sounding optimistic and confident, but nevertheless doing nothing to answer the question.
“I agree,” Healer Harris nods in assent. “It seems likely we’d keep things relatively uncomplicated, with just some extra monitoring from pediatrics rather than any time in the special care nursery.”
But neither of them says whether him coming tomorrow is very likely, and that gives the anxious expecting parents some pause.
After some prodding, Healer Harris offers them a gentle smile. “It’s hard to tell. We want you to be ready for anything, but we’re confident that we’ve secured a good outcome through early intervention. Right now, like we said, everything is steady.”
It does little to ease their anxiety.
Instead of going straight back to the ministry when they leave the office, Harry insists that they treat themselves quickly, and they stop at a muggle gelato shop to have ice cream for lunch. “It’s practically health food,” Harry reassures her when they each are eating a large cone at a table in the corner.
“Mmm,” Ginny agrees, turning her head to the side to swipe her tongue against the biscotti flavored mound Snitch steered her toward today. “We do need carbohydrates for energy and dairy has protein.”
“And eggs!”
“I don’t know if gelato uses eggs,” Ginny muses. “That may just be regular ice cream.” Snitch kicks her, hard, likely delighted by the rush of sugar entering his mother’s bloodstream. All Ginny can do is wince.
“All right?” Harry asks, face decidedly concerned as he notices. That’s at least not new: he’s looked incessantly concerned for three weeks now.
She nods. “Just a kick. I’ve known from the beginning that he inherited your sweet tooth, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Hark who’s talking,” Harry shoots back with a smile that doesn’t quite erase the worry from his features. “I’m not the only one with a sweet tooth here.”
They fall into a comfortable, companionable silence, and this has always been Ginny’s favorite thing about her relationship with Harry. Conversation flows easily, but silence is equally uncomplicated. It isn’t until they’re almost done with their cones that they talk about the appointment.
“I think I’m feeling better,” she tells him. And she means it: she’s at least less terrified that their child might be critically ill or that birth might be dangerous for them both.
“I am too,” he agrees after a moment. “I, er, reckon it’s the uncertainty that’s getting to me more than anything. The not knowing when.”
And if there’s something Ginny understands on a fundamental level, it’s that. “D’you think we’re ready?” Because she thinks that’s what’s eating at her — she doesn’t know when it’s going to happen, so she feels underprepared.
To this, Harry can only shrug. “Dunno. Ready or not,” he chuckles nervously. “Y'know, it’ll be fine no matter what. I don’t think I’ve ever felt ready for anything that’s happened in my life — even the final battle. I trained for seven years and spent the last one hunting horcruxes to ensure I could have even a shot at succeeding, and I still didn’t feel ready. But it’s all turned out all right, all things considered. I’m only a little worse for wear —”
“You literally died ,” Ginny balks. That is not what her boyfriend should say when he’s trying to calm her down.
“Perhaps not the best example, then,” Harry smiles that self-deprecating and still incredibly cocky smile of his at her. “Just — we’ll get ready, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Using the last bits of her cheerfulness, she grins at him. “Ready or not.”
…
In general, holiday or not, Sundays are the day the Weasleys and their People Collection typically congregate at the Burrow. It’s been that way since the summer after the war. After the funerals — when Percy went back to London and Charlie went back to Romania and Bill returned with his wife to Cornwall — it became clear that the closeness and support that came in those days immediately following the final battle couldn’t go away with them. So everyone came back once a week (or, in Charlie’s case, as often as he could manage it).
Sundays have only gotten more important in the years that have elapsed since then. As the family continues to grow — with friends and significant others and babies — so too will their significance. Which is why Weasley Sundays do not, strictly speaking, need to happen on Sundays. Any day can be a Sunday, if the family is all together.
March 26 is a Friday, but it’s Sunday that week. Charlie’s been in the UK guest teaching Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts for the week, but he’s due back in Romania by Saturday afternoon. Friday dinner, then, is the best time for the family to gather. Once, Charlie prioritized coming home as often as possible, but now they see him every couple of months at best. Molly Weasley makes it clear that this is a command performance.
Normally, that wouldn’t bother Ginny, because under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t need to be convinced not to miss one of her older brother’s rare appearances. She loves Charlie, and while she doesn’t share the same bond with him that she does with Bill or George — or even Ron — the chance to spend time with him is a precious rarity. But March 26th is different.
She fiddles with the golden daisy on its chain around her neck as Harry pulls a jumper over his head. He’s just gotten home from work, is changing his clothing quickly before they floo to the Burrow, and they’ve already agreed that this might be the last family gathering they attend before Snitch is born. “I don’t feel very well,” she announces to him, sounding nervous.
Harry startles, looking alarmed. “Not well how?” He asks her with the same intensity laced with anxiety that’s tinted his stare for the last month. “Are you having, er, contractions?” Audrey and Healer Harris have taught Harry a great deal about pregnancy and childbirth and the female anatomy, but the words still feel unfamiliar on his lips when he uses them. He still pauses before using any of them.
Ginny shakes her head. She doesn’t think she is, anyway, though she doesn’t really know what that’s supposed to feel like. Everyone she’s asked has told her that she’ll simply know when she feels them. But she’s certainly had false contractions before this point and hasn’t really noticed them. She has a high pain tolerance — a consequence of both being a professional athlete in a dangerous sport and having survived a war before reaching the age of majority — so she’s not convinced anything will stand out to her. More than once, she’s had the uncomfortable thought that she might be one of those women who doesn’t notice they’re in labor until they’re literally crowning.
“Forget I said anything,” she tells him finally. Because if everyone has told her she’ll know when she’s in labor, she’s sure something else will happen besides some introductory discomfort to alert her to the onset. “I probably just shouldn’t have eaten chips at lunch. Indigestion, I think, on second thought.”
Harry accepts this, though not without reservations. He’d really prefer it if they could drive or take the train to Devon. But Harry couldn’t leave his trainees before the end of the day, meaning there's no time, and Audrey had technically cleared Ginny to floo, so it’s only in hindsight that Harry is concerned about it. He might insist they stay home, if seeing Charlie weren’t such a rare occurrence to begin with. He tries to put the thought out of his mind, anyway; he trusts Ginny to tell him if she’s in pain or if her waters break.
He’d prefer for the pair of them to floo to the Burrow together, but the dimensions of her parents’ fireplace aren’t right for it, and she won’t let him owl them to ask for them to modify it until they arrive. She claims it would be too suspicious, and he’s not going to protest, so he agrees to floo after her. She steps into the fireplace at Grimmauld Place, throws some powder and enunciates her destination as clearly as she can.
When Ginny stumbles out of the fireplace at the Burrow, she feels a twinge in her lower abdomen. She barely has a moment to touch her abdomen — which does, perhaps, feel firmer to the touch than normal — and wince before the twinge disappears and Harry stumbles in after her. She blinks twice to clear her thoughts and tries not to dwell on it. It wasn’t painful, really; maybe that was one of those practice contractions she’d heard so much about. She grabs Harry’s hand and leads him to where her two eldest brothers have congregated.
“Look at you!” Charlie booms in lieu of a greeting, opening his arms to embrace his only sister. He turns to Bill: “I leave for a few months and you let her get this pregnant?”
“That’s the thing about being pregnant,” Bill deadpans. “Once it’s started, it tends to progress. Now, if you want to have a conversation about how she got pregnant in the first place, I do have to emphasize that I was in no way involved.”
Ginny scoffs and rolls her eyes with fond exasperation. “Nope, just me and Harry there,” she responds cheekily, gesturing to Harry, who is promptly turning vermillion. “I can give you details if you’d like?”
“Absolutely not,” Bill shakes his head. She’s about to call him a bloody hypocrite, given that his wife is also pregnant, when the twinge returns. Unable to help herself, she winces again, but as soon as it starts, it’s gone.
This time, Harry’s there to notice. His eyes widen in question; she shakes her head.
“What was that?” Charlie asks with a laugh. “Communicating telepathically now?”
“Just telling Harry that I think his son is a beater after all, the way that he’s trying to break my ribs,” Ginny recovers brightly. Harry quietly exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“Just my son?” Harry raises an eyebrow, unable to resist the opportunity to banter. “I’m not a beater. As far as I know, Potters have only ever been chasers and seekers. Weasleys on the other hand…”
Charlie laughs, clapping Harry on the shoulder. “He’s got you there.”
They make it through dinner without much incident. The conversation is lively and the food is delicious as always. Harry and Ginny are careful not to act overly familiar with Audrey — who shows up after Percy, after everyone has started to serve themselves, clad once again in her standard uniform of scrubs; even so, Percy notices that his sister is more genial toward his girlfriend and offers her a grateful smile.
It’s after pudding that the twinge returns, a bit more persistent, and lasting a bit longer than it had previously. Ginny plays with the charm on her necklace, rolling it up and down the chain. She looks across the room, where Audrey is asking Charlie questions about his dragons with great interest and wonders if she should, perhaps, interrupt the witch to confirm everything is normal. Dropping the charm from between her fingers, she excuses herself to use the loo. And that’s when she changes her mind: interrupting Audrey is absolutely worthwhile. Because that’s when she sees that there’s a small amount of pink-tinged discharge in her underwear.
Audrey is still enthralled at Charlie’s descriptions of the dragon sanctuary when Ginny returns downstairs, which does complicate things. Still, it looks like Harry has relaxed enough to start a game of chess with Ron, which can only help her. It’s not worth alarming him if he doesn’t have anything to worry about. Inhaling deeply, Ginny makes a beeline for Charlie, Percy, and Audrey.
“What are we talking about?” Her tone is bright though, internally, all alarm bells have been rung. She positions herself within Audrey’s line of sight.
“I just rescued an Antipodean Opaleye last week,” Charlie informs her. He launches into a story about how the dragon had been smuggled into Switzerland and abandoned shortly after whoever had done the smuggling had realized dragons aren’t a suitable pet. “She’s pretty docile, all things considered,” Charlie finishes with great gusto. “We usually see more aggression with those who were abandoned. And she’s the most beautiful dragon I’ve ever seen. Pictures don’t do Opaleyes justice.”
As Charlie regales them with the tale, Ginny tries to catch Audrey’s eye. When she finally manages to do so, she carefully picks up the daisy charm between her fingers and rolls it up and down the chain. Audrey catches on immediately. Audrey puts her hand in the pocket of her scrubs and jangles the keyring Ginny knows holds the charms of her patients.
“I need to get in touch with one of my patients,” Audrey announces apologetically. “So sorry. Ginny — is there a place where I can go to make contact in private?”
Percy looks like he very much wants to answer, so Ginny thinks quickly. “Yes, of course! You can use my old bedroom.” She stands and smiles sweetly at both of her brothers before leading Audrey to the room on the first floor landing. It only occurs to her as she closes the door that there’s no floo or owl in her childhood bedroom, and she hopes that Audrey has an alternative method of contacting patients, just in case this is nothing.
Drawing her wand, Audrey casts silencing charms around the room before speaking. “What are you feeling, Ginny?” She asks once she’s satisfied that their interaction is secure. She’s using the in-between voice — the one that she uses during home visits that is still calm and capable as a healer’s, but is slightly more familiar. “Should I go get Harry?”
“I’m not sure,” Ginny admits. “I don’t want to worry him if I’m making a big deal out of nothing but…” She trails off and meets Audrey’s eyes. “How difficult is it for you to evaluate whether I’m in labor now?”
Audrey blinks. “That depends. What are you feeling?”
Inhaling deeply through her nose and out through her mouth, Ginny begins. “So I felt kind of — I dunno — yucky since lunchtime. I thought maybe I had indigestion, because it really just felt like a normal stomach ache. And then after I flooed here, I got this twinge in my stomach, but it wasn’t terribly painful and it dissipated quickly. There were a few others, and then they went away. But now they’re back and when I went to the bathroom, I think there might have been a little blood.”
Ever the consummate professional, Audrey does not let any sudden reactions overtake her face as she listens to this. “Okay,” Audrey responds finally. “I think we should get Harry, and then I think we should give you a full examination.”
“Why?” Ginny’s voice rises in panic. Even as she tried to get Audrey’s attention, she only vaguely considered what might happen if she actually was in labor. She mostly expected that Audrey would tell her not to worry about it, and maybe praise her for being vigilant.
“What you described sounds very much like the early stages of labor. Want me to go downstairs and get Harry?”
Ginny shakes her head. “That’ll raise too many flags,” she explains, moving toward the door. “I should do it, or everyone else will panic.” But then the twinge is back, slightly stronger than before, and Ginny releases a strangled, surprised gasp.
“I think we’re past that point, Ginny,” Audrey tells her gently, placing an arm around her and leading her to her narrow old bed. “I think at this rate, it’s a matter of time before everyone is waiting for the little man to get here, so let me go get Harry, all right?”
The twinge ends and Ginny has little choice but to nod as she relaxes back onto the pillows.
Losing chess to Ron is something of a tradition at this point, so Harry barely tries to win. It’s mostly a ritual to occupy his hands while he and Ron catch up on everything and nothing. So it would figure that he’s actually about to make a very impressive chess move when Audrey descends the stairs and heads straight for him. “Harry,” she whispers subtly, though the fact that a newcomer would disrupt Ron and Harry’s game certainly draws attention. “Ginny is upstairs and I think you need to come upstairs, too.”
His eyes shoot up to meet hers — kind, but expressionless, and that watery blue-grey color — and even though her face conveys no emotion, he immediately knows what it’s about. He nods, his game of chess long-forgotten, and rises to his feet. He doesn’t even respond verbally before heading to the stairs, his long legs taking them two at a time. Percy looks at Audrey questioningly, but she pointedly ignores him as she follows up the stairs as well.
This pregnancy has been filled with bizarre experiences, but Ginny can hardly recall one as unusual as receiving an internal exam from her brother’s girlfriend as she lays on her childhood bed, surrounded by posters of The Weird Sisters and Gwenog Jones, who long ago ceased to be her idol and became her teammate. Removing the sterile gloves she’d conjured for the exam and vanishing them with her wand, Audrey nods. “We’re going to the hospital,” she announces.
Harry’s green eyes widen so far they appear to bulge out of his head. “So it’s time, then? He’ll be born today?”
Audrey nods again, the picture of calm. At least that makes one of them. “Given your progress, I actually think tomorrow is more likely,” she explains. “But we’re definitely having a birthday party in March.”
“All right,” Harry nods, trying to replicate Audrey’s calm though his heart rate has surely spiked through the roof. He turns to Ginny. “Okay, he’s coming. We’re doing this.”
Ginny grips his hand more tightly. “Ready or not,” she confirms, voice shaking.
“I have an extra dose of the development potion in my bag downstairs,” Audrey announces. “I don’t know why I brought it — guess I just wanted to be prepared — but I’ll give that to you and then I have an emergency portkey I can use to take you both to Mayfair.” She withdraws her wand to send a patronus to Healer Harris. “I’ll oversee everything myself until Helena is able to come,” she promises. “I’m just going to go downstairs and get my bag, all right?”
“We’re going to leave from here?” Ginny asks. “Like from this room?”
“I’ll go downstairs with Audrey and let everyone know what’s going on,” Harry promises Ginny, leaning over to plant a kiss on her forehead.
Ginny winces again. “Don’t leave,” she whines, distinctly uncharacteristically. Now that he’s by her side, she doesn’t want to risk him leaving and missing something she needs him for.
“I can tell everyone what’s going on,” Audrey reassures them. When Harry goes to protest — this is their family, he should really be the one to tell them, et cetera — Audrey waves him off. “Harry, this is my job, remember? Let me do my job.”
They don’t talk about anything of consequence while Audrey is downstairs. Ginny puts her pants back on. Mostly, Harry just kisses Ginny’s head and cheeks and hands and tells her that it’s all going to be okay and that he loves her, so bloody much , and that he’s not going to miss a second of it. She’s about to tease him that she hopes he won’t need to use the toilet during labor, then, when Audrey returns, followed closely by Molly Weasley.
“She insisted on coming with,” Audrey explains, training a neutral expression that Harry can only imagine comes from years of practice.
“Mum, I’m fine,” Ginny sighs. This, of course, is why she didn’t tell her mum about the risk of preterm birth to begin with. “Audrey’s going to give me a potion to help the baby’s lungs and he’s only a bit early…”
“He’s six weeks early, Ginevra,” her mother scoffs, practically pushing Harry out of the way so she can begin to fret over her daughter. “I mean, thank Merlin we have a healer here! If Audrey weren’t here, well I don’t even want to think about how much worse this could be.”
“Yes, yes,” Harry cuts in impatiently. “We’re all very grateful to Audrey right now, genuinely, but I don’t think now is really the time to tell Ginny about how scary this is. I think we both can feel that ourselves, thanks. Audrey,” he turns to the healer decisively. “Can you please give Ginny the dose of the development potion?”
Audrey, who’s already holding the bottle of bright blue liquid, unstoppers it and brings it over to Ginny, who knocks it back like a firewhiskey. At this point, she’s so used to the potion that she doesn’t even notice the taste very much, though the metallic tinge of it coats her tongue uncomfortably. “I’m going to activate the portkey for the three of us,” Audrey tells Harry and Ginny. “Molly, I’ll send an owl when Ginny is settled in, but I really prefer just the parents at first. We don’t want a mom to be without her birthing partner, but we do find that the initial monitoring is a bit easier with fewer people around.”
“But I’m her mum!” Molly’s going a bit red and looking rather put out.
“And Ginny is an adult woman whose boyfriend will be with her the whole time,” Audrey assures her soothingly. Ginny has never felt fonder of Audrey, and also never more certain that Audrey is on her mum’s bad side and will remain there for a good long while.
“I only want Harry,” Ginny pipes in, irritated. “In case anyone here cares what I want.” This last part is pointed, directed toward her mother.
Harry takes this opportunity to push past Molly and reclaim his spot next to Ginny. “Don’t worry, Gin, I already told you I’m not going anywhere,” he assures her, moving to grab her hand. He turns to Molly: “I promise, I’ll send a patronus with an update as soon as I can. Audrey will be with us the whole time, and I trust her. We’re in good hands.”
Molly sniffs, but Harry’s always had a way of melting her defenses; Ginny and Ron have often joked that it was the real reason they kept Harry around. “Well, all right. But we want to be there in case anything happens, even in the waiting room.”
“Of course,” Audrey agrees. “Harry will get word to you once we’re settled in for that.” She taps the portkey with her wand, and it begins to count down from ten. Harry and Ginny grab onto it, too, and as it pulls behind their navels, Ginny muses that the sensation of a portkey is not unlike a contraction.