Secrets

CHAPTER 11

When Ginny crept back into the Gryffindor common room late that night, she found Harry sitting in front of the fire, waiting for her.

"You told him?"

Ginny silently looked at the back of his head.

"Hermione finally got him to go to bed. He's pretty wasted."

"Oh." She wasn't sure what else to say.

Harry stood up and faced her. "I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry I didn't say anything to you. I just, I guess I was hoping if I ignored it, it would go away." His face was thick with lines of exhaustion, and Ginny fought the urge to feel sorry for him.

"Things like this don't go away," she said finally.

"Right. I know that. I really am sorry, Ginny. I guess we should figure out what we're going to do."

Ginny shook her head. "There is no we. We already discussed that. Not now, not ever."

"I can't let you do this by yourself," he argued. "I'm half of it. We're both exactly half."

"I'm not by myself."

Harry's face darkened. "Right. Malfoy."

She stood still, silent and waiting.

"He's evil. He's evil and dangerous and his father-"

"Yes," she interrupted. "I know about his father. He put Tom's book in my cauldron, remember? But know what? I'm beginning to know Draco too. Maybe I'm being foolish, but I'm going to take that chance. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I do know that I don't really want to be alone. You have bigger things than me to worry about right now, and even if you didn't, it wouldn't matter. We were a one night stand. No more."

"We decided that before we knew," he argued. "The situation changed, and we need to also."

"Why?" she demanded crossly. "What's the point?"

"I'm supposed to be there for you." The light of the fire was bouncing off the side of his face, making him look older and wearier.

"Good night," Ginny told him, turning away and heading up the stairs.

She hoped she wasn't being cruel. She didn't want to be. But she saw no point in forcing Harry to be part of her life just because she was pregnant. She assumed she would end up putting this baby up for adoption anyways, and she didn't want Harry moping around, trying to fit her into his life. That would just add to the painfulness of the entire situation.

The days slid by and quickly turned into weeks, and Ginny began to measure time in days with Draco and number of changes happening to her. If her stomach wasn't expanding as rapidly as she had expected, her chest definitely was. She felt Harry's eyes on her every time they were in the same room, wondering what was going on, wondering what sex the baby was, wondering what she would do with it. Hermione pretended that she didn't know what was going on and went back to being the cordial friend of her brother's. Ron didn't speak to Harry and Harry didn't speak to anyone. He just wandered around with his hand unconsciously pressed against his scar.

Ginny knew she should be concerning herself with studying for the upcoming O.W.L.S., but spending time with Draco was far more interesting. He had his leather sketchbook with him everywhere they went and was continually drawing pictures of Ginny as she napped or attempted to study.

"Is that what you're going to do?" Ginny asked him late one April afternoon.

"What?" he inquired absentmindedly, not looking up from his sketchbook.

"Are you going to be an artist?"

He snorted. "Maybe if this war kills my father."

"Is that what you want?"

"For him to die? Not particularly."

"Then what?" she pressed. "What do you want?"
He set aside his notebook and charcoal stick and stared her straight in the eyes. "I want to do what I want to do. That's it."

"What do you mean?" She wanted desperately to know. Her inner voice still tried to warn her, but she had managed to suppress it so much, she rarely heard it anymore.

"Just that," he told her, refusing to answer any more. He glanced back at his book. "I want to draw your stomach."

"My stomach?" Automatically she glanced down. "Why?"

"I think this would look better if I could see it."

Ginny leaned forward and peered down at his notebook. On the page was an exact likeness of her, stretched back with her head resting against her backpack, her face turned to the side. "Wow."

"After dinner."

Ginny nodded. "Who sees that notebook?"

"No one. Just me. The less people that know, the less my father will know."

"But you're good. Really good."

"Sometimes I think you're pregnancy has gone to your brain," Draco informed her, sliding his book back inside his back.

Ginny smiled and noticed the way his pale hair draped across his forehead and seemed to call out to her, just begging to be pushed back into place. Before she even realized it, she was reaching out, using her fingertips to slide the baby blond hairs back into place and then letting them run down the side of his face across his smooth skin and perfectly shaped cheekbones and pouting lower lip. "Oh," she gasped and suddenly withdrew her hand, holding her stomach.

"What?" Draco glanced down, his eyebrows knit together.

"It moved," she whispered. Suddenly Ginny was overcome with a feeling she couldn't explain. It washed up from her stomach and filled her limbs with tingling excitement. "Feel it."

"Not here," he hissed, standing up. "Come on. Let's go inside."

Ginny glanced nervously around and saw that further down, sitting near the edge of the lake, in the shade of the Forbidden Forest Ron and Hermione both had open books in their laps but were staring candidly at Ginny. She couldn't tell if Ron was just watching her or glaring at her, but she forced a tiny smile. She wondered guiltily where Harry was, assuming he was inside alone, studying or sleeping or devising some new plot to get rid of He Who Must Not Be Named. She tried to pacify her conscious by reminding it that things would all go back to normal once the baby was gone, but a nagging voice in the back of her mind whispered Are you sure?

Ginny held on to Draco's hand and she pulled herself up, and then they hurried towards the castle.

"What did it feel like?" he demanded, his voice low.

"I don't know," she answered softly. "Weird, like a fish moving or something. It felt like something was swimming in my stomach."

Draco laughed. "Is it still moving?"

"A little," she nodded. "It just did."

They ducked inside a broom closet in the castle entry way. "Feel!" She pressed the palm of his hand against her stomach, and they stood silently and still, waiting.

His eyes widened involuntarily when he felt the movement under his hand. "Was that it?"

She nodded. "Isn't it weird?"

Draco didn't answer. He pressed both of his hands against the curves in her stomach and waited.

CHAPTER 12

They ate their dinner early, so that the Great Hall was still nearly empty when they left and began the slow walk up seven flights of stairs.

"Let's hope Ron doesn't come looking for us again," Ginny joked breathlessly as they reached the seventh floor. "I'll be too tired to tell him off!"

Draco pushed the door open to the unused classroom they had first kissed in without a word. He had been quieter than usual during dinner. In fact, as Ginny recalled, he had been quiet since he had felt the baby move under his hand. Instead of talking, he had watching Ginny during dinner, some unspoken question looming behind his eyes.

"Lay on that couch like this," he instructed, holding his sketchbook open.

Ginny was more than happy to comply, as the hike up the stairs had exhausted her. Draco used his wand to position a desk in front of the couch, then said, "How ever you like, I just need to see your stomach."

Slowly Ginny undid her robes. Her blouse was already undone across the stomach, and far too small over her chest. It stretched tightly and she knew it was only magic that kept the buttons from popping. She knew that her mother must realize that by now, Ginny's clothes were far too tight and small, and yet, there had been no offer from home for old hand me downs from Bill or Charlie or even her father. So Ginny had to rely on magic to keep her shirts on, and had to hope her skirt never fell off, as she could only zip it an inch or so, and wore it below her bulging stomach.

Draco's pencil touched the parchment as soon as her stomach was bared, and Ginny was left alone with her thoughts. Ginny had stopped writing home each week to fill her parents in on the details of the pregnancy. Her mother's answers were coming few and far between, and the last three packages Ginny had received hadn't mentioned the baby even once. She knew how disappointing this was to her parents, and that everyone would be glad when it was over so they could move on and pretend nothing had ever happened, but Ginny found herself resenting it. She knew she had messed up; she knew she had made a big mistake, but it was one, single mistake, and her family had suddenly become strangers she didn't know.

The baby's movements had been the most amazing thing Ginny had even experienced. It hadn't actually occurred to her until right then, that there was a living, growing human inside of her. A human that was created by her, a real person. It was so overwhelming, Ginny nearly couldn't comprehend it.

"Is that really what you want to do?" Draco's voice broke the silence.

"What?"

"Give your baby up?"

Ginny was taken back by the question. "I think so," she nodded, chewing her lower lip. "I mean, I'm going to be 16 when it's born. I don't think 16 year olds make such great mothers."

Draco didn't answer, he was staring into his sketchbook.

"If I do keep it, I won't even be able to finish my schooling. And that means I wouldn't be able to support it. And to be honest, I don't think my parents want me to."

"But what do you want to do?"

Ginny shrugged slowly. "I don't know. Just be me again."

"Get a nanny," Draco suggested.

"You know I can't afford one."

"I can."

She sat up on the couch and stared at him. "What are you saying?"

"That I can afford a nanny."

"I know but-"

"I'm just wondering what you want. Not what everybody else wants."

Ginny sighed and sank into the back of the couch. "I want my parents to like me again. I want Ron and Harry to be friends. I want my clothes to fit. I guess I just want it to be over."

"Really?"

"I think so." Ginny put her hand back to her stomach. "It's moving again."

Draco got out of his desk and sat down beside her, his hand on her bare stomach. "You need to figure out what you want to do. This isn't something that just going to be over one day and everything will go back to normal."

She picked up his book and examined her picture. "I look pretty."

"I just draw what I see."