Lilies In Autumn

Ron pulled a blanket over Rose before the held out a hand to Hermione, who took it gratefully, as he helped pull her to her feet. 'Are you sure you've got five weeks left?' he asked doubtfully. 'You look like you're going to pop.'

'I've had three different Healers who specialize in obstetrics verify the due date. Five more weeks,' she sighed. 'Where did you disappear to earlier?'

'Took a plate of food over to Harry. He looked like he was going to fall over.' Ron brought Hermione's hand to his lips and kissed the palm. 'I'm so very glad you're Muggle-born, hen.'

'Why is that?' she asked, amused.

'We will not have to deal with dragon pox with Rosie or Hugo. Thanks to you.'

'How bad is it?' Hermione eased back on their bed, sighing as she swung her feet off the floor and lay back against the pillows.

Ron thought for a moment, as he pulled his t-shirt over his head, and dropped it on the floor next to the bed. 'It's awful,' he told her. 'Lots of little green spots all over. Even his skin looks a little green. Thankfully, whatever potion Harry's been giving James makes him drowsy, so he sleeps a lot.'

'Fever-Reducing potion, I imagine,' Hermione yawned.

'Yeah, and some ointment for the spots. It's supposed to keep them from itching, but Harry thinks it's just to make the parents feel better that they're doing something.'

Hermione snorted. 'Whatever works, I guess.' She began to squirm as she tried to yank her nightdress off. 'Hot,' she grunted.

Ron wheezed, 'Are you trying to kill me?'

Hermione paused in the act of rearranging the bedding so less of it was on her side of the bed. 'What?'

Ron rolled over and ran his fingertips down her recently bared skin. 'This.'

Hermione burst out laughing. 'Are you kidding me? I'm roughly the size of a hippogriff, and you want to shag?'

Ron whimpered softly in the back of his throat. 'Mione, seriously...' He shifted uncomfortably, plucking at the front of his suddenly too-tight boxers.

Her eyebrow slowly arched as she tugged the sheet leisurely down past Ron's hips. 'So it seems you find extremely pregnant women attractive,' she said dryly.

'Just one,' Ron said hoarsely. He shuddered when Hermione's hand slipped inside his boxers. 'Oh, God, please...' he begged.

Hermione chuckled. 'Well, since you said "please".'

*****

Ginny peered into the dimly lit main room of the Leaky Cauldron, looking for Katie and Hermione. They tried to meet during the week, without their children in tow, for lunch. Hannah usually tried to keep a table tucked into back corner reserved for them. George had once said they sounded like a flock of hens with all the cackling and wondered what they talked about. Katie just smiled enigmatically at him and patted his cheek.

The others weren't there yet, so with a wave to Hannah, Ginny trudged toward the half-hidden table in the back. A young barman brought her a glass of water. 'The usual, Mrs. Potter?' he asked quietly.

Ginny nodded. 'But could you wait until the others arrive?'

'Sure thing, ma'am,' he said cheerfully. He went back behind the bar, leaving Ginny alone.

Walking down Diagon Alley had given her the beginnings of a headache. People kept whispering when she walked by, even in the offices of the Prophet. She ignored them the best she could, but the effort of holding her tongue when she wanted to snap at them made her tense. 'Ginny!'

Oh, God, not her... Ginny moaned to herself. Lavender Brown waved energetically as she crossed the room. 'Hello, Lavender,' she said neutrally.

Lavender pulled out a chair and plopped into it, heedless of Ginny's mutinous expression. 'So, I read in the paper Saturday,' she clucked. 'It's the job, isn't it?' she whispered, leaning close to Ginny. 'Long hours and he's away a lot,' she added sympathetically.

Ginny massaged the bridge of her nose. 'We're not having problems,' she stated emphatically. 'Romilda's being vindictive...' she sighed.

'Oh?' Lavender said archly. 'That's not what I heard.' She leaned a little closer, her voice lowered. 'I saw Parvati the other day, and she told me that Harry's been closeting himself away with one of his Aurors at the Ministry.'

Ginny's hand fell to the table with an audible slap. 'And how would Parvati know? She doesn't work in the Ministry.'

Lavender sat back, a small smile playing on her lips. 'One of her regular customers at her shop is the assistant to the Head of the Obliviator department. He told her.'

'Still passing herself off as a Seer, eh?' Ginny snorted. 'You both ought to know better than to give any credence to Ministry gossip.' She took a sip of her water. 'If something was going on, I'd know.'

Lavender sneered slightly. 'You think Hermione would tell you if Harry was sniffing around elsewhere?' Her lip curled slightly; making the scars on her face stand out in spite of the cosmetics she wore to hide them. 'If you believe she and Harry don't have anything on the side...'

'I'd really rethink that last statement of yours if I were you,' said a voice behind Lavender. Ginny glanced up to see Hermione standing there, radiating indignation, her arms folded over her swollen abdomen. Katie stood slightly behind her, her hand over her mouth. The handle of Hermione's wand peeped above the edge of her bag. It wouldn't take much for her to whip it out of the bag and cast some sort of nonverbal hex on Lavender.

Lavender flushed and pushed the chair back. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, and let her eyes rake Hermione slowly from her toes to her head. She smirked then strolled away. Hermione took the vacated chair, setting her bag on the floor. 'I don't know how I shared a room with her for six years without smacking her a good one.'

Katie's laughter rang out. 'You could have done it in the common room and sold tickets. The entire boys' side would have paid every last Knut in their pockets to see it.'

Hermione smiled fleetingly, then gazed at Ginny soberly. 'You really don't believe any of that rubbish, do you?'

Ginny shook her head. 'Of course not,' she said firmly.

Hermione shook her head in wonder. 'According to Lavender and Parvati, Ron, Harry, and I had some sort of twisted three-way thing going on in school.' Hermione shuddered delicately. 'No offense, Gin, but Harry's not my type.'

'None taken,' Ginny replied wryly.

'Would have been like kissing my brother anyway,' Hermione added with a comical look of distaste.

Katie twisted her wedding ring around her finger a few times, her fingertips gliding over the vines carved over the band. 'She asked to have Witch Weekly publish that piece of garbage at our staff meeting yesterday,' she said, not having to clarify who "she" was. 'I told the editor if he did that, I'd resign on the spot,' she said bluntly. 'So did half the features writers.' She smiled humorlessly. 'It was that or lose a quarter of the staff.'

'You don't have to do that,' Ginny argued, but feeling a slight sense of gratitude that so many others objected to it.

'I know,' Katie said simply, signaling the barman. 'We wanted to. Even the Witch Weekly ought to have some sort of journalistic standards. The last thing most of us want is for it to become some sort of slushy rag. None of us would have wanted to be there if the descent began.'

'Thanks, Katie.'

The barman brought their lunches and the conversation turned to more mundane matters, like Sophie's new tooth and whether or not Ron and Hermione would have another baby after Hugo was born, and Ginny efforts to try and convince Harry to undergo a little procedure that would ensure they wouldn't have any more children.

It was pleasantly normal.

*****

Harry stretched out in his bed, groaning softly as he pulled the bedding over his body. James' fever had broken earlier that day, resulting in yet another barrage of laundry. Harry didn't think one small almost-four-year old could produce such copious amounts of sweat, but he was wrong. Almost as soon as he changed James' sweat-soaked pajamas for dry ones, the fresh pair was soaked through. Harry eventually had to start dressing James in his t-shirts, because all of James' pajamas were piled in a laundry basket in the corridor. He could hear the clothes dryer humming softly in the scullery. At least he wasn't vomiting, Harry thought. He would take the sweat over the vomiting any day, because it signaled James was getting better, and Ginny and Albus could come home soon.

Harry dropped his glasses on the night table and yawned. Something had been bothering Ginny, but she kept assuring him she was fine. Harry knew better. She kept twisting her wedding ring around her finger. It was one of Ginny's "tells", much like how Ron's ears grew red when he was trying to lie. It was subtle, but Harry knew Ginny far to well for him not to notice it. He mentally reviewed Ginny's work schedule and realized it had been one of her days to go into the office. Someone must have said something at the paper. Harry chuckled ironically to himself. He could practically hear Ginny say, Nice trick. Did they teach you that in your Auror training program? She usually huffed or snorted it, when he pointed out the obvious. Then again, if she hadn't gone straight to the paper, then home, it could have been anyone.

It wasn't a topic Harry cared to bring up through a Floo connection.

Sighing, he rolled over and slung an arm over Ginny's pillow. Maybe everything was fine, and Harry was just looking for things that weren't there. Maybe it had nothing to do with that bloody article. Maybe someone at the paper was making snide comments about her pregnancy. She hadn't been back at work a year, and soon, she was going to take off at least six months again. There were a million other things that could have been worrying Ginny.

Harry sometimes rued his choice of profession. It wasn't the job itself he minded. No, it was the instinctive searching of dark corners that made him want to smack himself with a Beater's bat, when there wasn't anything there.

*****

Ginny dropped her bag at her feet and settled at her desk, pulling her notebook out to edit her article about next week's match between the Harpies and Montrose. Ginny reread what she'd written the day before, and ended up crossing out most of it. She scribbled quietly, rewriting the part of the article that focused on Montrose. She didn't like their new Seeker. He was something of a bully, having spent the majority of his career with Falmouth, who were infamous for their rough style of play. Ginny's opinion of the Magpies' captain had dropped several notches when they acquired the Seeker from Falmouth a few weeks ago. It wasn't her job to comment on those kinds of things. Not when she was trying to write an article about the match. What she had written that morning was nothing more than a running commentary questioning the Montrose captain's sanity. Her job was to write a preview of the game next week, not pass judgment on another player. I'm a better reporter than that, Ginny thought.

The whispers that had followed her to the fifth floor ceased when she stepped off the lift. The others in the sports department didn't read the society page and couldn't have cared less about it. They hated that part of it so much, that covering any sort of social event for Quidditch fell to the younger reporters or interns. It was a welcome respite from the worried glances her mother had been throwing her way and the murmurs that arose as she passed people in Diagon Alley. Roger's wife had written a letter to the editor, oozing with pique over the photograph, demanding he retract the vile statements, insinuating Roger was having an affair with Ginny. Manderly hadn't done it yet and Cecilia Davies was ready to sue, if Ginny could believe what she heard from Hermione. Cecilia had been to the Ministry raising a hue and cry, trying to find out what her legal options were. She didn't have many, since unlike Rita Skeeter; Romilda didn't set out to report it as news, but in the gossip column.

Satisfied the article walked the line between neutrality and opinion, based on previous games and not personal feelings, Ginny began to copy it onto a piece of parchment to hand in for the next morning's edition. She worked steadily, since Harry had called the Burrow that morning with the news that James was officially no longer contagious. Ginny wanted to make it home before dinner. She was deep in her own thoughts, changing words here and there as she worked, and didn't see Eleanor wend through the haphazard warren of desks and stop at Ginny's. 'Ginny, can you come into my office for a bit?'

Ginny felt her heart sink in dismay. 'Sure,' she said, pushing her chair back and following Eleanor to her office.

'Close the door,' Eleanor said. 'We could use some privacy.' She rummaged on her messy desk, looking for something. 'So...'

'Are you suspending me?' Ginny blurted.

Eleanor looked up in surprise. 'Why on earth would I do that?' she asked. 'You're one of my best reporters.'

'With all the distraction...' Ginny said weakly, sitting on the edge of a chair in front of Eleanor's desk.

Eleanor snorted in derision. 'I told Manderly if he wanted to print that kind of trash, he ought to just rehire Skeeter and get it over with. Kind of hard to work from Azkaban, though, eh?' She located Ginny's file and pulled it out from under a pile of stories that needed her attention for the next day. 'Here it is.' She turned a few paged. 'So, I thought we'd get a jump on settling your leave this time. In case this one decides to make an early entrance, too.'

'Oh...' Ginny shoulders slumped in relief.

'When are you due? Early August?'

'Yeah.'

'Hmmmm.' Eleanor tapped a calendar with her wand, pulling up the month of July. 'Good time to have a baby. Season hasn't started yet and it's mostly reporting on the new team and practices and training games.'

'I planned it this way just for that reason,' Ginny said dryly.

'So, how does the middle of July sound for you to start your leave?'

'Fine.'

Eleanor scribbled a note in Ginny's file. 'Six months or a year?'

'Why don't you put me down for six months, and I'll let you know in January if I've started ripping my hair out and want to come back.'

'It doesn't have to be a full year, you know,' Eleanor commented. 'After the six months, if you want to come back on a part-time basis, we can work something out.'

'How?' Ginny frowned doubtfully.

'Cover a game if the regular reporter is sick, or write the preview, or you could even do the commentary article. You can do that from home, pretty much. Maybe go to a few practice sessions for that, but it's not an all-day thing like the game previews would be.'

'I'll have to think about it,' Ginny said slowly.

'Take your time. You've got until next January.' Eleanor gazed at Ginny for a moment. 'It's rough, being a female in a male-dominated profession like this.' When Ginny's eyes narrowed, Eleanor continued smoothly, 'I'm not offering sympathy. But it's difficult when you haven't been back a full year to find yourself having to contemplate taking another year off, and knowing what that might mean for your career.' She leaned back in her chair, propping her feet on the corner of the desk. 'You have the makings of a good editor one day, Ginny. And I don't want some perceived lack of seniority to hold you back.'

'I don't want special treatment,' Ginny stubbornly maintained.

'Good, because I'm not giving you any,' retorted Eleanor. 'I'm doing for you what I'd do for anyone that I thought deserved this. In your case, it's working around a baby. If it was Rob, I'd move him off the Cannons and onto a team, like Montrose.' She set her feet on the floor. 'Now go get that article finished, so you can go home.'

'Thanks, Eleanor,' Ginny said, standing up with a small smile. Home indeed. As soon as she was done, she was going to collect Albus from the Burrow and go home.

*****

Ginny brushed her teeth, chuckling to herself. She had decided "home" was some nostalgic thing that always sounded much rosier than it was in person. When she was at the Burrow, she dreamed about the house that was now her home. It was much neater, without the odd draft in Harry's office during the blustery spring weather, and the boys got on much better with each other. Ginny spit out a mouthful of toothpaste. Well, it's a nice dream, at any rate.

The dream had lasted as long as it took Albus to get a good look at James' liberally spotted face. If either Harry or Ginny had thought dragon pox looked bad in its earlier stages, the crusty stage James was in looked worse. Albus toddled closer to James to get a good look at his older brother's face, and promptly burst into tears, refusing to go anywhere near James. He'd run back to Ginny, wrapping his arms around her knees, and burying his face in her thigh. As long as Harry or Ginny was between Albus and James, Albus didn't cry. James turned it into a game by repeatedly inching closer to Albus; making him whimper in fear, then scoot away with a not-so-innocent grin when Ginny or Harry growled a warning.

In an effort to keep James from scratching the welts, Harry had Spellotaped James' mittens to his hands. Ginny had just given Harry a look, one to which he'd replied, 'If you can think of a better way to keep his hands off the spots, you're welcome to try it.'

Ginny dug a bottle out of her bag. 'Here, Bronwyn brought this from Holyhead's infirmary Sunday. Says it helps the welts go away faster. They use it on the reservation since the mild cases don't bother to go to St. Mungo's. She says it smells like arse, but it works.' James quite enjoyed the stench, reinforcing Ginny's idea that the smellier something was, the more boys liked it. It explained why George and Ron sold so many of the innocuous-looking fake insects, filled with Garroting Gas, that when stepped on, filled a room, or school corridor, with a noxious odor. Ginny had kept a running tally when she worked at the shop the summer before her seventh year. All of those Stinkbugs, as Ron dubbed them, were bought by boys. On the other hand, Albus didn't like strong scents, so he stayed well clear of James.

With a sigh, Ginny rinsed her toothbrush and dropped it into the cup on the counter by the sink. After they had put the boys to bed, Harry had gone downstairs to do some paperwork that had been neglected the past week, while Ginny had a bath. She hoped he wouldn't be long.

When she opened the door, Harry was already stretched out on the bed, propped up on the pillows stacked against the headboard. He was naked, save for the large red bow he'd tied around his neck. 'Nice ribbon,' Ginny commented, walking toward the bed, trying to keep a straight face.

'I thought I'd give you a proper welcome home,' Harry said.

'Well, that explains the bow, then,' Ginny giggled.

'I thought it was a nice touch,' Harry mused. He patted the bed enticingly. 'Join me?'

Ginny gazed at Harry for a moment, before shrugging off her dressing gown, letting it slither to the floor at her feet. 'You talked me into it.'