Making Mistakes

Ron patted Rose's back gently until a soft belch rumbled from her mouth. He chuckled quietly and laid her back into her cot, resting his crossed arms across the top. Rose gurgled and waved her tiny hands at Ron, a wide gummy grin on her face. 'Learning how to Keep already, are you?' Ron murmured. 'That's my girl,' he whispered conspiratorially. 'Don't tell your mum,' he added. 'She'll get a bit shirty.' He tucked the blanket over Rose and slipped out of the room.

Hermione was sitting up cross-legged in bed, a notebook balanced on one knee, and a large tome resting in her lap. 'Thanks,' she said distractedly. 'Was she hungry?'

'Uh-huh. Wet, too.' Ron slid into bed and stifled a yawn. He stacked his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. 'So...'

Hermione glanced at him from the corner of her eye. 'What?'

'Why after Snape? Isn't that taking the concept of owing him a bit far?'

Hermione sighed and closed the book, hefting it to her night table. 'Probably.' She scooted closer to Ron and lay down, resting her head on his chest. 'Makes me wonder, though,' she began. 'Just what was it that he saw in the Pensieve? You don't think his mum and Snape...? Were more than friends?'

'Nah.' Ron dismissed the idea immediately. 'According to Harry, Snape was a slimy git, even when he was a kid.'

'Still.' Hermione traced the faded scars on Ron's forearms. 'Harry doesn't have much materially to pass down to his children from his parents. Except the names. And remembrance of them is very important to him.'

'Snape wasn't a parent.'

'No.' Hermione shifted, so she lay half draped over Ron. 'But Harry's tried so hard to make people change their opinions of him.'

'Yeah. Old habits die hard, I suppose.' Ron played with Hermione's hair. 'Man left a bad taste in your mouth most of the time. Regardless of what he did.'

Hermione lay quietly for a moment. 'It's done, though. I don't think he'll be persuaded to change it, though. Seems like he'd been thinking about it for some time, though. I think even as far back as when Ginny was pregnant with James.'

'Blimey.'

'Yeah. I remember Ginny telling me Harry had mentioned wanting to use Albus for a name. It's only logical to assume that he would have had Severus in mind then as well.'

Ron shook his head, and reached over to switch off the light next to the bed. 'I don't think I'll ever understand that. Snape's being friends with his mum just doesn't seem like a good enough reason.'

*****

Harry slowly sat up and tripped out of the bed. 'You can what?' he asked incredulously, untangling his foot from the sheet.

Ginny looked away, blinking rapidly. 'I made a list,' she said in a low voice. 'Of all the reasons why I should go back. Quidditch was the one thing I had where I was on equal footing with you. And it was something I had with you where I didn't have to share you with anybody else.'

Harry paced warily next to the bed. 'Who are you sharing me with?' he blurted blankly.

'It doesn't matter.' Ginny looked down at her hands. They were visibly shaking. She clasped them together, to try and make them stop.

'Yes, it does!' Harry insisted.

'No, it doesn't.' Ginny threw the bedclothes back and stalked around the room. 'Quidditch was only thing I've had since I left school where people don't automatically assume I've gotten my job because of you!' She whirled back to the bed and punched the pillow. 'Even effing Flanagan thought I got my job because I was your wife!'

'But that's not true,' Harry whispered, horrified.

'I know that. You know that, but when the rest of the bloody world sees 'Potter' after my name, that's what they think.' Ginny picked up the abused pillow and wrapped her arms around it. 'Quidditch was mine. I earned everything I had with it.

'And it was something I had with you that had nothing to do with Ron or Hermione,' she admitted.

Harry stared at Ginny as if he'd never seen her before. 'Ginny...'

Ginny shook her head. 'I know they're you're best friends.' She laughed bitterly. 'They're your bloody family, too. But the three of you are so tight nobody else has a chance.' She slumped on the edge of the bed. 'Not even me,' she said to the floor.

Harry stood motionless in the middle of the room, his breath coming in shallow pants, pulse pounding in his ears.

Ginny fiddled with the corner of the pillowcase. 'Do you remember, back in February, the night before Rose was born?'

Harry swallowed and nodded.

Ginny traced the seams between the tiles of the floor with a bare toe. 'Flanagan implied I couldn't handle things,' she confessed. 'And you weren't talking to me. But you could talk to Ron and Hermione,' Ginny accused. 'And you knew. You knew what it was doing to me. And you let it continue. For months,' she spat flatly.

Suddenly, Ginny stood up and crossed the floor to Harry's knapsack that lolled in the corner. She flipped open the flap and plunged a hand inside, searching for something. She emerged with a pair of Harry's jeans and yanked them on under her nightdress, stooping to turn the hems up several times. She dove back into the knapsack and surfaced with one of Harry's jumpers. She turned her back to Harry and pulled the nightdress over her head and wrenched the jumper on in its place. She found her shoes and shoved her feet into them. 'I need to go for a walk,' she muttered, jerking the door open and striding down the corridor.

Ginny burst into the deserted street outside St. Mungo's, chest heaving. That wasn't a conversation she had wanted to have. Not now. Not when she was reeling from a disjointed night's sleep. Not when she was already on edge from sitting in that room with Albus, compulsively counting the seconds between each breath he took, barely managing to tamp down the rising hysteria when the gap between his inhalations and exhalations grew longer than the one before. She cursed Harry for his stubborn insistence on pursuing a subject she thought they had dropped. There were so many things she had said that she had never meant to say.

She stood in the street, unsure of where to go. It was late and everything in Diagon Alley would be closed and she didn't feel up to trying to navigate Muggle London in her state. She didn't even have her wand.

Growing angrier and even more frustrated, Ginny kicked a wall. She felt terribly confined, even more so than she had felt all the previous days in the hospital.

*****

Harry stared after Ginny's dwindling form, as she thrust the double doors at the end of the corridor open and disappeared from sight. He retreated back into the room, trying to convince himself it was just the hormones talking, and Ginny didn't really mean any of the things she'd said. It's true, though, a part of his brain that could still think analytically said smugly. Ron and Hermione both told you it was a mistake to keep Ginny out of it, but no... You know so much better than they do, don't you?

'Can I eff things up even more badly than I already have?' he wondered aloud, as his bare feet trod over the soft cotton of Ginny's nightdress, lying forlornly where she'd flung it earlier. Harry picked it up, and neatly folded it, setting it on the chair on top his clothes.

It was true he, Ron, and Hermione were often seen by others as a single entity at times, but it was more out of habit than actual fact. Ever since the end of the war, Harry found himself telling Ginny more than he would Ron or Hermione. While Ron and Hermione knew the abridged version of what he'd seen in Snape's memories, Ginny was the one to whom he had revealed everything. Even how he thought his mother had felt about Snape. Ginny was the only one who would know that his need to name his son for Snape was driven by less of a feeling of respect for the late Potions master, but more out of a sense of honor. Ginny was the only one who knew Snape had been forced into joining the Order out of a sense of guilt and remorse - that it hadn't been for Harry's sake that Snape put his life into danger countless times - it had been recompense for not being able to save Lily.

Ginny was the only one who knew about his nightmares that still kept him awake into the small hours of the morning. Even now. She was the only one who knew about the cupboard under the stairs and why he had learned to weep soundlessly.

Ginny was his anchor to reality. He had often thought if it hadn't been for her, he might very well have disappeared into himself after the war.

Harry raised a hand to his cheek. He remembered the afternoon after the war when she had slapped him. It was the first thing he had felt in nearly three months. Thinking about it made the skin stretched over his cheekbones tingle with the memory.

In any other circumstance, Harry knew Ginny was more than aware she occupied a space in his life that went far beyond where Ron or Hermione ever could go. But he had to admit the past six months had not been conducive to rational thought. For either of them.

Harry dug into his knapsack and pulled out a jumper, pulling his trainers on his feet. He traced Ginny's path out of the hospital, feeling slightly foolish as he did so, seeing as he had no idea where she would have gone. She can't have Apparated, he thought, glancing around the darkened street. Her wand's in her room at the Burrow. He had seen it there earlier that day and meant to bring it to her, but James' cries of distress as Harry had tried to leave the Burrow had driven it out of his mind. 'Ginny?' he called tentatively, eyes scouring the surrounding area. There was a run-down bus stop at the end of the street. Ginny sat morosely inside the small structure, gazing at her feet. Harry went inside the three-sided stand and sat at the other end of the bench.

'Ron and Hermione were my first friends,' he told a ratty flyer, advertising a record shop, avoiding making eye contact with Ginny. 'And they are my family, and not just in this wistful sort of way like it was before I married you.' He looked sideways at Ginny. She still stared stonily at her feet. 'I don't know what to tell you, Gin. You know more about me than anyone else, including the two of them. You keep me sane,' he admitted. 'I didn't fall in love with you because you were Ron's sister. I fell in love with you because you're you,' he finished lamely.

Ginny remained silent.

'I didn't not tell you anything until now to deliberately cut you out,' he continued, gazing out at the empty street. 'Nobody knew anything. Not even Percy or Hermione. Kingsley's the only other person besides you who even knows where I've been. I don't have to tell you what that means.' Harry turned sideways, pulling his feet up onto the seat of the bench, watching Ginny's profile. 'I didn't want to worry you. When Ron first told me about the notes, we had just found out you were pregnant, and you were already in a right state, Gin, and I didn't want to pile anything else on.'

Ginny's head turned away from Harry slightly.

'It just got harder and harder to tell you. You were sick so much in the beginning, and I could tell how difficult it was for you to try and juggle being James' mum with the paper, and it just seemed like a good idea to not say anything. You already had enough on your plate.' Harry let his head fall against the side of booth. 'And then with Al coming early, I was barely holding myself together, and you weren't doing very well, either, and it just seemed like one more brick in the wall.

'I didn't want to burden you.'

Ginny still sat silently, unwilling to meet Harry's eyes. She thought if she did, the carefully constructed veneer of calm would collapse on itself. She swallowed hard and bit her lip harder, nearly trembling with the effort to not bolt from the bench.

'Flanagan's an arse. You've said it a million times, and you're right. And the one person in the world you're supposed to be able to count on kept insinuating you couldn't handle it. Just like he did.

'I shouldn't have done that,' he said gruffly, watching Ginny for some sort of reaction, barely able to breathe. One of her shoulders twitched in what Harry hoped was some sort of acknowledgement.

'I am sorry, Gin. I don't...' Harry's eyes dropped to the laces of his trainers. 'I don't expect you to forgive me for that. Not for a while.'

Ginny blinked and a hot tear slid down her face and landed on her tightly clenched hands. She felt another follow in its path, but didn't bother to wipe them away. She didn't want Harry to see her crying.

Harry sat for a long moment, waiting for Ginny to give him some kind of response. He was willing to take anything: shouting, attempted hexing, even a slap, just to know that she had heard him. Harry would have taken a slap like the one she had laid on him a couple of weeks before his eighteenth birthday in a heartbeat. It was better than this motionless, unspeaking Ginny sitting three feet away from him.

Ginny gripped the front edge of the bench with her hands, desperately willing Harry to leave, so she could lose control without the audience. She jumped when her wrist began to softly hum. Ginny knew she should go back inside, but she felt rooted to the spot. The humming steadily grew louder and she heard Harry put his feet on the ground and vacate his spot on the bench. She watched him go back inside the hospital and a few moments later the vibrations radiating from her wrist came to a halt.

Ginny bent forward, nearly choking on the sobs she had been holding back. It had taken all the restraint she had to not react to Harry. She shook, as if she were cold. Dimly, she realized she was, in fact, cold, but it wasn't from the weather. Ginny pulled her knees into her chest and under the jumper, wrapping her arms around them. Harry's admission he had been no better than Flanagan unnerved her greatly. She didn't want to be seen as the princess in an ivory tower, needing to be rescued, but it was an image that had dogged her since she was eleven.

My knight in a dirty, filthy, bloody school uniform. He had seemed almost perplexed that he had managed to save her, as if he wasn't sure how he had done it.

Sighing, Ginny rubbed the sleeve of Harry's jumper over her face, wincing at the friction of the nubby knit over her stinging cheeks. She tried to breathe normally, but it just hitched in her chest, and she started crying all over again. Ginny buried her face in her knees again, and gave in to the anger, hurt, and fear threatening to overwhelm her. She was too exhausted to try and hold it back anymore.

*****

Harry gave up trying to wake up Albus and set the bottle on the floor. He hadn't heard Ginny come back inside yet and a glance at his watch informed him he'd been inside for almost forty-five minutes. He leaned his head against the back of rocking chair, trying to decide whether or not to attempt to find her again. Deciding against it, Harry slowly got to his feet and put Albus back into the cot, giving Ewan a weary wave as he left and went across the hall. The room was troublingly empty.

Sighing, Harry bent and dragged the tangle of bedclothes trailing on the floor alongside the bed back into place and began to try and put some semblance of order to the bedding. He tugged the blanket into place and dropped into the chair. He felt a pain shoot up the side of his face and realized he had been grinding his teeth for the past hour. He hadn't done that in years. He folded his arms over his chest and stretched his feet out; adopting the same position in the chair he had done Monday morning.

He was starting to get worried. Ginny was alone and wandless in the street. While she was perfectly capable of dealing with anything that could cause trouble if she was armed, the fact that she was practically defenseless kept him wide awake.

*****

Ginny pressed her cold fingertips to her eyes. They ached abominably. She blew out a slow, shaky breath, and stiffly uncurled herself from the bench. She stretched the knots from her back and shoulders and winced as her head pounded in time with her pulse. She felt as if she'd been pelted by a hundred Bludgers.

Over the past hour, something Harry had said had gradually sunk in. There were two people in the world who knew what he was doing with this assignment. And she was one of them. No, you don't have to tell me what that means. She held his life in her hands. He trusted her implicitly. And with that realization had come another. She hadn't afforded him the same courtesy.

She'd been suspicious and jealous. All the things she hated and swore she'd never do.

Everything he had said was true - it had been a draining pregnancy. If there hadn't been the emotional tension between the two of them, she had been ill. Or their jobs. Or just trying to keep up with their rambunctious son. And now trying to deal with Albus. It had all been terribly draining for both of them.

Ginny trudged back to the entrance of St. Mungo's and slipped down the concealed corridor that would lead her from the main entrance back down to the maternity wing. She laid a hand on one of the double doors, and pushed it wide enough for her to gain entrance to the corridor beyond. She went down to her room, and stood in the open doorway a moment studying Harry, sprawled in the chair. He wasn't asleep, but staring intently at the ceiling. 'Harry?' she said quietly.

He didn't turn his head or look at her. 'Where've you been?' he asked neutrally.

'Thinking over things.' Ginny tentatively inched into the room and perched on the edge of the bed.

'Go to bed, Gin. You need some sleep.'

'What about you?' Ginny pulled her hands into the sleeves of the jumper, letting the cuffs dangle past her fingertips.

'I can sleep later.'

Ginny looked down at her hands. 'I don't need saving,' she said into the yawning silence. 'I'm not some useless princess who can't handle things.' Harry gave her a questioning glance. 'I'm not eleven,' she stated. 'You can't keep seeing me that way when things go pear-shaped.'

'I know.'

'I can't forgive you for doing that,' she added. 'Not right now, anyway.'

Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the ceiling once more. 'I understand.'

'But I owe you an apology, too.' Ginny took in a deep breath, before plunging ahead. 'I've been acting like a spoiled child. I didn't trust you enough.'

Harry blinked. 'No,' he said hoarsely. 'I didn't trust you enough. If I did, I would never have treated you like that.' He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at Ginny, taking in her reddened and swollen eyes. She was holding herself carefully, as if her head would fall off if jarred too suddenly. 'Go to sleep, Gin,' he repeated. 'We can do this later,' he added, wondering how much later.

'Are you coming to bed?' she asked in a small voice.

Harry shook his head. 'This is fine. You need your rest.'

Ginny felt tears well up in her eyes and bit her lip. She found her nightdress neatly folded on the pillow and knew that Harry had put it there. She picked it up and with a furtive glance at her husband, she slipped into the bathroom to change, suddenly self-conscious of changing in front of him in a way she'd never had before. She pulled Harry's clothes off and tugged the nightdress over her head. Ginny gathered Harry's clothes into her arms and opened the bathroom door.

Harry was still in the same position he had been when she came into the room, but he had obviously dimmed the lights. Ginny laid the bundle of clothing on the far table and climbed into the bed. She curled into herself, gazing at Harry's profile. He was close enough for her to touch, but had an aura about him that screamed at Ginny to stay away. Ginny wound her fists into the sheet, nearly gnashing her teeth. He obviously wasn't going to say anything else. Harry was a good one for isolating himself when it was the worst thing in the world for him to do.

Neither of them slept much that night.