Making Mistakes

little_bird

Story Summary:
The events leading to the birth of Albus Severus Potter.

Chapter 18 - Square One

Posted:
05/08/2009
Hits:
764


Shanti gathered Albus' file, her clipboard and a monstrously large cup of coffee. One of her aunts was a doctor in York, and over the years, Shanti had picked up on a few Muggle medical ideas she had gradually integrated into her thought process. She took a sip of the hot coffee and briefly wondered if she could somehow introduce the caffeine directly to her bloodstream intravenously. Ewan had left a comment in his notes from last night that Harry and Ginny had been off with the overnight feedings. Both of them had left the hospital last night, Harry for roughly half an hour, and Ginny for quite a bit longer. Shanti frowned at the clipboard, wondering what had happened. They had seemed to come to some sort of understanding the other night, but she'd seen other couples crack under the pressure and get into vicious rows over everything from the seemingly trivial to things pushed so far into the subconscious, it threatened to tear the couple apart.

She knocked softly on Ginny's door, and waited, hearing someone's soft footfalls on the other side. Harry cracked open the door, eyes bloodshot and puffy. 'Oh, it's you,' he said, not unkindly, opening the door wide enough to let her in. 'Thought it might be Molly with breakfast,' he added, peering hopefully down the corridor, gazing at Shanti's coffee with a wistful expression.

'Came to give you both an update on Albus,' Shanti said, waving her clipboard. She took the chair next to the bed, leaving Harry to sit gingerly on the edge of the bed next to Ginny. 'He's regaining some of his birth weight, which is good. He's able to take feedings with a bottle or nursing, which is excellent. The apnea's a bit worrisome, since he's had changes of color with a few episodes, so we might keep him a bit longer until that improves. And finally, he'll need to be able to maintain his temperature without the Warming charms for at least a day. And I'd like to give him several more days before we test that out.' She looked up expectantly at Ginny and Harry.

'When can we take him home?' Ginny asked forlornly.

'Not sure,' Shanti took a sip of her coffee. 'Could be this time next week, could be longer. It all depends on Albus. It's something of a process.'

'What about when we do take him home? What then?' Harry rubbed his eyes.

'Keep outings to zero for a while. If someone has a cold or the like, then they should probably not visit.'

'What about James?' Ginny's voice held an edge of dread to it. She felt Harry's cold hand wrap around her equally frigid one.

'Wash his hands often, and if he gets sick, take him to Molly and Arthur's for a few days.' Shanti leaned forward. 'Don't panic, Ginny. We're not going to let Albus go home until we're sure he can handle it.'

Ginny took a deep breath and nodded. Harry's fingers squeezed hers, reassuringly.

'Something else you both need to remember is that for the first two years or so, Albus will have a real age and a "corrected" age. The latter is what his age would be had he been born full-term. So, when he's say, twelve weeks old, he should be doing things that full-term six week olds will do. Don't get concerned that he seems to be lagging behind a bit. He's got a bit of catching up to do.'

'And that means...?' Harry felt his shoulders tense, afraid to hear the answer.

'Just that developmentally, for the first two years, he'll be about six weeks or so "behind". Most premature babies are indistinguishable from their full-term counterparts by the age of two.' Shanti squinted at Harry and Ginny's unconvinced expressions. 'In all likelihood, by the time he and Rose celebrate their second birthdays, nobody will be able to tell Albus was born early.

'He has a very good chance of growing up with no problems at all.' Shanti flipped a page of her clipboard. 'There's a Healer here who specializes in caring for premature infants, once we let them go home. Ewan's actually Anne's apprentice. They'll keep track of Albus' development. Anne will come meet you before we send Albus home and make sure you know what needs to be done to care for Albus at home, as well as set up an appointment for a follow-up visit. You can bring him here, or she can go to you, whichever you prefer.'

Harry could tell from the way Ginny's fingers convulsively tightened around his, having all this piled on top of last night was about send her back outside to the dilapidated bus stop again. 'Thanks, Shanti,' he quickly interjected, before Ginny could start shaking uncontrollably. There were two things Ginny didn't do if she could avoid it: one, let people make decisions for her; and two, cry in public. Having Shanti in the room made it public. 'If we have questions, we'll let you know.'

Shanti nodded and picked up the files and her coffee and slipped out of the room, leaving Harry and Ginny sitting in an uneasy truce.

*****

Ginny watched Shanti leave the room, and started to pull her hand from Harry's. His grip tightened and he looked at her, unable to say anything. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, shaking his head, before he let go of her hand, and gathered the clothing she had worn last night from the table.

He stood in the shower, his hands braced on the wall, breathing heavily, forcibly shoving the chaotic swirls of his own emotions behind his painstakingly constructed mental walls. It was almost too much for him to bear, with everything seeming to crash around him. He leaned his forehead against the tile, between his outstretched hands.

He carefully inhaled slowly and just as slowly released the breath, in an attempt to stem the rising tide of emotions that refused to go quietly.

He failed miserably, and the next exhaled breath caught and tears mixed with the water cascading over his head.

Harry didn't worry about Ginny hearing him over the rush of water. He still wept without making a sound, a habit of more than two decades.

For the first time in his career as an Auror, Harry found himself not wanting to finish an assignment, if it meant leaving Ginny for an indefinite amount of time again.

It was a startlingly unpleasant sensation.

*****

Ginny looked up as the door opened and Arthur's head came around the edge of the door. 'Dad? I thought Mum...?' Ginny gestured to the basket Arthur carried in one hand.

Arthur set the basket down on the table. 'Your mum didn't want to upset James by leaving,' he said nonchalantly, pulling out a vacuum flask. 'Tea, Gin?'

'Uh, sure, Dad,' Ginny dazedly replied. 'What do you mean by Mum not wanting to upset James?'

'He's just a bit clingy right now,' Arthur soothed. 'Don't worry about it.' Arthur pulled a covered bowl from the basket and released the sticking charm holding the lid on it. 'Your mum sent some porridge over. Some fruit, too.'

Ginny spooned porridge into an empty bowl and poured milk into it, before adding some sugar. She stirred a spoon around it a few times, not really feeling very hungry. The bathroom door opened, and Harry stood framed in the doorway, stopping short when he saw Arthur.

Arthur glanced between his daughter and son-in-law. Ginny dropped her spoon with a clatter and darted into the other room, muttering something about needing to check on the baby. 'Shite,' mumbled Harry. 'I can't keep doing this.' He took Ginny's place on the bed and began to eat her abandoned porridge, making a face as he did so. She always put too much sugar on it. 'We had something of a row last night,' he offered.

'So I gathered,' Arthur said dryly. 'I thought the two of you were all right?'

'We were.' Harry opened the vacuum flask containing the tea and took a gulp. 'Did you know she'd been offered a place on the team again?'

'No,' Arthur replied slowly. 'When?'

'Couple of weeks ago.'

Arthur didn't look surprised, but Harry had learned long ago that Arthur could show remarkable constraint when necessary. 'She isn't really going to consider it, is she?' he contemplated. 'It was hard enough when it was just the two of you. You don't really think she'd do it with two small children?'

'She might.' Harry screwed the lid back onto the flask and resumed his mechanical eating of the porridge. 'It's like she's got something to prove to everybody and that's the only way she can do it.' He looked up at Arthur. 'And it went downhill from there.' Harry meditatively used his spoon to sculpt the thick porridge to the sides of the bowl. 'Can I ask you something, Arthur?'

'Yes.' Arthur hooked a foot around the chair, and pulled it closer, sitting down.

'Ron, Hermione, and me... Do we block out Ginny? Truthfully?'

Arthur blinked. It hadn't been the question he was expecting. 'The three of you have always been close,' he began.

'But do we exclude Ginny?' Harry interrupted bluntly.

Arthur leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest. 'For a long time, yes. You and Ron especially when you were younger. But that's normal. Ginny was the pesky little sister, tagging along behind you. Hermione, not so much. But they both had more in common, being girls.

'You seemed to see Ginny as just another star-struck girl, when the last thing you wanted was the attention. But she grew up hearing stories about you and it was just a bit of a shock for her to wake up one morning and see the object of her daydreams sitting at the kitchen table eating sausages.

'One day, you seemed to realize Ginny had stopped waiting for you to notice her as something other than Ron's baby sister.' Arthur's smile softened his words.

'She wasn't really part of your group until, oh, maybe your sixth year. I think after the incident at the Ministry, you had an idea of how much Ginny had matured. But you've always had this fatalistic streak, ever since I've known you. And you haven't always given Ginny much of a choice in deciding how much she can handle being with you.

'You have this barmy idea even now that everyone around you is a target for every crackpot witch or wizard in Britain.

'But do you exclude her now? Recently, yes. But not usually.' Arthur reached across the table and gave Harry a light cuff on the back of the head. 'You tend to gravitate toward Ron and Hermione when the family's together more than anyone else, so I can see why she might think so, but you're always aware of where Gin is. Sort of like a sixth sense.'

Harry wordlessly scraped the last bit of porridge from the bowl. He shouldn't have been surprised by the answer. Arthur, for all his madness about Muggle technology that bordered on obsession, was an astute observer of human behavior. He would have had to be, with all those different personalities in the house, Harry mused. Arthur had given him a lot to think about.

*****

Ginny edged into the room, eyeing her father and husband sitting in something resembling companionable silence. Harry looked up at her, gave her a wry one-shouldered shrug, and rose from the bed, going to take his turn by the cot. Ginny remained hesitantly by the door. 'Come and eat, Ginny, before it gets cold and your mother finds out,' Arthur admonished mildly. 'She'll snatch what hair I have left. And I'm rather attached to it, you know.' Arthur pulled a clean bowl from the basket and dished the remaining porridge into it.

Ginny sat on the edge of the bed, and took the clean spoon Arthur proffered, adding milk and sugar to the bowl, drawing out the process as long as she could. She looked up at Arthur, sitting patiently in the chair across from her. 'Playing confessor today?' she asked, a slight edge of sarcasm coloring her voice.

'If you want.' Arthur shrugged and reached into the basket for an apple. 'What was the fight about?'

'Harry didn't tell you?'

'No.' Arthur shook his head and took a bite of the apple.

Ginny looked down in the bowl, and forced herself to take a bite of the porridge. 'Everything,' she said succinctly. 'Things I would have never said. I don't even know where they came from.'

'Had to come from somewhere, Gin.'

Ginny stirred her porridge, carving tiny channels for the milk to flow from one side of the bowl to the other. 'I just don't want to be...' She paused taking a deep breath. 'When is he going to see me as an adult?'

Arthur moved to sit next to Ginny, wrapping his arms around her. 'Ginny, I wish I could wave my wand and make you feel better, but I can't.' He released Ginny and sat back a little. 'What do you want from him, Gin?'

'What?'

'You're all he has, Gin. You and the boys. So he's driven by this need to make sure you will never have to face the same kinds of decisions his parents had to make. And that makes him more than a bit overprotective, and Gin, I know you - you chafe under something like that. You are so much your mother's child. Just as stubborn and twice as tenacious as she is.'

'But I can take care of myself!' Ginny insisted mulishly, stabbing the spoon into the bowl.

'He knows that.' Arthur picked up his apple and munched in silence for a moment. 'Your mother... She wanted to join the Order the first time. I told her absolutely not.' He looked at Ginny from the corner of his eye. 'We were like the two of you, in a way. Young, two small children. And there was no way I was ever going to let Molly put herself in harm's way. Not if I could help it. We had the same argument, and if I recall correctly, your mum felt that I just saw her as a wife and mother, and not a fully trained witch in her own right.'

Arthur gazed at the apple in his hand. 'Even after we found out she was pregnant with Percy, she still stubbornly argued she could be an asset to the Order. And she would have been, too. But I don't have to tell you that.'

'No.' Ginny was starting to wonder where her father was going with his reminiscences.

Arthur cleared his throat. 'I came home one day, to find a letter sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. She had left and taken Bill and Charlie with her to her mother's. It was the worst two weeks of my life.'

Ginny's jaw dropped open. 'Mum... Mum left you?' she asked weakly.

Arthur nodded. 'I was so distracted over it that I almost got caught by the Death Eaters I was watching.' He ran a hand over his balding head. 'Bill remembers it; he was almost six. Charlie wasn't yet four, so I don't think he remembers much of it. But for a long time, after your mum came back, every time they left to go on an errand, Bill would ask if they were going to Grandmum Prewett's again.'

Arthur pressed a kiss on Ginny's forehead. 'Ginny, why would you want to go back playing? You weren't happy the last year or so. Any fool with eyes could see it. I was relieved when you retired.'

Ginny looked down, unable to meet her father's eyes, in light of his revelations. 'I'm not going to leave him, Dad.'

'I didn't think you were.'

'But it's one of the only ways I can think of where I can be me, without everyone speculating that I got my place at the paper because of him.' Ginny made a few peaks and valleys with the spoon in the porridge. 'I want... I want to leave that behind,' she admitted.

'But do you really want to go back to the Harpies?' Arthur pressed gently.

'No,' Ginny said with certainty.

'I can't tell you what to do, Gin. But I do think you need to think about a few things. And if you hang on to this idea that you have to get out from Harry's shadow in whatever way you can, you're going to put a lot more stress on Harry. Whatever Harry's doing, it's delicate enough for him to keep it quite a secret from all of us. And if Harry's anything like I was, he's going to have his mind on you and the boys at the wrong time. When you and Harry announced you were getting married, I thought you were far too young to be married. But I know you're much too young to be a widow. And Harry has to know he doesn't need to worry about you.'

Arthur pulled Ginny close, in a much gentler embrace the she would have gotten from Molly, but no less loving for it. It completely undid Ginny. She wept into Arthur's ratty Saturday cardigan, wishing for a moment she was a small girl again, and Arthur would be able to cheer her up with a trip to the Muggle ice-cream shop in the village. This wasn't something a chocolate ice cream cone was going to fix.

'Ginny, sweetheart, you have some very good things in your life. Harry loves you more than his own life. In spite of what you think, or what you've been led to believe, you're a very well-respected reporter. That piece you did for Quidditch Quarterly back in March was very well done. I wanted to go buy an extra copy, but it was sold out. And nobody I know read that article because of your name. They read it because it you wrote a bloody good argument about female players.' Arthur pulled out a worn handkerchief and blotted Ginny's cheeks gently. 'You have two beautiful sons, who will make you proud, no matter what they do, one day.

'Think about that for me, will you? Because he's leaving again tomorrow and I don't want to see either of you hurting like this, Gin.'

Ginny snuffled into the handkerchief and sighed. 'Was it hard for Mum to forgive you?'

'Yeah. But she never forgot it. And neither did I. Forgiveness is a hard game, Ginny. It means letting go of something you've been clutching for ages like a security blanket.' Arthur smoothed the hair from Ginny's face. 'I learned that one with Percy. It was the hardest thing I've ever done to forgive him.'

'I said a lot of awful things last night, Dad,' Ginny said in a low voice.

'People do say things when they're emotional that they'd never say otherwise,' Arthur agreed. 'People make mistakes. You and Harry are both human, so while you're trying to figure out how to forgive him, give yourself a break. It's been a rough couple of months for you, too.' He gave Ginny a small squeeze, before clearing the congealed porridge in Ginny's bowl. 'There are a couple bananas in the basket. Promise me you'll eat them?'

Ginny nodded wearily and watched as Arthur placed a few oranges, apples, and bananas on the table. 'Make sure Harry eats some of that, too. Can't have him coming down with scurvy, now, can we?' Arthur leaned over and gave Ginny another hug and kissed her cheek.

Ginny wound her arms around Arthur's neck. 'Thanks, Dad,' she whispered.

'When you come home, we'll go for a walk down to the village for some ice-cream. Like old times, eh?'

'That would be great, Dad.' Ginny gave him a wan smile.

Arthur left and Ginny sagged against the pillows. As much as she hated to admit she was wrong, Arthur had been right. She had been so focused on what she thought was going wrong, she had lost sight of what was right in her life.

*****

Ginny watched Harry rove about the room, gathering his things and packing them away in his knapsack. If at all possible, this time hurt worse than when he'd left last month. He had gone to the Burrow earlier to spend the afternoon with James and put him to bed. Ginny missed James' bedtime routine, with his infectious mischievous grin as he darted from the bathroom without a stitch on and ran down the corridor to his bedroom giggling. She missed the sleepy weight of him on her lap as he drowsed while she read a story to him.

Albus had wrapped his tiny fingers around her smallest finger earlier that day. The strength of his grip surprised her. For the first time in a week, she allowed herself to feel hope that he would be all right.

Arthur's words about letting things go as part of forgiveness echoed through her head. She had held the perception of Harry, Ron, and Hermione excluding her from their tightly-knit circle for so long, that the idea of not having it anymore, made her feel as if she would lose a part of herself. It wasn't unwelcome, but it frightened her a little, wondering what would take its place.

She and Harry had danced around each other all day. Several times, each of them attempted to speak, but each time, the words failed to come out. She caught him watching her - while she fed Albus, or took her turn with him in the kangaroo hold. She had done plenty of surreptitious scrutiny of her own throughout the day, too: during Harry's time with the baby, and when Ron had brought them dinner, and he and Harry had gone into the hallway to give each other those peculiarly male back-pounding hugs.

Ginny was lying in the bed, the one of Harry's Muggle novels in her lap. She made a small moue at the book's pages. Harry, it seemed, had a penchant for novels about women in difficult circumstances, if his collection of novels by this Austen woman was any indication. She placed a scrap of parchment inside to mark her place, and laid the book aside. 'Are you coming to bed?' she asked, her voice rusty.

Harry glanced up, in the act of folding a jumper. He nodded and tucked the jumper into his open knapsack. 'In a minute,' he replied.

He waited until Ginny fell asleep, then dug into a pocket of the knapsack, pulling out a Self-Inking Quill and a piece of parchment. He began to write, praying the sibilant scratching of the quill wouldn't wake Ginny. The letter finished, he folded and sealed it, and left it inside Ginny's book, remembering all the letters he had written to Ginny during the war and promptly burned, lest they fall into the wrong hands.

Harry slowly undressed, draping his clothes over the chair.

Tomorrow evening, he would take a Portkey back to Inverness. It would come far too soon for his taste. He had considered leaving while Ginny was asleep, just to avoid having to tell her good-bye, but that was the coward's way out. And while Harry believed he was a lot of things, a coward wasn't one of them.

He lifted the edge of the bedclothes and carefully slid into the bed, wishing they were in the hammock at the Burrow. It hadn't been hard to talk to Ginny ensconced in its embrace. Here, surrounded by the constant worry and fear, it was nearly impossible.

Harry pulled his glasses off and set them on the table. He leaned over Ginny's slumbering body and oh-so-gently kissed her.