Making Mistakes

'Bree?' Kathleen's voice floated out of the darkness.

'Yeah?' Kathleen could hear Brianna's sleeping bag rustle as she shifted, trying to settle down.

'Do you think he's setting us up for failure?'

Brianna's movements stilled. 'What do you mean?'

'That he's given us a job we can't do to learn from it?'

Brianna sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. 'I don't think so,' she said slowly. 'I asked Shacklebolt that last week. He didn't think so, either. Didn't tell me any details, but I got the impression that Harry's been put into some rather uncomfortable situations in the past. Made to do things he wasn't remotely trained for. I can't see him doing that to anyone else.'

'What if he had a team of fully-trained Aurors?'

'I think they'd still be here,' Brianna stated. 'Look...' Brianna began. 'All things being equal, this isn't a dangerous assignment, really. But think about what we've learned from the successes. And the failures.

'Besides,' she continued. 'What would a fully-trained Auror have done differently?'

Kathleen didn't reply immediately. 'I don't know,' she said finally.

'Kath,' Brianna said gently. 'Stop worrying about it. A fully-trained Auror would have had a difficult time capturing her under those conditions.'

Kathleen sighed. 'Do you ever consider the idea we're holding the investigation back?'

'No.'

'You sound so certain.' Kathleen punched her pillow.

Brianna thought for a moment. 'All right, then, Kath... You were a Slytherin. You have this uncanny ability to put yourself in those kinds of shoes, and we're grateful you use your powers for good. But think about it for a moment... If you were her, would you have done anything differently so far?'

Kathleen closed her eyes, thinking back to the beginning. From using parchment that was virtually untraceable by magic to transforming under a Disillusionment charm. The house in a decidedly Muggle area of Inverness. Even using the dark, rainy weather as an asset.

She opened her eyes. She could see Brianna's outline in the dark bedroom. 'No.'

Brianna slid back into her sleeping bag. 'Go to sleep. We can't afford to be groggy tomorrow.'

Brianna lay in the stifling darkness, listening to Kathleen's breathing grow slower until she was certain the other trainee was asleep. It was starting to get to them. The doubt and fear. It ate at their insides like a cancer.

She turned her head and looked at Kathleen, curled into a ball. She hadn't asked her the most important question - could the woman actually kill another human being?

Brianna wasn't naïve enough to believe that the woman wouldn't be capable of doing it. She was old enough to remember the last war. It had been her first year of school. People had been killed for far less that what Harry and Hermione had done. Brianna sighed and slid out of her sleeping bag, and headed to the kitchen. She could use some chocolate and Harry kept a sizeable stash in a cupboard. She had refrained from raiding it so far, but she could use some chocolate now. At least it doesn't give you a hangover like alcohol, she thought.

Blinking as she crossed the threshold into the dimly lit kitchen from the dark corridor, Brianna found Iain at the table, his hand wrapped around a large mug of something hot. 'What are you doing up?' she snapped. 'You're supposed to be asleep!'

'Shhhh!' Iain laid an admonishing finger over his lips, jerking his head toward the closed scullery door.

Brianna flopped into an empty chair, glaring at Iain. 'Why are you up?' she hissed.

'I don't sleep,' Iain said softly. 'Well, not much. Six hours is a lot for me.' He Summoned a mug from the cupboard and poured Brianna a cup of something hot from a pot in front of him. Shoving the mug to Brianna, he mumbled, 'Hot chocolate. Used some of the stash.'

Brianna lifted the mug to her lips. 'Don't you ever crash?'

Iain smiled a little. 'Depends. When school got out for summer hols, I slept for two days almost. When this is over, I'll probably sleep for three days, wake up for a few meals, then sleep at least another night.'

The scullery door opened with a loud scrape, making Iain and Brianna jump in alarm. For a split second, Harry stood in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes wide and frightened, a film of sweat glazing his face. He quickly schooled his face into a mask of smooth neutrality at the sight of the startled trainees.

'Are you all right?' Iain asked.

'Fine.' Harry strode to the cupboard where the glasses were kept, and took one back to the scullery with him. He paused, with one hand on the door. 'Don't stay up too late,' he advised. 'Get some sleep, while you still can,' he added in an undertone, remembering all too well the sleepless nights spent sitting just inside the tent flap.

He closed the door carefully with only the slightest sound, and set the glass on a windowsill, picking up his wand. He filled the glass and drained it with a few gulps, putting the glass down with an explosive gasp.

More nightmares.

Images of Albus turning blue, unable to breathe.

Seemingly never-ending loops of Ginny, holding James' hand in front of a small headstone set in the cemetery near his parents. An achingly small stone bearing just three words: Albus Severus Potter.

For the first time in his career, Harry wanted to walk away from a case. He wondered if he had been blinded by his desire to capture and finally be able to put her away in Azkaban. She'd made it so personal that he hadn't been able to see beyond the fact it was her. Anybody else could have handled this case. He hadn't wanted to leave Ginny or Albus. He hadn't needed to leave them. But he had been so certain anyone else would have not taken it seriously and cocked it up.

He knew it was starting to get to the trainees. They laughed less and less as the days dragged on. Kevin didn't pester anyone to play chess. Iain didn't read as much - the books ended up splayed across his stomach more often than not. Kathleen, never gregarious to begin with, withdrew further into herself. Brianna's steady confidence was beginning to flag. Harry could see the tension begin to crease the first-year trainees' faces. Eric, Benjamin, and Lucy had been thrown headfirst into the deep end of a horribly anxious situation.

Even his own dreams couldn't decide what was worse. They veered from seeing Ginny or any of the others receive one of those notes to all manner of medical complications happening to Albus.

Harry hadn't been so afraid to fall asleep since his fifth year of school.

*****

Ginny rubbed her wet hair with a dry towel and suppressed a sigh. Ron had hinted someone else would come over to spend the night when he brought lunch. She hoped it wasn't one of her brothers. They seemed to have a few problems handling the whole situation. Charlie had been badly frightened last night when Albus had stopped breathing, even with Bronwyn's warnings. Ginny had managed to not panic, but barely. She couldn't let Charlie see how close she had been to punching a fist through the wall. If Harry were here...

But he wasn't.

Ginny didn't want to let her brothers know just how close she was, in fact, to panicking.

'Ginny?' A muffled feminine voice reached Ginny's ears. She wrapped the now-damp towel around her body and poked her head out of the bathroom door. Katie stood just inside the door to the room, a large carrier bag in her hands. Ginny smiled in genuine relief. She wouldn't have to worry about keeping up appearances for Katie. Katie would understand the need to vent, cry, scream.

'Is someone coming every night?' Ginny called through the partly open bathroom door, as she pulled on her pajamas.

'Yeah.' Katie set the bag down in the armchair. 'Fleur's coming tomorrow. Percy'll be here on Wednesday. Ron on Thursday, Andromeda Friday, and George on Saturday.'

Ginny left the bathroom, a dubious expression on her face. 'Percy? Really?'

'You don't have to have a sleepover with him,' Katie chided.

'I know.' Ginny's eyes lit on the bag. 'What's that?'

Katie grinned. 'Care package.' She opened the bag and began to pull items out of it. 'The new Quidditch Quarterly, the last few issues of Witch Weekly, nail varnish, a few bars of Honeydukes' best chocolate, a couple of books, and some regular clothes. I thought you might be tired of pajamas all day. You might want to actually leave the hospital and go out for a bit.'

Ginny threw her arms around Katie in gratitude. 'Oh, thank you.' She sorted through the clothing and Banished them to a cupboard. She picked up the varnish and examined the small glass bottle. 'Why the nail varnish?'

'When I was carrying Fred and Jacob, I would get dressed and do my hair and face every day, even if I wasn't going anywhere,' she admitted sheepishly. 'Just made me feel better. It's completely shallow, I know, and doesn't even begin to address what you're going through, but it's something to at least look better than you feel.'

Ginny examined the label. 'Chick Flick Cherry?'

'Or, "Shag Me Red" as George calls it.'

Ginny laughed a little. 'Right, like I'm going to need that here.' She put the bottle on the table next to the bed.

Katie settled into the armchair. 'All right, then. Fill me in on what I can expect tonight. Bronwyn called me earlier and said Charlie was a bit shaken by last night.'

Ginny snorted. 'Shaken? I don't think he slept at all last night. At least not until after the last time he fed Albus. Git kept me up. Kept waiting for the alarm to go off when Albus stops breathing.'

Katie didn't even blink when Ginny began to explain how Albus would periodically stop breathing long enough to need intervention. She listened patiently as Ginny threw mountains of information at her, everything from what Albus would do if he was hungry to what to do if the alarm did go off, filing it away in her memory. After two years of keeping track of a set of impish twins, Katie could nearly write her column for Witch Weekly with one hand, while she changed a nappy with the other. Remembering everything Ginny told her would be pie. As for the disrupted sleep, Katie reckoned neither she, nor George had gotten a night of uninterrupted sleep in over two years, so it wasn't going to be that hard to handle.

George had been oddly silent about his role in Albus' birth. It wasn't until after he and Katie and wearily put the boys in their cots and climbed into bed themselves, did he tell her about it. But only in the cover of darkness after he had turned out the light. That's how it always had been with George. He wouldn't speak of anything deeply emotional unless it was pitch black, and she couldn't see his face. Katie didn't have to see him. She could hear it in his voice and feel it in the way his hand gripped hers and his arm tightened around her waist.

*****

'He's so small,' George whispered, his lips just under Katie's ear. 'They whisked him away from Ginny as soon as he was out.' He tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. 'Three other Healers in the room, just for him. Three Healers, and all of them standing over him muttering charms, and mumbling between them. Words like "pneumonia" and "brachycardia".' George's voice dropped a notch deeper. 'They don't know if he's going to be all right,' he confessed. 'But the weird part of it, Katie, the baby didn't make a sound.' George's husky voice grew frightened. 'It was just Ginny crying.' He paused significantly. 'And Ginny never cries in front of people.'

*****

'Katie?' Ginny waved a hand in front of Katie's face. 'Are you there?'

Katie blinked and Ginny swam into focus. 'Yeah. Sorry.'

'It's not nearly as bad as it sounds,' Ginny repeated. 'Looks worse than it is.'

Katie tilted her head back to look up at Ginny. The lines of strain were taut over her face. Perhaps to someone who didn't know Ginny well, she seemed calm, if a bit lacking in the sleep area, but Katie could hear the faint desperation in Ginny's voice. The idea that if one repeated something often enough, it would come true. The mechanical chanting of it over and over again, so that it became a mantra.

It was something Katie knew and understood quite well.

*****

Bill stumbled over a small bag by the fireplace when he Flooed home from Gringotts. His booted foot accidentally kicked a pair of knitting needles across the sitting room, trailing a quantity of fluffy yarn. Grumbling, Bill stooped to pick up the knitting, and stuffed it into the bag. He heard muffled giggling from the bathroom upstairs. Victoire and Maddie were getting ready for dinner, trying to scrub off a day's worth of accumulated grime from playing outside. Bill headed upstairs, knowing from experience that Maddie and Victoire would get more water on the floor than on themselves. He figured he should mop it up before Fleur found out. She was all done in most of the time lately. The girls rather took after their mother, save for the hair. It was much closer to blonde than red, but there was still a definite blaze under all that cool blondeness. They more than made up for their lack of discernable Weasley physical characteristics in their cheekiness. Bill may have indeed been Head Boy once, but he tempered it with a great deal of knowing when to look the other way.

'Hi, Daddy!' chirped Victoire, a wet, soapy face cloth spread over the palms of her hands. She held it out to Maddie, who put a sticky hand into the face cloth, giggling as Victoire scrubbed her hand between the folds of the cloth. 'Other hand!' Victoire sang to Maddie, and she repeated the process, drying Maddie's hands on a towel. Victoire quickly swabbed the face cloth over Maddie's face, then hastily washed her own face and hands.

'Hallo, there, Vic.' Bill leaned against the open doorway, watching as Victoire slung the grimy face cloth over the edge of the sink. 'What did you do today?' Bill followed his daughters downstairs, listening with half an ear as Victoire chattered about the things she and Maddie had done. They preceded him into the kitchen, were Fleur sat at the table, her head pillowed on her arms.

She sat up as the girls clattered into the bright kitchen, one hand smoothing her hair away from her face. Fleur flicked her wand at the stove and a tureen of soupe au pistou landed on the table. Bill grinned a little. She had patiently spent as much of their courtship and marriage introducing Bill to properly cooked French cuisine, as he had spent trying to teach her how to make a proper high tea. She balked at cooking some of the more homely English dishes, but it didn't matter to Bill. There were other ways to get black pudding, even if Fleur refused to kiss him until he had practically Scourgified his teeth.

Bill smiled at his wife, feeling the old scars twist a bit. He remembered the day she had abruptly asked him what he saw when he looked at her. Startled, he had blurted he just saw her. She didn't reply. Just looked him up and down, a narrow-eyed expression on her face. He hadn't understood what she was about until he took her to the Burrow to announce their engagement. Fred, George, and Ron had nearly fallen over themselves when Fleur walked into the sitting room.

Fleur handed Bill a bowl of soup. 'What?' she asked quizzically.

Bill picked up a chunk of crusty bread and buttered it. 'Nothing.' He chewed his bread, carefully picking the right words to say. 'I think I should go tonight.'

Fleur sighed through her nose, and put a bowl of soup in front of Victoire. 'I am fine,' she stated, putting some of the vegetables from the soup into a small bowl for Maddie, and waving a small Cooling charm over it.

'You don't need to stay up all night, then come home and deal with the girls,' Bill countered.

Fleur gave him a look, and swirled her spoon through her own bowl. 'Ginny needs us,' she said simply. 'And I will be zere to help.'

Bill dipped his spoon into his bowl, knowing now would be a good time for a strategic retreat.

It was later, after the girls were bathed and put to bed, he saw his opening. He hadn't been the only one in the family to routinely beat Ron at chess for nothing. Fleur was sprawled on the sofa, a magazine held in her slack hands, sound asleep. Bill looked at his watch. It was only eight-thirty. She was sleeping a great deal more than she had with either Victoire or Maddie. He cupped her cheek with his hand, his thumb brushing over the graceful arch of her cheekbone. Her bright blue eyes fluttered open. 'What time ees it?'

'Time for you to go upstairs and get into bed. That sofa will put knots in your back.'

'Non-.' She closed her eyes again, and slowly exhaled. 'I will wake up in time to go to ze hospital,' she assured Bill.

Bill's lips tightened into a grimace. She was every bit as stubborn as he was sometimes. 'Fleur, please, let me go instead.'

Fleur cracked open one eyelid. She sat up and glared at Bill. 'You will promise not to discuss anyzing important wiz Ginny, yes?'

'Define important,' Bill retorted.

Fleur stood up, her hands on her hips. 'You are not to discuss Harry or ze case.'

Bill blew out the breath he had been holding. 'Fleur...'

'Promise me, or I will go right now.'

'Fine.'

'Bon.' She started to go upstairs, but paused, one foot on the first riser. 'And so help me, if I hear from Ginny zat you so much as zought ze words, "Harry Potter", you will sleep on zat horribly uncomfortable sofa until after zis baby is born!' Fleur threatened.

Bill merely nodded. Privately, he felt Fleur was being slightly unreasonable, but she always did get a bit dramatic when she was hormonal. It was going to be a long night.

*****

The dimly lit kitchen was ever murkier from the quantity of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder they regularly used in the front room. A young man sat at the rickety table, cutting letters out from a quantity of magazines, teetering in a stack on a spindly chair. He hadn't seen Potter in the press box lately. Rumor had it she was flying solo these days, while her husband gallivanted about, chasing shadows. He smirked mirthlessly at the idea of her banging about that large empty house alone with two kids.

It was nothing less than she deserved. Haughty bitch, he growled to himself. He had never liked her. He hated her now more than he had in his last days playing. Potter had just started playing for Holyhead as a reserve Chaser, but on one game, his last game, she had been pulled in as a Seeker. The Harpies' Seeker and reserve Seeker had both left the game with rather severe concussions. She had stepped in to the position, sending a cheeky grin up to the family box that held her family as she swooped by it.

And Harry.

Scowling, the man arranged the letters into the first word, adhering them to the parchment with his wand.

He had come into the game, just after she had.

Potter saw the Snitch before he did.

She swooped out of a dive, the Snitch clenched in her fist, whooping triumphantly. It was then he felt the first twinges of bitterness.

He loathed her and her damned charmed life.

Every letter he added to the parchment on the table twisted the knife in her back a little more.

It gave him a sick sense of satisfaction that nearly bordered on sexual pleasure.

*****

Ginny looked down at the journal in her lap. When she had pulled it out of the bag Katie brought last night, she remembered something Ron and Hermione had done when Hermione went to Australia. She had begun to write while she sat in the rocking chair over the course of the day.

She didn't just write about the baby.

She wrote about Charlie and the drawing of her nursing Albus he had left.

She wrote a reply to the letter Harry had left in her book.

And the one he had left in his desk at home. The one she wasn't supposed to have read.

She wrote about Katie and the care package.

About how Ron brought her lunch and sat with her while she ate, talking about the shop.

How much she missed James and how her fear that something would happen to Albus kept her in the hospital and how it began to flirt with resentment that she felt she had to neglect one son, in order to maintain her watch over the other. And the deep, tearing guilt she felt at being forced to choose between her two sons. She hoped James wouldn't remember.

Ginny had written so much over the day, her hand cramped by dinner time. Her fingers numbed by the stiffness, she had to stop, because she couldn't hold a quill and write legibly anymore that day.

The door creaked open, and Ginny's mouth dropped open in shock to see Bill standing on the threshold, instead of Fleur.

Bill stood uncertainly, framed by the doorway. 'Fleur couldn't come tonight,' he mumbled. 'She said to bring you this.' He held out the bag with the knitting he tripped over earlier.

Ginny laid the journal aside and slid off the bed, taking the bag from Bill's hand. 'Is she all right?'

'Yeah, just not feeling very well,' Bill said stiffly. He inched into the room, and flopped into the armchair.

Ginny watched as he began to drum his fingers on the arm. Shrugging, she went back to the bed, and picked up the journal once more, skimming over what she had written, when Bill began to fidget, picking at a loose thread in the upholstery of the chair. He heaved several short sighs through his nose. After several minutes of this, Ginny couldn't take it anymore. 'What is your problem?'

'Nothing.'

'Oh for Merlin's sake, Bill, if you're going to do that all night, just go home.' Ginny's head bent back over the journal.

Bill folded his arms over his chest, and glared at the top of his baby sister's head.

Ginny didn't look up. 'Spit it out, Bill, before I ask Ewan to have you removed,' she said threatened.

'How can you be okay with this?' Bill hissed.

Ginny, sensing the infamous Weasley temper about to boil over, yanked her wand from under the pillow and jabbed it at the door, before adding extra Silencing charms to the room. 'What do you mean?'

'Harry! Leaving you like this! Is this how the rest of your marriage is going to be? With him gone like this?'

Ginny carefully put the journal down, and unfolded her body from the bed. Shaking with barely suppressed anger, she marched to where Bill sat. 'My marriage,' she began quietly, 'is not up for discussion with you or anyone else.'

'Then why don't you think about your children for once, and not about yourself?' Bill bellowed, rising to his full height. 'Is this the most stable way to raise them? Do you want them to hear you crying at night, waiting for him to come home from Merlin knows where he's been?'

'Since when do you have the right to question my life, William Arthur Weasley? My life!' Ginny nearly screamed, jabbing her finger into Bill's chest.

'I have every right! I'm your brother!'

Ginny felt her hand reflexively pull back, and managed to refrain from slapping Bill, just in time. She stood in front of Bill, her hand clenched into a fist, panting from the effort to not clout her git of a brother over the head. 'I am an adult,' she said slowly. 'This is his job,' she added. 'And he hasn't left me,' she spat. Ginny forced herself to take a step back. And another, until her hand hit the doorknob. She twisted it savagely, yanking the door open. 'Get out,' she said levelly. 'If all you're going to do is browbeat me over something neither he, nor I have any sort of control over, then you can leave.'

Bill's jaw fell in astonishment. 'I just don't want to see you hurt, Ginny.'

'Just go, Bill. I can't do this right now.' Ginny's gaze fixed unwaveringly on Bill.

'But... the baby...' Bill held up his wrist, already clad in a dark green bracelet.

'If you feel you must, then stay in the waiting area,' Ginny snarled. 'And he has a bloody name! It's Albus! Not "the baby"!' She jerked her head at the open door. 'Get out of my room, Bill. If I have to ask you again, I will let Ewan do the asking.'

Bill's shoulders slumped in defeat and he walked out of the room, pausing at the door. 'Gin?' He reached out a tentative hand toward her, but she shook her head mutely, eyes blazing. Bill pulled his hand back, as if he'd been burned and trudged toward the waiting area.