Making Mistakes

Ginny flopped into bed, groaning softly as she began to relax. It had been a horribly long day. James woke up at six that morning, and refused to leave Ginny's side all day. Even when she tried to nurse Albus, James insisted on plastering himself to her side. He hadn't shown any outright jealousy of Albus, but it was still early, and James seemed to be taking it all in stride, as long as Ginny didn't leave his line of sight. But that had meant Ginny had to take Albus with her everywhere, either in his sling, or in the carrycot. And since James followed her everywhere, she didn't even get to use the loo on her own. She badly needed to take a shower. James had flung butterscotch pudding all over the kitchen, and she could feel a dried streak of it in her hair. She was covered in dried milk; the remnants of James' lunch and dinner; and felt grubbier than a body had a right to feel. Albus had been fussy most of the afternoon, refusing to nurse, and Ginny's increasingly frantic attempts hadn't helped. It just stressed them each even more.

Ginny was exhausted. She remembered how tiring it had been when they brought James home, but this was worse. She turned her head, and peeked into the carrycot on the bed. Albus was asleep, as was James. 'It's now or never,' she murmured, hauling herself off the bed, and trudging into the bathroom. Like last night, she rushed through a shower, grateful she had kept her hair short. It was much faster to wash. All too soon, she stepped out of the tub, and pulled the clean nightdress sitting on the bathroom counter over her head. 'It's not going to stay clean for long,' she grumbled. Albus was whimpering in the carrycot. He hadn't quite started crying yet, but his chirping grew more and more insistent. It was only a matter of time before he did start crying. She lifted Albus from the carrycot and settled against the pillows stacked against the headboard. 'Shhhh,' she crooned, shifting Albus against her breast. He latched on with a ferocity Ginny hadn't seen before. 'Ow. That hurt,' she informed him. He ignored her, and continued to eat with single-minded focus. Ginny traced his sketchy eyebrow with a fingertip. It followed the arch of Harry's. Albus opened his eyes, and Ginny wished, not for the first time, that Harry's parents hadn't died. She would have loved to ask them about Harry as a baby, to compare Albus to Harry with Lily. It was a large portion of Harry's life that was largely lost to them. The few photographs they had didn't do it justice.

Albus' head rolled away from her breast, and Ginny tried to wake him to no avail. He was sound asleep, and likely to stay that way for at least two hours. He could sleep up to three at a time, before hunger prodded him to wakefulness. She used an old, but clean, nappy to wipe the milk outlining his mouth and carefully shifted him to her shoulder, where she doggedly patted his back until he burped and settled back into sleep. Ginny swung her feet off the bed, and gently laid Albus in the cradle. She dimmed the lamp, so it cast a soft glow over the room, and collapsed into the bed, falling asleep almost as soon as her eyes drifted shut.

*****

Harry appeared outside the back garden of his house, silently cursing Ginny. He glanced up at the dark windows, and jogged to the side of the house where their bedroom was. He could see a faint light struggle its way through the gauzy curtains. 'What possessed you to come home?' --he muttered. 'You were supposed to go back to the Burrow. Stubborn...' He went to retrieve his knapsack and tested the wards. She had left them up. 'At least she had enough sense to do that,' Harry grumbled and walked into the kitchen. It smelt strongly of butterscotch, but Harry didn't stop to wonder why. He continued through the door into the sitting room, and dropped the knapsack at the bottom of the stairs and swiftly went up the stairs to their bedroom. He stopped to look in on James, and stood in the doorway, just watching Ginny sleep. She lay curled on one side, on top of the quilt. Harry pointed his wand at his boots and they unlaced themselves. It wasn't something he did often, since it was just as easy to do it by hand. He toed them off, and tiptoed to the bed, and climbed into it, next to Ginny. Harry scooted closer to her, so his knees touched hers. Not thinking, he pulled her body to his, so she draped over him, and began to press kisses to her cheeks and lips.

Ginny didn't function well on sleep deprivation, and when she woke up to the sensation of someone in her bed, her eyes remained shut, but her knee shot up, and with unerring accuracy, connected solidly with Harry's balls. The gurgling moan in her ear, made her open her eyes. 'Harry!' she exclaimed, when she saw his face, mere inches from hers, contorted in eddy of pain.

'Geroff!' he wheezed.

Ginny scrambled off Harry, who immediately curled into a ball, his hands clasped over his abused anatomy. 'Oh, sweet Godric,' she breathed. 'I'm so sorry! I didn't know it was you!'

'Urrrrrrrrrrrrrr,' he replied, painfully removing one hand, and waving it at her, panting.

'Are you all right?' Ginny knelt next to Harry's coiled form.

'Mmmmmm.' He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes. Ginny's face hovered anxiously over his.

'Shall I kiss it and make it better?' she asked impishly. Harry's eyes narrowed. Now was not the time to make jokes. 'Well if you had just woken me up like normal people, we wouldn't have to worry about whether or not Albie is our last.'

'Not funny,' he gasped hoarsely. 'Just give me a minute...'

At that moment with exquisite timing, James began to wail in his cot. 'I'll go get him,' Ginny said, kissing the tip of Harry's exposed ear. James was sitting up in the cot, fat tears rolling down his face. 'What's the matter then, sweetie?' Ginny crooned, reaching into the cot. She lifted James into her arms, and he burrowed against her, his face pressed against her neck.

'Mummeeeee,' he whimpered.

'I've got a surprise for you,' she told James. 'Guess who's here?' She carried him to the doorway of the bedroom, and set him on the floor. 'Look, Jemmy,' she whispered, pointing to the bed.

James glanced up and his eyes widened, and he started running toward the bed. 'Dahdeeeee!' he screeched, stumbling to a stop at Harry's side of the wide bed. 'Dahdee, up!' he demanded.

Harry lifted his head stiffly, and came face to face with his eldest son's wide blue eyes. Groaning slightly, he reached down and grasped the back of James' t-shirt, hauling him up to sit by him on the bed. 'Hiya, mate,' he said.

James straddled Harry's stomach, and bounced excitedly on his diaphragm. 'Dahdeedahdeedahdee,' he chanted.

'Oof!' Harry grunted. 'James, stop... Daddy can't breathe...' he gasped, grabbing James by the waist, and pulling him off his stomach. Harry flipped the quilt back, and tucked it over James. 'Go back to sleep, there's a good boy,' he murmured, patting James' back. James shifted a few times and turned over on his stomach and fell asleep, his head resting on Harry's shoulder.

'You're not going to sleep at all in those jeans,' Ginny commented kneeling on the foot of the bed.

'I've got a two year-old pinning me to the mattress,' he replied, one hand still cupped over his groin. 'I don't think I'll be moving any time soon.'

Ginny crawled up the bed, and came to a stop next to Harry. 'Want some help?' she asked, her hands suspended over the button of his jeans.

'As long as you don't kick me again,' he quipped.

Ginny's mouth twisted wryly. 'Keep that up, and I'll Stun you and take you to the hospital, and they can do a little spell Shanti told me about. Albus will definitely be our last.'

Harry's eyes widened comically. 'You wouldn't!'

Ginny batted his hand away from the flies of his jeans. She didn't answer, and proceeded to work Harry's jeans off with a smirk and dropped them on the floor next to the bed. Harry wriggled until he could slide his legs under the bedding, and Ginny slipped under the quilt on the other side. She heard the tell-tale whimpers drift from the cradle, and sighed, sitting up so she could pick up Albus. She unbuttoned the nightdress and positioned the baby against her breast. She looked over at Harry, watching her, his bright green eyes cloudy with drowsiness. 'Not quite the homecoming you imagined, eh?' she asked softly.

'Not really.' His eyes swept the bed; taking in James sprawled between them, Ginny nursing the baby. 'I actually pictured something a lot more romantic,' he added.

'Yeah...'

'But this is pretty good, too.' He shifted to his side, and reached over with his free hand, brushing his fingertips over Ginny's arm. 'Nearly perfect. I wouldn't trade it for anything,' Harry murmured, turning his head to brush a kiss over James' hair.

*****

Harry woke up with one of James' feet pressed against the side of his face. 'How does he sleep like that?' he muttered.

'You do that,' Ginny snorted. 'The first time I spent the night with you, you were all over the bed.'

'I did not!'

'Yes, you did.' Ginny picked up Albus and carried him into his nursery. 'You can put James in his cot, if you want. I'll get him up later.'

Harry eased out of bed, and opened a bureau drawer for a pair of pajama bottoms. He pulled them on and turned to pick James up from the bed. He took James to his room, and laid him in the cot. 'Harry?' Ginny's voice came from the room across the corridor. 'Could you look in the cupboard, and bring me a few clean nappies? I didn't get a chance to restock the changing table in here yesterday.'

'Sure, Gin.' He padded down to the end of the corridor and opened the cupboard and reached for a stack of nappies. As he pulled them off the shelf, he knocked a canvas carrier bag over. Frowning, he picked it up, and examined it, not recognizing it as one of the ones that belonged to them.

'Harry! Seriously need a nappy in here!'

He jumped and shut the cupboard door, taking the stack of nappies to Ginny, who grabbed one from the top and swiftly wrapped it around Albus, pinning it one handed. 'Gin, what's that bag in the cupboard?'

'What bag?' she muttered distractedly, settling into the rocking chair to feed Albus.

'Canvas, with blue trim and handles?'

'Oh, that one. It's Katie's. I wondered where Mum put it Saturday. I need to take it back to Katie before I forget.'

Harry stowed the rest of the nappies under the changing table. 'It's got some things in it.'

'Could you take them out and put the bag downstairs? Otherwise, I'll forget we've got it, and Katie'll get it back when the twins start school.'

'What do you want me to do with the things inside?' Harry started for the cupboard.

'Just put them in our room.'

Harry opened the cupboard and took out the bag, rummaging through it as he walked to their bedroom. Most of it was unremarkable. A few magazines, a book, some clothes, a bottle of bright red nail varnish. The plain, leather-bound book caught his eye. It stood out in a bag full of rather ordinary items. He tossed the nail varnish into a drawer in the bathroom, and dumped the rest of the items on the foot of the bed. The leather-bound book flopped open. When Harry picked it up, he saw the pages were covered in lines of Ginny's round, loopy handwriting. 'What the...?' It was a journal from the two weeks she spent in the hospital.

'Want breakfast?' Ginny was standing in the doorway, buttoning the front of her nightdress.

Harry started guiltily and dropped the journal on the bed as if it had bitten him. 'I'll do it,' he said quickly.

Ginny trailed after him as he ran down the stairs. 'It's all right if you read that,' she called after him.

'Read what?' He was standing at the stove, preparing to cook eggs and sausages.

'The journal. I was going to let you read it when you came home anyway.' Ginny pulled plates from the cupboard and began to set the table. 'When do you have to be at the Ministry?'

'Four weeks.'

Ginny stood next to the table, a fork suspended in midair. 'What?'

'Four weeks. I've been suspended.'

She laid the fork on the table carefully. 'Pardon me?'

Harry turned the sausages over, and looked back at Ginny. 'Where do I start?'

'Try the beginning,' she retorted, making tea.

'We caught them,' he began.

'Obviously.'

'Flanagan was working with Skeeter. When we captured him last Wednesday, I, uh, sort of punched him in the face...'

'Bravo,' she applauded. 'I wish I could have seen it.' She piled slices of bread in the toaster.

'So, I suspended myself for two weeks, and when Kingsley came up, he added two more weeks.'

Ginny poured boiling water over the tea leaves in the pot. 'He forced you to take a vacation.'

Harry dished eggs and sausages on a platter, and carried it to the table. 'Something like that.' He took the toast and put it on a plate. 'So while the boys are still asleep, we have to talk about something...'

Ginny's brows knit over the rim of her teacup. 'All right...' She put the cup down in its saucer carefully.

Harry was busily buttering a slice of toast. 'It's just... Kingsley wants to make me Head.'

'Told you,' Ginny replied smugly.

'I need to give him an answer so he can start transitioning me when I get back next month.'

'Okay...'

'He said I ought to talk to you.'

'Wise man.'

Harry poked at his breakfast. 'Well?'

Ginny began to eat her eggs. 'Well, what?'

'What do you think?' Harry sighed in exasperation. 'Should I accept it?'

'It's rather up to you, isn't it?'

'I want to know how you feel about it.' Harry laid his fork down. 'If you don't want me to take it, I won't.'

Ginny bit her lip. 'I don't want you to not take this because of any misgivings I might have. I want you to do this because it's what you want.' She paused and took a sip of her tea. 'Do you want to do this?'

'Yeah, I do...' Harry confessed.

'What would you have to do?' Ginny asked.

Harry shrugged. 'Pretty much the same thing I do now. Supervise all ongoing investigations and the trainees. My probation list. Coordinate with other Heads if we're on the same case. No field work, like now, though.'

'I'm all for that,' Ginny muttered. 'Would it make you happy?'

Harry heaved a sigh and toyed with his food. 'Maybe.'

Ginny spread marmalade on her toast. 'Listen... I'd rather have you happy and busy, than unhappy, but with a lot of time on your hands.' She reached across the table and took one of Harry's hands. 'Do it. If you want to do it, I'm not going to stop you.' She ate her toast quietly for a moment. 'So Flanagan...?'

'Let me fill you in,' Harry told her. 'You'll never believe it.' He proceeded to tell her the entire story; from the night Ron came to see him to the previous day. 'So I went to the hospital after I finished my report and they told me you'd gone home, and then I went to the Burrow.' Harry took a long sip of his tea. 'Why did you come here? You were supposed to be with your mum and dad,' he said pointedly.

'Honestly?'

'Sure.'

'I just wanted to come home.'

'You were supposed to be with your parents until I came home...' Harry repeated.

'Why is it so important to you that I didn't come back here alone with the boys?'

Harry picked up the dishes and took them to the sink, and began to wash them. 'You got one. Friday. From Flanagan. Well, he started it, and Skeeter delivered it.'

'There wasn't one here Saturday afternoon...' Ginny mused.

'She took it to the Burrow.'

'Oh, so I was so much safer there,' Ginny said caustically. She picked up the remaining dishes and took them to Harry. 'I left the wards up, and nobody but you or me knew how to get through them. And honestly, Mum and Dad were here most of the afternoon and evening Saturday. I didn't even leave the house at all yesterday.'

'I know,' he sighed. 'I just didn't want you to be by yourself.'

Ginny wrapped her arms around his waist. 'After the last six weeks, I wanted some time by myself.' She paused. 'Well, as much as you can have with a newborn and a toddler.'

'I take it that's not very much.'

'Not at all.' Ginny rose on her toes to kiss Harry's cheek. James had woken up and could be heard calling for them from upstairs. 'Maybe now that you're back, I can go to the loo by myself.'

*****

The next several days eased into a sort of pattern for Harry and Ginny. Wake up, make breakfast, play with James, lunch, naps, play with James some more, dinner, give James a bath, put him to bed, spend some time with each other, before they, too, fell into bed. In between all that they cared for Albus, making sure he was warm enough, gaining enough weight, and a few times, they were forced to use the mask to help him breathe. It was a routine they slipped into easily.

A week after Harry had come home; Ginny put James in his cot after lunch, and trudged into her bedroom. James was on the verge of sleep, Albus was dry and full, and it was time for her to take a nap, too. 'You look like you could use some sleep,' she mumbled sleepily to Harry, who was stretched out on the bed, reading her journal.

'I will in a minute,' Harry promised. Ginny had written about everything from the day he left until the morning she and Albus had come home. 'This is good,' he told her. 'Very good.'

'What? The journal?'

'Mmm-hmm.' Harry turned a page. 'George was with you?'

'When I delivered Al? Yeah.' Ginny burrowed into her pillow.

Harry ran a hand over her head. 'I'm sorry I wasn't there.'

Shrugging, Ginny pulled the quilt over her. 'Not like we could have predicted any of the last two months.' She yawned widely and fell asleep.

Harry read several more pages, amazed as always, by the amount of devotion displayed by the Weasleys to each other. Ginny didn't write a chronological account of her time apart from Harry, but spent several pages on each member of the family, going from James to Albus, Molly and Arthur, her brothers, Andromeda. The pencil sketch Charlie had done of her and Albus was tucked into the back. The last bit belonged to Harry. Some of the descriptions Ginny had written about his behavior made him uncomfortable, but he didn't find anything really inaccurate in her perceptions of him. Sighing, he turned the page, and what he read made his blood run cold. He looked at Ginny sleeping peacefully next to him, then back to the page covered in dark blue ink. How could he? Harry thought angrily, forcefully shutting the journal, and rolling off the bed.

Harry opened the wardrobe and grabbed the trainers sitting on the floor, yanking them on. He needed to get out before he woke Ginny or the boys. She really would hex him into next week if he woke up James. James needed his nap; else he was crankier than Harry could be when he hadn't been sleeping. Harry burst into the back garden, turning in tight, angry circles, before he made up his mind. Pulling out his wand, he slammed through the garden gate, and Disapparated to Shell Cottage.

Bill knelt at the flowerbeds in front of the house, surrounded by the brightly hued blossoms waving in the breeze coming off the sea. Harry walked up to him, still vibrating with his sense of outrage at Bill's presumption of the truth of his relationship with Ginny. 'I need to talk to you,' he blurted, half aware of how rude he sounded. He didn't care. 'Now.'

Bill straightened up, brushing the grass and dirt from his knees. 'What about?'

Harry grabbed the front of Bill's shirt and all but slammed him against the wall of the house. 'How could you?' he growled. 'You have absolutely no idea about how I feel about Ginny!'

'I know, I...' Billy stammered, but Harry kept talking.

'Everything I've done... Everything, has been so my children - our children - do not have to grow up the way we did. So they don't have to wonder if their parents leave that they'll come back home. And if that means I have to sacrifice things, then that's the way it has to be!'

Bill nodded. 'Harry, I -'

Harry cut him off savagely. 'And Ginny! Do you think it was easy for me to leave? To just pick up and seemingly abandon my pregnant wife for weeks at a time? I hated it! I hated every minute I was gone, and she was left here, alone.' Harry whirled around and strode to a nearby sapling, slamming his fist into the slender trunk, making the leaves tremble. 'Do you know - no you wouldn't, nobody does - that the last person I saw when I went into the Forest to face Voldemort was Ginny? That she was my last thought before Voldemort tried to kill me?' Panting, Harry rested his forehead against the trunk and wrapped his hands over the smooth bark. 'She made it possible for me to stand there and sacrifice myself.' He clutched the trunk, feeling the rough edges of the bark dig into the flesh of his palms. 'She's my life, Bill. I'd sooner amputate my own arm than do anything deliberately designed to hurt her.' He felt Bill's hand land on his shoulder. 'Why would you say that to her? Why would you imply that I could leave her and that it meant nothing to me?' Harry's voice was barely audible over the sound of the surf at the base of the cliffs.

'It wasn't you,' Bill said. 'I know you love her. It was me.' Harry took a few steps away and slid down the trunk, landing hard on the ground. 'Did Ginny tell you? About Mum and Dad?' Harry nodded tersely. 'I was putting all of that on the two of you. It was a mistake. My mistake.' Bill folded his lanky frame to the ground next to Harry. 'You were gone, and nobody knew where you were. And when the baby came, she was alone. And when you came back, the two of you weren't talking. It was sort of easy to put two and two together.' Bill scratched the back of his hand and glanced at Harry apologetically. 'It was a miscalculation.'

'You can say that again,' Harry growled. He pushed himself to his feet. 'I have to get back home.'

'Yeah,' sighed Bill. He looked up at Harry. 'I am sorry.'

Harry closed his eyes. 'I know. So am I.' He opened his eyes, and looked down at Bill. 'There were a hundred things I could have done differently on this case.' He started walking to the edge of the cliff to Disapparate back to Godric's Hollow, when Bill's voice stopped him.

'I'm glad you're back.'

Harry looked at Bill over his shoulder. 'Me, too.' He took out his wand, preparatory to Disapparating. 'Thanks.'

*****

The days slipped into weeks, and before Harry knew it, the month was over. Al's weekly pediatric visits had been reduced to twice a month. James had been acclimated enough to his new brother to become annoyed at all the attention lavished on him. But one morning, while Al was still in his cot, he began to cry. Startled at the noise, because Al hadn't cried before, they dashed into Al's bedroom, and found James standing next to the cot, shoving his beloved stuffed black dog through the slats. 'Ah-bee cry,' he informed them loftily, then stalked out of the room under his parents' perplexed gazes. The days it threatened to overwhelm Ginny, she was grateful to have Harry's presence when the boys were asleep, taking comfort in the familiarity of touch and scent. The rest of the family mercifully left them alone, until McAllister cleared Al to leave the confines of the house, and Harry, Ginny, James, and Al joined the family for Sunday lunch the day before Harry's twenty-sixth birthday.

Harry returned to work, and while Kingsley was true to his word that the amount of work wasn't much more than he doing before, there was much more detail and nuance to the job. Two weeks after he was given the responsibility of supervising the current cases, he turned to Ginny one night in a fit of pique and began to vent about the job the team had been doing. When he was done, he realized it was something he had missed while working on the case against Flanagan and Skeeter. He started making a conscious effort to talk to Ginny about his work again. She noticed. Sometimes she just listened. Others she offered advice.

Ginny didn't bring up playing Quidditch again, but had she expressed the desire to come out of retirement to rejoin the Harpies, Harry vowed she would know he was behind her, if that was what she wanted.

Shanti had given Ginny clearance to resume sex, but neither of them were up for it yet. Exhaustion usually claimed them soon after they put James to bed for the night. But the knowledge it was an option once more added a layer of anticipation to the kisses and caresses they shared. It was enough for now.

*****

When Al was three months old, Harry packed him in the pram, and made his way to the cemetery on the other side of the village. He parked the pram outside the kissing gate, and lifted Al from its depths, and carried him through the gate and over to a triad of white headstones. Harry settled on the ground, securely pulling the knitted cap over Al's head. 'Hiya,' he said softly, turning Al around to face the headstones. 'I know you're probably going to hate the name, but this is Albus. Albus Severus Potter.' Harry ran a hand over the surface of his father and godfather's stones. 'I'm sure you think I've gone off my tree naming him after Snape, but I did this for Mum. It wasn't meant to be a slight against Remus. I hope you know that.' Harry rested his hand on his mother's stone. 'He deserves to be remembered, too.'

Harry turned his head and glanced in the direction of the small, black stone marking where he'd buried Snape nearly a decade ago. Harry got to his feet and took Al to the other grave. He took a deep breath, and knelt in front of the headstone bearing Snape's name. He opened his mouth a few times, but wasn't sure what to say. In the eight years he'd been coming here, he'd never spoken at Snape's grave. 'You probably hate that I've named my son for you. And I'll admit, it baffles everyone else.' He continued in a low voice. 'But if it weren't for you, we wouldn't be here.' Harry shifted the baby in his arms. 'Someone has to remember that.'

A giggle made Harry look up, and he saw Ginny and James standing by the gate. Harry reached out a tentative hand, and brushed his fingertips over the name etched into the stone, before rising to his feet, and wending through the headstones to his family. He stopped at the gate, and turned around, his eyes resting on the graves of his parents. 'I'll see you again soon.'

The End.