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The life she has, it’s the life she chose. The boy she singled out in a crowd, just shy of ten years old - she picked him not because he was famous, or because he was handsome - eyes that reminded her of the jars that her mother kept in their pantry at home (he always reminded of home ) - but because for the first time in her life, she found herself silenced in his presence. Ginny Weasley, the chatterbox, fearless and daring - she looked at him and thought: yeah, okay, and didn’t know what else to say . It was scary and it was intriguing in all the right ways so she added: perhaps, it’ll be you, then. Perhaps, you’ll be the one who stops, holds, and stays close .
Years later, on her television screen, a blonde-haired girl declares that life is a series of rooms and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are. Ginny - she likes the quote, thinks about it a lot. As a child, as a teenager, she remembers how it often felt like all she did was hop from room to room until she found the right one. When she did, Harry was in it. A boy, back then - her husband, now - her wild card, her hurricane; he opened the door and broke them out and into the whole, wild world. She found it full of untamed unknowns that drew her in. L’appel du vide, the edge of a cliff, a volcano.
Ginny - well, she can’t speak to why Harry picked her (or as to why he loves her) - that is not and will never be her story to tell - but she can explain why she chose him. And again, it wasn’t because of a childish crush or because of his famous name, but because no one else had ever made her feel this way. Ginny married him, built a family with him because she knew it was a risk, but Harry was one well worth taking.
Of course, to get the life she dreams of, she makes sacrifices. They both do. Hers aren’t her career - she stopped playing when she wanted to - and certainly not her kids. She lives for James’s smile and Albus’s cautious-curious looks, Lily’s determination (even when it hits a little too close to home). In her chest, Ginny’s heart still pounds with the way that Harry hesitated the first time he held each of their children in his arms, like no matter how many times the Healers told him that everyone was fine, he wouldn’t believe that his kids were actually alive until he materially felt their breaths against his neck. Ginny looked at him as he sat on a chair in St Mungo’s and thought: the sacrifices they’d made so far, the ones it took to get there, she’d do them all again, in a heartbeat. The nightmares, and the wars and the wins coaxed in losses - just to get here. Right here, with him. That’s worth everything.
No - as far as she is concerned, the sacrifice she makes is this: Ginny wants kids, Ginny loves kids, but Merlin, does she hate being pregnant. For a little under a hundred and twenty weeks, she carries the three of them like she carried on her shoulders the heavy weight of a rebellion at age sixteen: with a goal in sight, an investment in the future she so desperately wants. In those years, she is sick, she is tired, she can’t sleep, her back hurts, her legs hurt, her bladder won’t hold and she’s so hormonal she can’t even bear her own company, genuinely wonders how Harry takes it all in stride with a smile on his lips. In the early days, she wasn’t quite sure what to expect but by the time she misses her period with Albus and the test comes back positive, she is ecstatic, sure, but a very tiny part of her thinks: ah, here we go again. Truth is: she’s been through worse, though, and that oddly helps, especially when she has to leave the table over Sunday brunch to go vomit and her mother says: ‘Oh, I’m sorry you’re feeling so poorly, dear. I loved being pregnant, never had a single issue.’
Harry’s hand gently covers her forearm in what most people probably read as a caring gesture, not knowing that the alternative would have been to let her hex her own mother with her wand under the table. By the time Lily is born, Ginny looks her husband dead in the eye, mere hours after the birth and says: ‘That’s it, Harry. I am done. I’ll get my fucking tubes tied by Muggles if I have to.'
In response, he laughs, kisses her, and tells her he loves her. The five of them are her everything, by then, and Merlin knows she loves him, too.
With Albus, the Healers tell her to stay home and ‘rest’ at twenty-five weeks which, being the kind of person who can’t sit still for more than two minutes, is truly the worst of it all. Hermione brings over her well-wishes (and books to entertain) which drives Ron to roll his eyes and say: ‘You should get a TV instead.’ The liquid inside the bottle of Corona he holds swirls slightly as he sets it down on the table. ‘Dean’s installed ours, he can get them to work in magical homes, now. Has made a whole business out of it. You can watch the Muggle sports on it and all. Should keep you busy, they’re fucking mental.’
Hermione quickly admonishes: ‘Just because it’s not Quidditch doesn’t mean it’s “mental,” Ron,’ but Ginny’s brother shakes his head before catching her gaze.
‘For real, there’s one where you have to move forwards to score but they can only throw the ball backwards, don’t tell me that’s not mental.’
That’s (frankly) all it takes for Ginny to be sold on the idea (to tell the truth, she would probably be sold on anything at this stage), and so she is already halfway through asking Ron for Dean’s contact details, when Harry asks: ‘So, does Dean work alone? Or does he, I mean, have employees that come in or something?’
Ron throws him a puzzled look as if to say: who cares? Hermione glances up across the table. Ginny doesn’t even need to see his face.
Both girls simultaneously burst out a laugh.
Officially, Harry denies ever feeling the tiniest bit of jealous insecurity, of course, which only makes Ginny tease him more, knowing that he’d do the exact same if the roles were reversed. Just for that bit of fun, getting the tv installed is worth it. She insists that Dean come in person, makes him tea and chats amicably while he performs complicated spells that power the technology up; Harry politely hovers in the background carrying James in his arms as if to prove that he’s acting perfectly normal, not bothered at all, thanks very much. After Dean leaves, though, he kisses her rather possessively, mouth claiming hers and says: ‘Yeah, okay, you win. Maybe, I was jealous, a little bit, alright?’
She laughs against his lips before whispering, ‘I chose you . I love you, Harry Potter,’ and promptly taking his clothes off.
Through her pregnancies and her kids’ early years in the mid-to-late 2000s, the television becomes a background item in their lives. She turns it on on occasion, whenever she needs a distraction, or to take her mind off things. Sometimes, it’s during naptime. Sometimes, it’s late in the evenings when Harry’s on a mission and it’s either that or blankly staring at the clock and watching the minutes go by.
These days, Ginny likes: the stupid soap operas that she can’t stop laughing at (‘Gin, even Petunia didn’t watch those,’ Harry observes once as they watch some woman miraculously awake from a 15-year coma that apparently was all a hoax, to which Ginny responds: ‘Well, we all know your aunt’s got shit taste, anyway,’) and the silly quiz games that teach her about muggle culture. That first year when she’s pregnant with Albus, she (unfortunately) also gets hooked on a rather pointlessly intense American drama about Muggle Healers and tells Harry: ‘I swear, so many of their problems could be solved by magic, or if they didn’t all sleep together all the time.’
They are in the kitchen making food; He sets the knife in his hand down on the table and barks out a laugh: ‘Are you watching porn while I’m at work?’
Of course, she isn’t, but she sort of laughs and teases back: ‘So, what if I am?’ The tips of her fingers trace slow, deliberate patterns next to him, against the worktop of their kitchen. She describes: ‘Lying on the couch all on my own, thinking of you when you’re not here…’
Harry freezes mid-movement as he transfers an empty pan onto the stove, gaze narrowing on hers, trying to determine if she’s messing with his head. A thought occurs to him and suddenly, she definitely is messing with his head - he blushes and avoids her look - it’s nice to know that even after all these years they’ve spent together and (almost) two children, the idea of her touching herself on their couch to the thought of him still makes him blush. Ginny raises a daring eyebrow; he shakes his head and laughs.
(Needless to say, the reality of Grey’s Anatomy, when she does show it to him eventually, is rather disappointing.)
Throughout the next eighteen years (and counting) of the series’ run, Ginny hangs onto it and rarely ever misses an episode. By 2021, she sure is more than fed up with the whole thing, pretty much begging for it to end, but she’s also invested so much time and energy into this thing that she can’t just give up now, can she? The storylines get more and more ridiculous and the number of life-shattering events that happen to these people range from insane to completely bonkers but by then, she is determined to see it through. Harry gave up after about half a “season” but she still keeps him updated with her own commentary. ‘Well,’ she says, once. ‘I thought it was all a dream because Meredith was in an accident again, but lo and behold -’
About ten minutes into her recap, with Lily nestled in his arms, Harry is still shaking his head at her in disbelief.
In 2012, Ginny crosses her arms as she ventures up into their bedroom, stands at the threshold, and pouts at Harry when he catches her gaze. ‘They’ve killed off the hot one,’ she laments.
He rubs his eyes under his glasses, sets the work file he’d been reading down on the bedside table. ‘Oh? The one with the hair?’
Ginny frowns at him for a second (because no, it was actually the other hot one), but then she laughs and suddenly McSteamy’s untimely death doesn’t matter as much anymore. Harry sends her a questioning look and, ‘Funny,’ she tells him, ‘That you’d think the hot one is the one with the dark, messy hair. Wonder how that came about.’
‘Ha-ha.’
Regardless, it so happens that in Grey's Anatomy, the first hot one dies in a plane crash and the second hot one dies in a car accident which permanently puts Ginny off any and all means of Muggle transportation. Even dragons feel safer, at this point.
So, one night a couple of years later, Harry sits next to her on the couch, her head resting against his shoulder as he half-pretends to read something work-related and Meredith Grey discovers herself yet another secret sister. Ginny laughs, shakes her head, and says: ‘They make our lives look boring, don’t they?’
And, it is a moment of quiet. A moment where suddenly, silly, soapy fiction isn’t the only thing she thinks about. There is the room they’re in, with its steady walls and it’s warm heating, and the both of them and harry nods, silent, drops a kiss into her hair. ‘Boring’s good,’ he tells her. ‘I like boring.’
She smiles. Thinks that: yeah, she does, too.