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The names of Ginny Potter's kids

Summary:

Ginny chose the names just as much as Harry did.

Notes:

This is a hybrid between different one-shots and characters' studies.

Work Text:

James

Naming her first son "James" had always sounded like the most natural thing in the world, to the point that she had been quite shocked when her husband had proposed shyly the name during her first pregnancy. The truth was that when she was just a little girl making up stories with her dolls about marrying Harry Potter, their child was always called James and she had grown affectionate to the name. For years in her mind, the name of her future hypothetical son was always James, and when her friends at school sometimes brought up the subject of how they would have liked to name their children, she always had to be careful to refrain herself from bringing up James. She knew that no matter the popularity of the name, out of her mouth, everyone would associate it with Harry.

But James most of all was the name of the father-in-law she had never met, the man that, Sirius claimed, would have adored her. She likes to think they would have been friends, she and James, even before she and Harry would have started dating. They would have discussed chaser tactics, the Quidditch League, pranks, and maybe even their shared curse of being attracted to clueless green-eyed people.

"James" was a choice to honor the man who had sacrificed his life to allow her to have a husband and children. The brilliant man with unwavering loyalty and the ability to look at himself and decide he had to mature. She hoped that her first son would be just like him.

 

Sirius

The name "Sirius" came quite naturally, too.

Sirius Black had been a brief and yet remarkable appearance in her life. A sort of weird combination between an older brother and uncle but, more importantly, a friend. Ginny had stayed up during the more soundless hours of the day with him in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Endless nights of sharing nightmares, old stories, and stupid jokes.

Her actual godparent was Auntie Muriel, but she didn't like to talk with her, and she barely saw her anyway. She had always imagined an actual godparent would have been what Sirius had been to her during that year. She still remembered vividly the conversation she and Sirius had the night of her first argument with Harry, during the Christmas holidays. Her feeling of anger at Harry for forgetting something so important, the guilt of having snapped at him considering what he was going through, and Sirius' unwavering belief that Ginny and Harry would have ended up married. She had tried to explain to him that she had moved on, that Harry would never think of her like that, but Sirius didn't want to hear it. In a moment of exasperation, she had promised him that if she and Harry ever got married they would call their first son after him. That had made Sirius shut up and opt instead for one of his barked laughs and a pleased smile. "Can't wait to meet little James Sirius, then." he had told her with a wink.

She hoped that wherever he was, Sirius knew she had kept the promise, even if there hadn't been a question about Jamie's middle name, joked undertaking or not.

 

 

Albus

She supposed that the average Hogwarts student wasn't familiar with the twinkling blue eyes of their Headmaster, always so distant in his high chair at the teachers' table, but that wasn't Ginny's case.

Her first year at Hogwarts had been particular, different, a complete nightmare. And yet the worst part of the possession had not been the possession itself but the recovery from it. And so she had been glad that during that second year of uncertainty, fears, and panic attacks, someone had remembered to check on her and that someone had been Albus Dumbledore.

She never liked to show her most intimate emotions. She supposed that it was the real reason for her first frustration around Harry, she couldn't hide how taken she was with him. And she didn't like asking for help. Everybody already viewed her as small and fragile enough. Unfortunately, it seemed that nothing could be hidden from that wise old man with a beard that looked like snow and the eyes like the summer sea. Around the middle of October, he had started asking for meetings with her in his office. At first, it was a bit intimidating, but they always played chess and she didn't seem able to win, which meant that she couldn't refuse the next match. He asked her about the possession, how she was responding to the trauma, but he was always so subtle, mixing it with aimless chitchat. The wound remained, but it started healing a bit faster once she had the opportunity to talk about the experience. What surprised her most was that, despite the many great abilities of the Headmaster, she had never suspected how much of a genuinely kind and fun person he was. He always treated her with respect, not like she was a stupid child, and he made an effort of constantly reminding her how much strength she had had to fight Riddle for so long. He even provided a couple of embarrassing anecdotes about the scary Dark Lord in his school years, which had helped enormously. Unsurprisingly she was never able to beat him at chess.

She knew that Dumbledore in his mantel as war general had been great and yet had made some big mistakes and, to be honest, she didn't particularly care about that man. Dumbledore already had millions of history books that would make sure nobody ever forgot him. Albus, on the other hand, the man with the twinkling blue eyes, the kind smile, and the firm belief that love was a power like no other, the man who in his fight for the light had never let himself build a family, that man she wanted to remember, to never be forgotten.

 

Severus

She knew she had a bit of an obsession with weird unique names. Maybe because she grew up with one that was part of the category, at least in her country. So she supposed it wasn't that surprising when she admitted to genuinely liking the name "Severus". A strong name, for who she wished would be a strong boy.

The name itself wasn't the problem at all, the man it was in honor of on the other hand... She knew that a lot of people wouldn't understand, her fifteen-year-old self wouldn't have understood. But if the names of their first child, conceived in a moment of just pure passion, had rolled off their tongues with the simplicity of who just follows their instinct, the names of their second child, conceived in a moment that was part of a precise plan even if not less passional, had come to them after a lot of thinking.

Severus Snape had worn a lot of masks in his life. She was, after all, the only person besides Harry that had seen the memories of the late professor. They had felt like a family secret. Everybody else had just believed Harry's word, it was good enough, especially right after the war.

Snape had been a little child who grew up in an unhealthy environment, a boy with a crush, a teenager with poor hygiene and a couple of weird obsessions, an archnemesis, a guy in love, a friend with always a snarky witty answer, a death eater, a terrible teacher, a man ripped apart by guilt, a double agent, a hero maybe... depending on your definition of the word. Ginny remembers during that dark sixth year at Hogwarts those confusing moments where all she could think about was that Snape had just saved her from a Carrow, a cruciatus curse, a night chained in the school dungeons. It seemed peculiar like she was missing a piece of a puzzle of which she didn't even know the theoretical final result. She never said anything, she never asked. If for Snape a stroll in the Forest with Hagrid was worse than a night of tortures, she wouldn't complain. Maybe, she had thought, they wanted to avoid spilling too much "pure blood". Only when she had listened to Harry's story and eventually seen the memories she had understood. Snape had saved her life, and it hadn't been an accident. He had been a man who had let hatred shape for him a house of darkness, but that in all that darkness had managed eventually to grip himself to that little glimmer of light that he had known.

Once she came to that realization, she decided that Severus Snape wouldn't be remembered as an enemy of the Potter family, that she and Harry would do what the people before them hadn't been able to do. They would take that glimmer of light and make it enlighten the entire dark house. The middle name of her second child was a symbol that love, and light, would always win, no matter how buried into darkness.

 

 

Lily

Lily Potter had always been an intimidating figure to Ginny. The image of the perfect mother who had sacrificed herself to protect her son, the purest incarnation of love. She seemed to be someone no one was able to speak badly of. Always kind, a bit cheeky if you asked Slughorn who would answer like he was talking about an angel, a brilliant woman who had quite literally men fighting and dying over her. And she was the Mrs. Potter whose shoes she had to step into. Rationally she knew that there had been a lot of other Mmes. Potter, who were probably quite remarkable women too, but when people thought of Mrs. Potter, they thought of Lily.

She had spent a couple of sleepless nights right before her and Harry's wedding wondering if Mr. and Mrs. Potter would have approved of her. For some reason, she had never doubted James' opinion of her, maybe because of all Sirius' remarks about an alive James who would have adored Ginny. Lily though was a mother, and Harry was her only son. Realistically, she would have been very protective of him. Molly was with her sons, and she had six of them, well... five.

Ginny had seen photos of Lily. She had been so beautiful. She had long wavy dark red hair, much more elegant than her vivid one, her skin was immaculate and not covered with annoying freckles, her eyes were of that incredibly unique green that she had passed onto Harry, and she was taller too.

There had never been a doubt that their first daughter would've been named after her paternal grandmother. Someone Ginny admired like no other, whose love for her child had been so strong, to live behind a physical protection that had allowed Ginny to share her life with her soulmate. She hoped to make that sacrifice live on keeping alive her memory, she wished that somehow that name would be a protection also for her little girl.

She liked to imagine that her mother-in-law, the woman who died in the name of unconditional love, would have liked her if only because, and of this she was certain, there was no other woman besides Ginny who could love Harry just as much as Lily had done on that Halloween night.

 

Luna

Growing up as the only girl and younger sister of six brothers hadn't exactly given Ginny a good image of femininity. She had wanted to be like her brothers and said brothers didn't fancy the idea of having to deal with someone who liked frilly dresses and tea parties, so Ginny never engaged in those activities. Her mother had tried to teach her what feminity was but, her version always had such traditionally old-dated and frankly offensive connotations that she couldn't help but find her mother's activities an oppressive imposition. She had learned to bake a mean treacle tart though, which Harry appreciated.

When she started Hogwarts, and she was finally surrounded by other girls her age, for a long time, she thought that none of them had offered her a version of femininity that made sense for her. Hermione seemed to reject the whole concept as well and her classmates engaged in this stupid silent war of buying the newest shiniest products, let it be make-up or dresses. Ginny didn't have the money to worry about that anyway.

Then, in her fourth year, she became friends with Luna Lovegood. The ravenclaw girl had a way of doing things that was always her own, and being feminine was part of that. Luna wore pendants that she liked, she adorned her hair with feathers with enchanting colors because it was fun, and she wore the rings that her mother had worn before her to feel the late Pandora closer. So Ginny started thinking that maybe she could do a little braid with her hair just because, and paint her nails Harpies' green because it relaxed her and there was nothing wrong with that, it didn't make her weaker, it didn't make her frivolous, it made her Ginny.

When the time came, she decided that she wouldn't mind calling her daughter after her loyal, brave, and incredibly smart friend. And she decided that she wanted to call her little girl after Luna so that she could always remember that there was nothing wrong or complex or predefined in being a girl, it just meant being herself.