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Ginny regarded the hydrangea bush drooping in the shade of the tidy house on one side of the well-manicured garden path. The air was slow and hot around her, and the sides of her ankles felt swollen against the sweat-dampened leather of her brown oxford shoes. A cold glass of lemonade and a tray of perfect biscuits…such generous hospitality would be very much in keeping with what things looked like outside. Ginny almost dared to hope as she rapped on the door.
There was no response.
Tinny sounds—first voices, then music—told Ginny that the woman to whom she was paying a visit was in fact within the house. She knocked harder, called out, and knocked harder still. “Mrs. Dursley! Petunia! Come on out here! Open up!”
The door suddenly swung outward to reveal a sour-faced woman in a flowered dress, which was buttoned up to the top of her thin neck. Simply looking back at her made Ginny feel like she was choking. “Why on earth didn’t you ring the doorbell like a normal human being, instead of making this scene outside my house? Whatever you’re selling, I’m sure I have quite enough!”
Her dad had explained the “Door/Bell”; it had sounded like two things she already knew about, so she hadn’t paid close attention. Choking or otherwise, Ginny met the woman’s gaze firmly before passing her eyes from the doorstep to the garden path, and then back to Petunia. “Wrong of me, indeed, to raise such a ruckus. You’d best let me in, then…the neighbors will talk.” Without waiting for permission, she entered the home and sat on the sofa, resisting with difficulty the urge to prop her feet on the end table.
“Who are you?” The woman’s thin eyebrows were arched, her gaze narrowed; she remained standing, as though attempting to claim the upper hand.
“I’m Ginny. Ginny Potter.” Petunia’s pale eyes widened, her mouth briefly opened to a puckered ‘O’ before she closed it like a door. “And you’ve known that surname longer than I have.”
“What do you want? Did he send you here? Is he coming also?”
“My husband is otherwise occupied. He sends his regrets.” A lie, of course, but Petunia needn’t know that, any more than Harry needed to know of this visit, unless it went well. Which…didn’t seem to be spelled out in the tea leaves, Ginny realized, thinking wistfully of the lemonade that clearly would not be offered.
“What do you want?”
“Did Harry tell you we’re expecting a baby?” The woman’s look was confirmation that he hadn’t-–the surprise of the news, but without the joy that had, in Ginny’s experience, been a universal part of it. The joy that the idea of Harry’s child deserved.
“Well, we are. We’re having a boy. And so…I was hoping, Mrs. Dursley, that you could tell me a bit about your nephew as a child, what he was like. I’d like to know what toys Harry fancied—maybe have one, for the baby. Mum can tell us loads about how I was as a child, but…well, he’ll be getting bits of himself from both of us, now, won’t he?”
Petunia said nothing, looking at Ginny instead as though she’d trampled her hydrangeas and put her feet up after all. Gamely, Ginny attempted to wrap her query up.
“I know you two aren’t close, but…my husband doesn’t remember some things, and I was hoping, perhaps, that you might.”
“Oh I remember some things,” said Petunia, her voice dripping with complaint. “Your husband was dropped on our doorstep without anyone asking, when I had my own child to raise and my husband could barely provide for the three of us. Day in, day out, we needed to take care of him, from baby food and nappies to school uniforms and lunch money. You’re asking me what toys he fancied, and I’m telling you right now, he’s lucky that he ate.”
A part of Ginny had been prepared for this. She had intimated something like it from Harry’s silences and evasions and from Ron’s nervous look when she’d asked him for the address. It was one of many things they hadn’t talked about yet very much: she’d figured they’d have time, plenty of time, to discuss. But over the months, as her stomach had swollen, the need became stronger to know just a bit more . Every day, what she felt for the life within her womb helped her better understand the love she’d always seen between her husband and his godson, the love she herself felt for her own perfect niece, and it whispered to her that surely, things could not have been that bad . A baby, any baby, could only be loved—and it hadn’t been just any baby in that house: it had been Harry. Ginny realized that she had been a bit of a fool in her optimism. But what this woman had been was a thing Ginny had no words for.
“I didn’t ask you what he ate. Did he play?”
Petunia gaped again and crossed her thin arms over her chest. “We had enough to get on with, if you please, without entertaining him. Letting him play enough was the least of our concerns—he could have been levitating toy cars and…making Dudley’s toy soldiers fight, and…goodness knows what else, if we hadn’t…”
“If you hadn’t what?” asked Ginny, in a dangerous tone.
“...discouraged him,” answered Petunia, voice a little quieter but her eyes still defiant. “We swore, when we took him in, that we’d raise a normal boy.”
“Right,” replied Ginny, standing suddenly from the couch despite her changing body’s protests. “Listen. This is how it’s gonna work now.”
“I’m going to continue making him utterly, stupidly, incandescently happy, and my side of the family will watch his children grow.” She held up one hand as though to stave off any argument, then continued speaking.
“And if you get any part of it, it is only because I want you to see that none of your shite worked.” She paused and forced Petunia’s gaze.
“He is magic. He is loved. He deserved more than the little you gave him, and he became a better person than you have a right to know.”
Ginny almost spat the last words before she turned away, decisively, a hot prickly feeling at the back of her eyes. She was almost at the door when a small voice said, “Wait.”
Petunia left the living room and Ginny heard her footsteps climbing the stairs. It wasn’t just politeness that kept her from leaving without being dismissed: she stood dumbly at the threshold, half wondering which part of the house she should hex first. A minute passed and Petunia reappeared with a small bundle of faded yellow cloth. She held it out to Ginny, eyes first raised, then briefly downcast, then tentatively raised again.
“What’s this?”
“His baby blanket. He…he was wrapped in it, that night.”
Ginny’s heart sank and clutched as she took the blanket—impossibly simple, impossibly light-–imagining a mother’s touch upon it for the last time. She felt her own hands shake a little as she tightened her grip, then looked up into Petunia’s eyes, eyes so unlike her nephew’s. Her husband’s aunt, his mother’s sister. Some relation to her child.
“I’m not sure if this changes anything.”
Petunia shook her head slightly. “I don’t suppose it does.”
Ginny closed the door behind her, aware more than ever of the new life that she carried. She left the garden path and set her steps towards Harry and home, stroking the blanket held firm against her chest.