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There’s something about being the Chosen One’s ex. People turn to look to you for guidance, but they also leave you the bloody hell alone. They turn eyes to you but they also cower back when the cold fire of anger or loss burns in your eyes. Or maybe people have always been wary of her, but now they realize they should stay away from her. It’s useful, either way, because it leaves her alone in the Room of Requirement even when it’s almost full to bursting with hideaways.
Which is perfect. All Ginny wants to be is alone right now. Her hand splays over the growing bump that’s barely hidden by her robes now. No, that’s not right. She’s not entirely alone. She’ll never be entirely alone ever again. Not for many, many years.
It warms her cold soul.
How many months has it been since August? Six? She’s six months along now. That sounds right. Or maybe it’s less. Maybe January isn’t the sixth month since she fell pregnant. Maybe it’s not the lack of safety that makes her pregnancy feel so small and uncertain, maybe she’s just not as far along as she thinks. Maybe it’s not Harry’s, born that last night of their time together at the Burrow. Maybe it’s something else.
The Death Eaters who have made their homes at Hogwarts aren’t the most upstanding people. Amycus alone is happy to put any blood traitor in their supposed place. And that’s not including the – visitors.
Ginny’s a protector though, and there’s something thrilling about – fighting for her life that lights a fire inside of her that had long been doused.
She’s been so cold. So cold and lonely for so long. Ever since Tom – that diary.
She’s felt so wrong since she was eleven years old, and only now is she starting to learn what it feels like to live again.
She hadn’t meant for it to end like this but – she can’t find it within herself to be upset with how fate played out. She really has no one to blame but herself. Chasing that flame has left a little seed of life growing within her.
They should be calling her a coward, those who follow her and look up to her. They should turn all their attention to Neville. He’s the one who still goes out and confronts the Death Eaters. He’s the one who takes the hexes and torture in place of the first years. He’s the protector. She is the selfish one.
Her hand curls into a fist over her baby bump. Lavender has offered her painless ways to remove the ‘problem’, saying young women should have a choice when it came to such events. Parvati has told her all the dangers that can face a mother and her child when she is tortured while pregnant. Neville sits with her, his presence hovering as they whisper about how it’s safer for her to stay hidden now. “Who knows what they would do to you if they find out you’re with Harry’s child Gin. It’s better you stay here.” They’re trying to be helpful. They don’t understand.
None of them understand.
She doesn’t care about herself. It’s not about her. It hasn’t been about her in months – in years! Ginny’s never known who she really is, never really known what it feels like to feel as though her body is her own. More than that – it gives her a reason to live. It gives her a reason not to throw herself into every battle, it keeps her from tossing herself away in defense of others.
She has to stay alive for her baby.
She has to live – beyond this day, this week, this war.
The world is dangerous and screaming at her to be smarter than this but she won’t. She refuses to listen to anyone else but her in this matter.
Her hand flattens again against her stomach and there – there is a little kick. Whenever she doubts, her little baby reminds her with his fluttering kicks that he is alive and he needs her. He needs her. And she needs him.
“Mummy will fight for you baby.” Ginny whispered softly. “Even if she’s fighting alone.”
She’s sixteen and her schoolmates are fighting a war.
She’s sixteen and she wants nothing more than to live so she can meet her baby on the other side of this war.
She–
“I’ll live for you.”