Chapter Text
“How did this happen?” whispered Harry, his voice steely and cold, anger simmering in his eyes and the hair standing up on his arms. “How did we not notice, Gi-“
“I have been saying for months Harry,” snapped Ginny, glaring at her husband as she stood, arms crossed over her chest, in front of the kitchen sink. Their daughter, her little Moonflower, their Lily was in the living room crying into Al’s chest. She could hear the sobbing and Al’s faint whisperings of comfort from where she stood.
Never before had she felt like she had seen Percy in either of her sons, but here she was surprised again by the gentleness her son was giving their daughter like her older brother did for her. She wished suddenly that she could crawl into his old bed at the Burrow, the August siblings reunited in the middle of a sleepless night.
Harry nodded, bringing Ginny back to the kitchen as he fell into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, rubbing his long ago faded scar. Ginny wanted nothing more than to reach out to him, to rub her own fingers over the too familiar shape of the mark and give him some comfort…but it was like her feet were glued to the floor.
“I told you something was wrong and you told me that she was fine, that it was basically growing pains,” said Ginny, remembering all of the conversations they’d had in the last handful of months, since Christmastime. “Luna and Susan also said something and you didn’t want to accept that something could be wrong with Lily.”
Harry gritted his teeth, and Ginny faced his anger, knowing…knowing that she was right. Over the years, they only ended up fighting about one thing, and that one thing was their children.
It all boiled down to Ginny thinking that Harry was too soft on Lily and Harry thinking that Ginny was too soft on the boys.
“She’s always been yours Gin.”
Ginny watched as a few silent tears started to trail down his face, down his cheeks and into his beard. He never seemed to realize that it was all out of necessity, Lily had always been with her because Harry had left them together.
She didn’t always blame him for it, his job was demanding, even more so before he became the boss, but even then there had been times where it was just them girls against the world. Ginny didn’t want it to be like that, she loved her husband, her sons, the family she had grown and cared for and loved since the moment she met them, but then came Lily.
She wasn’t anything less than her older brothers, than any of her cousins, but she had captured all of their attention since the moment she was born and that hadn’t changed since.
And it disappointed Ginny in a way that she would never voice out loud. She knew how isolating it was being one of two women in a house full of boys.
Even now she wanted a sister to lean on.
“We’ll need to talk to Parvati, and Hermione too, we can’t do anything without her guidance. This will have to be hidden from the press but I know you can handle that and I’ll make sure it doesn’t get spread through the others at the Ministry-“
“Harry,” said Ginny, once again feeling annoyed at her husband.
“See if we can get a jury more in line with us than-“
“Harry.”
“-and also there will need to be something done about what happened to the other kid, sadly Dean is on leave right now-“
“Harry James Potter,” snapped Ginny, and Harry turned to look at her, words still on the tip of his tongue.
“What?”
“Lily needs her dad Harry, not the Head Auror, and if you can’t be that for her right now then you need to go,” said Ginny, and as if to put her words in motion, she finally turned around to fill the kettle.
It took one, two, three seconds, and then his arms were around her waist, pulling her tight to his chest. She felt her own tears mix in with his silent sobs, the pair of them trying to come to terms of the attack, of Lily’s words spoken in McGonagall’s office.
Their little girl had been raped.
The pair of them knew that kind of helplessness, knew that kind of pain where nothing seemed to be in control. But what had been the worst of it was how everyone knew what happened to their daughter.
She hadn’t had the chance to say the words first, to admit to her attack because someone else had for her. It was just as bad as the diary, as the beetle spying in a window. Sixteen for the pair of them had been a war of outside forces, sixteen for their Lily had been a war of mistrust and her loss of agency.
“I just want to protect her Ginny,” whispered Harry, his voice low and sad, like in the short summer months after the funerals. This had all started with a funeral too, with that dreadful man and even more horrible woman. Ginny remembered Lily’s wide eyes when she had told Petunia that she knew where Harry once slept in that house.
She couldn’t imagine what her daughter would’ve thought of the barred widows and food slot on the smallest bedroom, the outside lock being the worst of it.
It made her remember the old adage her parents used to say “all children are precious”.
“What should we tell the family?”
“Nothing today.”
Today, tonight, they were going to order takeout, they would eat together in the kitchen. Listening to Al’s stories of training and then listen to the wireless for news on James and Puddlemere. Then at bedtime, they would tuck Lily into her own bed, knowing she would end up in theirs soon enough.
Ginny didn’t want her out of earshot, really out of sight, out of their home. She wanted to tie her against her body and carry her like when she was a baby, the familiar warm weight of her daughter her only tether to the world.
But that would be crazy right now.
It would be too much, it would be controlling and ridiculous, it was her own fears manifesting. She could hear the whispers of that cold cruel voice in the back of her mind, right at her ears, “give in, you’re weak!”
Tom was going to haunt her tonight if she even managed to get her eyes closed.
“Ginny?”
“Can you call for a carry out? Anything the kids want,” said Ginny, as she finally started the task of making tea. Something about doing it all the Muggle way just made it taste better in her opinion, it was the only thing her own mum made without magic.
“Sure.” said Harry, seeming to realize that she just needed a moment to herself, to live in her own memories of hurt and pain. “Sure.”
Tom whispered in the back of her mind, calling her weak, calling her a child, but Ginny just set herself to the task of making tea. She got a few hidden glimpses into the living room, Lily without her glasses, her head resting on Al’s shoulder. She looked so small, like the day she was born, and Ginny felt a familiar ache in her lower back like a contraction.
She never knew that this was what she had in store when it came to motherhood, she didn’t know it would be this kind of aching love and heart wenching pain all at once.
“You can’t protect her!”
“Bite me!”
Ginny felt a sudden thudding sensation in her heart, as if she had been shocked. A roar of anger and fear and love all at once pushing her forward, a lion roaring, a mother bear chasing after her cubs, the wolf on the hunt for her children.
She was going to be everything to her daughter as she struggled over this pain, it was a promise she had to keep.
She would be what her mother hadn’t been with Tom.