We Shine Like Stars. (Fic, GW/LL, SS/HP, NC17 7/7)
Title: We Shine Like Stars 7
Author: Cluegirl
Type: Fiction
Length: Novella -- words.
Main character or Pairing: Ginny/Luna, with a side of Harry/Snape.
Rating: NC17
Canon compliancy: Shooting for canon compliance. If you squint.
Disclaimer: All HP characters are the sole intellectual property of JKRowling, whom I am not. Therefore, I make no profit from this use.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of childbirth, but aside from that, it's pretty vanilla.
Summary: Harry is not the only one who must struggle for a sense of self against the expectations of others; Ginny's dreams are heavily mortgaged too. It takes a brush with tragedy to alert her to the very real possibility of losing all, if she does not take matters into her own hands.
Cards Drawn: The Empress, the Ace of Swords reversed, and Strength.
Card Interpretation: The Empress -- satisfaction, a competent woman spinning the future from the present.
The Ace of Swords, reversed -- Words, or the threat of them, used to destroy. A silence that is destructive. A refusal, or inability to speak up when words are needed
Strength -- Power, energy, a calm and soothing conviction. Fearlessness.
Author Notes: Thanks to the League of Extraordinary Betae: Jenna_Thorn, emessann, amanuensis1, and kaiz. And also, my plot doctor, the ever-patient aquila_dominus. The title of the song, and the verses used at the chapter heads come from the song Bullet, by Covenant.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 2a, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
~* Wine, and the Architecture of Reciprocity *~
Kisses on the dance floor in my past: I need some comfort just like you
They nearly lost Snape at the ceremonial robes. Apparently, he found the semiotic link to the magical lineage of the lost priesthood of Ys less than compelling in the face of looking rather silly for a few hours.
Luckily though, he'd already submitted (albeit with poor grace,) to taking the ayahuasca-laced potion, so between Harry working on him, and Ginny persuading Luna to cut a corner or two, the four of them had quickly reached a compromise of nudity all round. Harry stripped down first -- by way of enticement, Ginny felt certain as she watched his clothes peel free of his summer-damp skin, and fall, soundless as moth's wings in darkened corners. He was glorious; still slight from childhood’s hunger, and still too thin, for appetite hadn't yet replaced the tone his grieving had stolen, but oh, he was as sleek and fine as a panther in that peach-golden skin of his.
Severus watched him no less hungrily, a flush rising on his sallow cheeks that had nothing to do with outrage. By the time Harry was bare and stretching luxuriously to the sultry night, Severus wasn't the only one thoroughly bewitched. Ginny's fingers itched to stroke along the velvet of Harry's shoulder, to taste the back of his neck, and count the moans to be found between the bones of his spine... to climb into his skin and roll herself around in all of him. It was not the potion's amplification of her peaking hormones, either; there had always been a pure, breathtaking light in Harry, the more astounding for the fact that he just never seemed to see it for himself. His beauty was like his sweetness: unconscious, unpracticed, and as purely natural as his irreverent hair and quick, delicate hands.
And then there was Severus, revealed slowly as his robes dropped away, tall, pale, and spare -- a crescent moon slipping free of bleak woolen clouds. His scars were faint texture in the low, quiet light, blending with his pale, curling hair to somehow soften Severus from his normal, tight-buttoned and brittle rigidity to a softer, more pliant sort of intensity that Ginny supposed she must always have sensed was underneath it. He was not handsome, but somehow he made the word laughable, as though notions of aesthetic loveliness were cheap, and hollow next to a gravity like his. It was awesome. It was intimidating.
But then Harry, with an eyeroll and smile, reached into Severus' mist-pale hair, and gently pulled his face out of hiding for a kiss. His response could hardly be called submission; his hands, as they rose to cradle Harry's face, were nothing short of possessive. It was hard not to wonder what it would feel like to stand at the center of such blazing focus, but there was a part of Ginny that was perfectly content to watch as he devoured the mouth of the only man she had ever loved.
Somehow, entwined so closely, they were exquisite.
"Fire and water," Luna murmured beside her, reaching up to slide Ginny's blouse off her shoulders. "They're like a storm at sea, aren't they?"
"Yes," she heard herself breathe as Severus' eyes came open and fixed on hers like a dare.
Second thoughts? that look seemed to say, do you envy me this? Do you hate me for taking what should be yours?
And surprisingly, Ginny found she wasn't actually jealous -- or rather, that the slight jealousy she did feel was nothing compared to the luxuriant voyeurism of watching what they did to each other. She replied with a smile that felt cat-smug and daring, and shimmied her skirt and knickers down over her hips together.
“They are,” she said, hollowing her back as Luna’s cool fingers pulled at the catch of her brassiere. A click, and the bands went slack and the same, shockingly lush touch tickled them off her shoulders, and away. She gave a shiver, and a gasp loudly desperate in the candlelit gloom, and guided Luna’s hands up from her belly, to cup her breasts.
Harry and Severus both stared, rapt, erect, and distracted. Smug, she craned her neck to Luna for a kiss, and murmured. “What next, love? Do we just make a pile?” She glanced at the carpet, and the pile of pillows that surrounded a wide, shallow copper cauldron. Beside it lay a small collection - a bottle of something deeply red, a smaller bottle that looked like oil, a cordial glass, a plate of cakes, all of their wands, arranged in a square. One candle - wide and yellow and smelling of honey, with two wicks, -- took pride of place in the center of the dish, suggestively vertical in Ginny’s aroused state.
Luna’s smile ghosted along the cords of Ginny’s neck as she shook her head. “Not just yet,” she smiled, gently kneading Ginny’s nipples as Severus and Harry both prowled nearer. Each of them reached for one of Ginny’s hands, and Luna pressed her foreward from behind. “Offerings first,” she said.
Ah. She knew that. Ginny took a shaky breath, trying to think through the haze of building desire inside her. She’d read the ritual, talked it over with the rest - the risks, which parts they could not afford to get wrong. It was just so hard to keep that in mind when she wanted so very fiercely.
Ginny allowed the three of them to steer her to the copper bowl, then Severus and Harry dropped to kneel on the other side of it - elegant contrast as they reached for the candle, and lifted it together. Luna nudged her forward, and Ginny stepped into the cauldron as she reached out to wrap both hands around the heavy wax pillar. A shock coursed through her as she did so, and she could not bite back a groan at the sudden, brief feeling of connection.
She looked down at the two men, crouched and patient, with hungry eyes and eager cocks. Supplicants, but hardly humble. Awaiting her permission, but by no means submissive to her desire. Beautiful, but in no way hers - then again, perhaps they were. Ginny smiled, lowered her candle, and bent to sample their kiss-softened lips. Harry was shy, and needed her tongue to coax him out, but Severus was bold enough for both of them. And his tongue was anything but sharp.
She grinned wickedly as she released him. Not for her, the meal, but oh, that little taste was fine!
“What do you want?” Luna’s voice seemed to float from the darkness all around, tactile as the curling smoke from incense Ginny hadn’t noticed her lighting. But there was a strange, double tone to it, as though another, much more vast voice whispered just behind the familiar tone.
“A son of my blood,” the wizards answered in concert, and Ginny could almost feel it as they linked their fingers in the hollow between them. “Nurtured within your vessel.”
Ginny flexed her fingers around the candle, and rode out the echoing spasm those words aroused in her. Oh, that potion was potent - her knees were watery already, and they’d not hardly begun!
“And what do you offer me in trade?” the Not-Luna voice demanded, louder and closer now. Ginny imagined she could feel a chill breath against the back of her head.
Before her, Harry swallowed, his free hand twitching just the tiniest bit toward their gathered wands, before Severus’ finger-clench stopped him. Instead, he caught the wine and goblet, and passed them to Severus, before taking up one of the cakes, and rising to his knees.
“The work of my hands,” he said the words to Ginny, eyes intent and nervy upon her face as he offered the cake to her lips.
She bit, tasted honey and comfrey, poppyseed, oats, and sweet almonds. The crumbs tickled down between her breasts, and over her belly, each one a tiny, fizzling star. She licked Harry’s finger, suckled and bit on his thumb when she finished the treat, and was smug at the shaky breath he had to take to steady himself.
“What more?” The cold behind her moved closer.
Harry’s glance almost flickered aside, but then he set his jaw. “I offer you my eyes.”
“Done.” The reply came at once, and Harry’s green eyes clouded over at once - iris, pupil and sclera gone beneath an ink-stain swirl. Harry gasped, Severus made a tight, hurt noise in his throat, but placed a steadying hand on his lover’s hip as he too, rose to his knees.
“And you?” that couldn’t be mistaken for Luna anymore. Ginny tried not to think about where her lover had gone while the owner of that vast, cold voice was speaking. “What do you offer me?”
“The work of my hands,” he replied in turn, lifting the cordial glass to Ginny’s lips. It was fiery and fierce on her tongue, redolent with apple, spice, and something exotic, woody, and bitter. She drank it down, slipped her tongue deep into the cup’s throat, to catch the last drops. Snape’s eyes were hot on her own when she smirked at him.
But then he returned the smirk, and raised the bottle, to pour the rest of the liquor over her heated, sensitive breasts. She gasped, shuddered under the blaze of sensation, and had she not had the candle to hold, would have had to clutch at his shoulders.
The voice was unimpressed. “What more?”
Harry’s hand sought blindly just missing Severus’ elbow. Severus glanced at him took his hand, and leveled a look at Ginny that held no more merriment. “I offer you my voice.”
“No-“ Harry began.
Too late. “Done,” the voice answered.
“Shhh,” Ginny said over Harry’s protest. “It’ll be all right, Harry. It will.”
“Gin…” he said, but then Severus reached out and gathered him in, and silenced whatever desperate fear he had been about to voice beneath his own soundless lips. Ginny watched as restraint turned to comfort, and comfort to devouring passion between them.
Oh, she wanted Luna just now… Ginny sank to her knees in the puddle of spicy red, gasping as the liquor brushed the folds of her sex with fire. She wanted to spread herself, to stroke the welling heat at her center, to delve deep within as she watched those two lithe bodies straining each into each. She wanted to be touched, and clutched, and held so desperately as that - each curve of her body fitted to the hollow of another, so that only the gentlest rocking could push one in reach of release…
Hands closed over her shoulders; Luna’s by the size, but so hard and cold, her mind insisted they had to be bone. “And you, Lady?” the voice rumbled in her ear like a lover as she watched Severus urge Harry down into the nest of pillows. “Will you give to me what most you love?”
Ginny shivered as unbidden sensations flooded her mind. Jamie’s milky baby grin. The giggle Harry always gave when she tickled that spot on his back. The pillow of her mother’s embrace. Pride in her father’s eyes. Severus’ grudging welcome. Ronnie's offhand compliments. Milly’s hardnosed ribbing. Luna sleeping, golden and sweet in the morning light; Luna reading, ink-smudged and beautiful; Luna kissing her, blue eyes dreamy, soft lips welcoming her home…
She shook her head, and set her shoulders. “No,” she told whatever was asking. “That’s not mine to give.”
The chill descended a bit more, and Ginny had the sense of great, dark wings coiling around her copper bowl. “Then will you give to me what most you fear?”
Red eyes in a pallid, serpentine face. Golden hairs, caught bloody on the window of a train. A boy who walked away from her and never came back. A mother who died for love. A child who grew in darkness, and never understood that sunlight came for free…
“No,” she said, relieved when her voice didn’t shake. “That fear is dead.”
Half-shadowed, Harry made a desperate noise, one leg arching high over Severus’ back. His toes were flexed out wide, as though grasping in the dark.
One wick of the candle sprang alight.
“Then will you give me your name?” the voice asked, and Ginny imagined she heard a little, wheedling note come into it now.
But she knew better than that. Names were magic; names were control; names were power. She smiled, and shook her head. “Of course not. My name won’t fit you.”
The hands on her shoulder clenched. “Then what do you offer, to stop me keeping all I have taken, Lady?”
All he had taken; Harry’s eyes. Severus’ voice. Luna’s body. Could a single child be worth such loss?
Harry groaned again, this one a long, weaving sound. Sweat gleamed along the slope of Severus’ shoulder and hip as he surged down, down, down… then shuddered and was still.
The candle’s second wick took flame, blazed up bright and warm beneath her chin, and suddenly, Ginny knew. From the hollow of her empty belly, to the weighty crown of her head, she knew what she had to tempt the voice.
“Life,” she said, watching Severus collapse into Harry’s embrace, the candle light stroking back and forth along his ribs as he gasped soundless for breath. She leaned her head to the side, rubbed her cheek along the cold, bony fingers. “I offer you life. Love, Home, Family -- a place in my heart, and at my hearth, until the end. I offer you birth, if you will have it.”
“Done,” the voice said, warm and soft as a kiss in her ear.
And in the cradle of her hands, the twin flames blazed like stars.
~* Press, Promises, and the Naming of Cats *~
Drowning in the flood of morning light: I'm only human just like you
“No?” Harry repeated, and for a moment, his eyes blazed with hurt and confusion. Then he shuttered it away, buried it under a veil of unreadable, unassailable calm, and he nodded, rolling away from her in the bed, and staring at the morning-bright ceiling. “All… all right then.”
Ginny had to chew on her lips to hold back the smile. Her heart was hammering like a bird under her ribs, and the rush of adrenaline that followed Harry’s unexpected proposal had her just about ready to giggle like a loon anyhow. But it wouldn’t do to give in. Not with poor Harry looking so crushed. “I expect you’d like to know why I’m not going to marry you,” she prompted.
Harry foiled her there though, and offered only a sidelong glance, and a wry smile. “You don’t have to explain yourself, Ginny,” he said, and drew the duvet up to cover his chest. “I know I’m not-“
“Wrong,” she countered, and rolled onto her side to kick him in the ankle. “You are good husband potential. You’re kind, and generous, and honest and loving, and all those things I’d want to see in the father of my children. And that’s not even coming near the fact that you’re richer than Midas, and extremely easy on the eyes. Now that you’ve survived the worst grudge-match of our age, you can be pretty much summed up with the words “Bloody Fine Catch,” in fact.” She poked him in the armpit. “Next guess?”
His brow clouded as he flinched away from her tickle; a ghost of the stormy, volatile Harry from their school years, but he quelled it with a deep breath, and sat up in the bed. The duvet puddled around his hips, revealing a distracting trail of hair below his navel, but as usual, Harry was completely oblivious to his own beauty. And as usual, Ginny had to firmly quash the urge to touch, and help him see what she did in him.
“It wasn’t fair of me to ask you to wait,” he said, voice low and defeated. “I’ve… look, Neville told me some of what happened that year I was gone, and -“ he turned to face her, reached under the pillows for Ginny’s hand. She let him catch it. “We both changed that year. Nobody can deny that, and Luna’s the one who stood by you while-“
Ginny cut him off with a sigh, and a roll of her eyes. “Wrong. Luna spent half that year in the Malfoy’s basement, Harry.” She gave his fingers a squeeze, and used the leverage of his grip to hike herself up a little higher against the pillows. For as grim and tricksy as Grimmauld Place could be, she had to admit that its beds were the very definition of luxury. Once you got the doxies out, that is.
“I do love Luna, yes,” Ginny informed Harry with a level stare. “And yes, she is going to be a part of my life, just like Snape’s going to be a part of yours, and don’t you even start to deny that!” She warned as he opened his mouth.
He shut it with a clack, but at least he was intrigued, goaded into actually listening to her, instead of presuming the worst. Ginny turned her palm to his, and laced their fingers together against the pillows. “Harry, the only person I’ve ever met who loves as much as you, is Luna. And the only person who loves as fiercely as you is Severus.” He blushed, and looked away, but she wouldn’t have it. She poked his side again to make him look back. “Harry, there’s been a gravity between you and Severus Snape from the first moment you met, and everybody knew it! Yes, you had debts, and fears, and old wounds to work out between you, but you’ve done that! And now that force has finally taken the shape of love, rather than hatred, how could I be jealous of it? You deserve his love, Harry. I can’t begrudge you that. Who else in the world could have done for him what you have?”
Blushing, he ran his free hand through his hair, and turned his pillow-head into an even more shocking mess. “It was no more than he deserved,” Harry murmured. “After all he’d had to do, all he sacrificed to try and…”
“That’s right,” she agreed, and gave his hand a squeeze, “but you and I both know that wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been for you. You forgave him before anybody else did. You decided that he deserved another chance. If you hadn’t stood up for him - Merlin, Harry, you brought him back to life! I’m not so egotistical as to think I have the right to interfere with that!”
“But I love you too, Ginny,” he said, and gazed hopelessly through his fringe. “I always wanted to have a life with you.”
Which wasn’t exactly true, and both of them knew it, but Ginny was feeling generous, so she let the small lie pass. Shaking her hand free of his, she reached up to brush the too-long hair out of his eyes, then trailed her fingers down to cup his cheek. “Then that, is what you should have asked me for, you idiot.”
He blinked, was adorable, and did not understand.
Ginny sat up, grabbed his shoulders, and forced him to look at her square on. “Harry Potter, you don’t have to ask me to love you,” she said, and gave him a little shake. “I already do love you, and the fact that I love Luna doesn’t in any way lessen it!” His eyebrow quirked, Snape-like, and she quieted him with another shake. “And you don’t need to ask me to make a family with you… someday, because I’m already doing that.” She blushed to confess it, but it was truth. She had been imagining what their children might look like for months since the final battle.
She couldn’t decide whether she’d sooner see her own red hair above the lovely green eyes she expected their children to have, or the wind-tousle raven silk of Harry’s. Even when she was brushing up on her contraceptive spells to be sure there were no accidental endings to her Quidditch career, she knew that she loved the very idea.
“Then I guess I don’t understand,” Harry admitted at last, dislodging her hand as he shook his head. “If you’re not breaking it off with me, then why won’t you marry me?”
“Because I don’t need to,” Ginny replied, and a part of her rang with the truth of it. “Because we don’t need a ring to be what we already are. And we don’t need a piece of paper, or a change of names to make room for each other in our lives.” His startled blink encouraged her, and the ghost of a smile tickled his lips. Ginny met it with one of her own.
“I’ve just now learned to like being Ginevra Weasley. It’s taken me years to learn how to make that name into my own, and not just a platform for what my mum and dad expected of me - I know you know what it’s like; people thinking they can put their hopes and dreams on you without so much as offering you a choice, or sometimes even telling you about them.”
He nodded, and now his eyes were thoughtful. “This isn’t going to make the press leave you alone,” he warned. “You realize that, don’t you?”
She laughed. “I intend to make the press sit up and take notice of me without the benefit of your last name, thank you, Mr. Potter! Quidditch stars get much better press than National Heroes, after all!”
And by the time they finished laughing at that, it was somehow all right again. Mum would pester and disapprove; Ron would smirk, and wind Hermione up about her matchmaking; and Daddy would watch to make sure she was happy, and give her his blessing when he was sure Mum wouldn’t overhear it.
They would go on. Whatever came about, whatever challenge arose, Ginny was certain they could be a match for it - with Luna’s insight, Snape’s intelligence, and her and Harry’s well-matched stubbornness, what in the world could stop them?
“So…” she stretched, inwardly smug to note how his eyes followed the swell of her breast as it slipped from under the covers. “You ready for breakfast, or are we going to keep beating this dead thestral?”
But as it turned out, Harry wasn’t interested in tea, or conversation at all just then. Which was actually just fine by Ginny.
~* Albus Severus, Enter Stage Right *~
Do you hear the city waking up?: I will survive and so will you
"Where... Hah! Where are they?" Ginny gritted through her teeth, gripping Luna's hand fiercely, and trying to breathe through the contraction without sounding like the Hogwarts Express on a steep hill. "If Harry's fainted again, I swear to Merlin, I'll -- Aaaaowwww!!!"
"Breathe, dear." How Molly managed to speak with her lips pursed that tight, Ginny didn't know. She'd promised the second time would be easier. Had promised that it wouldn't be so bad, now she knew what she could expect, and her body had already done the flexing it needed to do when Jamie had been born.
The only thing stopping Ginny calling her mother a bald-faced liar was the empirical evidence of her own existence as seventh-born child, and the rather sensitive place that Mum had her fingers just then.
Luckily, Luna was there to distract her. "I think they're still arguing, actually."
"Arguing," Ginny huffed. "Imagine. What is it this time?"
"The baby's name, I think," Luna's chuckle cooled the sweat-slick hair at Ginny's temple. "The Professor wants to name him after Headmaster Dumbledore, but Harry's pitching for tradition."
Molly snorted loudly, "Funny sort of tradition, if you ask me. Naming a child after-"
"His father," Ginny gritted in reply. "Lots of parents do it that way, Mum. And from the way this kid's shoving about on my bladder right now, he doesn't seem much like a Dumbledore kind of boy, really!" She rolled her head back between Luna's breasts, and stared pleadingly at her lover. "Are you sure you couldn't get them in here? Because if all they're doing is more fighting, I could really enjoy kicking the both of them right now..."
"Breathe, dear..." Ginny huffed some more, but didn't relinquish her stare.
Luna smoothed Ginny's hair back from her brow, and smiled like an unruffled angel. "Well, I can see if the Professor is done throwing up if you like. Harry was holding his hair in the loo when I checked in on them earlier."
"What, still? He hasn't eaten anything since last time!" Ginny arched into a contraction, and groaned through her teeth. "What's he got left to throw up, his bung-"
"GINEVRA!"
"BOOTSOLES!" Ginny yelped, digging her heels into the mattress, and trying in vain to use Luna's arm to leverage her escape. "Bootsoles, Mum! And ow, that hurts!"
"Well, you're not nearly dilated enough yet, is why," Molly replied, smeared and pitiless as she stood upright and wiped her hands on a towel. "You should be focusing on breathing, and relaxing, not plumbing the depths of your locker room vocabulary at a time like this! And in front of your -- no no, James, leave Mummy be, there's a good boy."
"Jamie?" Ginny levered herself up, scrambling to pull her nightdress down. "What is he doing in here?"
The door hadn't opened, had it? How could he have gotten in without her noticing? And yet there he was, the fluffy-haired scamp, peering up from the foot of the bed as his tiny, sticky hand patted at her foot. "Ma!"
"No no, Jamie love," Molly cooed, disengaging the baby's hand as he tried to haul himself up onto the bed, "Mummy's busy, and there isn't room for you to help."
"Ma! Maaaa!" Jamie protested, flopping his rag baby up onto the bed and reaching for Ginny with his free hand.
"Jamie, baby, stay -- ah! Stay down please..." Ginny gasped, writhed under the cramp, but fixed her mother with a gimlet stare. "I thought Hermione was meant to be... watching him! Where's she got to if he's-"
As if in answer, the door burst open, and a flustered Hermione burst in, Hugo propped on one hip, Victoire toddling after, thumb fixed in her mouth. "Well, there's where you went!" She cried, spotting Jamie. "Sorry Ginny, Molly; seems this little boy's trying on his instinctive magic a bit earlier than most."
"He went!" Victoire said around her thumb.
"That's right, he did," Hermione agreed, straightening her robe, and juggling Hugo to the other hip. "I swear, Ginny, one minute he was right there helping me put a plaster on Harry's nose, and the next, there was no sign of him anywhere!"
"He went!"
Mortified and in pain, Ginny pulled Luna's arms up around her head and groaned. "If you love me, you'll kill me now!" Luna only laughed though, and settled Ginny more firmly against her body.
"That's right, Vicky, he did," Molly said, scooping James up into her arms, and kissing the squirming boy. "Well, Jamie can't be blamed for wanting his mum, can he?" She said, carrying him toward the door, and shooing Hermione and Victoire along before her. "Let's see about a bit of a snack to settle everybody's nerves then, shall we?"
"MUM!" Ginny cried, appalled, "You can't just leave me! You're meant to be the midwife!"
"Oh, you're just fine, girl," Molly tossed back. "This bout of cramping's nearly done, and you're still going better than ten minutes between contractions. You hardly need me hanging about while you've got your friend here with you."
And with that, she was gone, closing the door on Hermione's apologetic smile before a word could be said. Ginny said a few words to the closed door anyway.
"Maybe we should try St. Mungo's for the next one," Luna observed once Ginny stopped swearing. "They have this huge tank all full of the amnioserum of rare, deep sea Poeditzys, and they have mothers swim in it during labour, since the harmonic magnetism of the birthing fluid enhances the- ouch, you're squashing my fingers, Ginny!"
"Next one?" Ginny released the digits with a glare, then sighed, and stretched her legs out as, true to her mum's prediction, the contraction gave way to a watery, shaky buzz of aftershocks through her tired muscles. "What in Merlin's shaggy pants makes you imagine I'll be doing this again? Ever? For the rest of ALL of our lives?"
"You wouldn't want to have a baby with me next?" Luna asked, massaging her hand.
Ginny stared, but couldn't tell if Luna's placid, expectant smile was a put-on, or genuine. "It wouldn't take much," she went on when Ginny didn't answer, "to modify the spell we used for Harry and Severus, and I was thinking a pretty little girl might be nice." Luna gently combed her fingers through Ginny's tangled locks, and her smile went that extra, irresistible shade deeper toward perfect beauty. "I'd rather fancy a pretty, red-haired daughter..."
"Yellow-haired," Ginny replied, reaching up to free a loop of curl from behind Luna's ear. She smiled as it, and many of its fellows came slithering down all around her face in a silken whisper that smelled of mysteries, meadowsweet, and printing ink. "Yellow hair is so much prettier..."
Even upside down, weary, and sticky with sweat, the kiss was just as sweet as the first they'd ever shared. Ginny let her smile linger as Luna sat upright again, and twitched her hair back over her shoulder. "Help me stand up?"
Perplexed, Luna released Ginny's shoulders, and asked, "Do you need me to go get something for you?"
"No," Ginny replied, rolling to drop her feet off the edge of the bed. "I just need your help with the stairs if I'm going to kick some sense into the boys heads before the next contraction starts..."
~* Fin *~
Bullet Lyrics
Songwriters: Simonsson, Eskil; Montelius, Joakim;
Time is like a bullet from behind
I run for cover just like you
Time is like a liquid in my hands
I swim for dry land just like you
Time is like a blanket on my face
I try to be here just like you
Time is just a fiction of our minds
I will survive and so will you
We are the only ones right now that are celebrating
And we are joining hands right now
We are the only ones right now that are suffocating
We are the dying ones right now
As the water grinds the stone
We rise and fall
As our ashes turn to dust
We shine like stars
Kisses on the dance floor in my past
I need some comfort just like you
Beating like a bass drum, time goes by
I want the last dance just like you
Drowning in the flood of morning light
I'm only human just like you
Do you hear the city waking up?
I will survive and so will you
We are the ones, the only ones
We are the ones, the dying ones,
We are the ones, the only ones,
We are the ones
We are the only ones right now that are celebrating
We are the dying ones
We are the only ones right now that are dying
And we are joining hands
As the water grinds the stone
We rise and fall
As our ashes turn to dust
We shine like stars.
Author: Cluegirl
Type: Fiction
Length: Novella -- words.
Main character or Pairing: Ginny/Luna, with a side of Harry/Snape.
Rating: NC17
Canon compliancy: Shooting for canon compliance. If you squint.
Disclaimer: All HP characters are the sole intellectual property of JKRowling, whom I am not. Therefore, I make no profit from this use.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of childbirth, but aside from that, it's pretty vanilla.
Summary: Harry is not the only one who must struggle for a sense of self against the expectations of others; Ginny's dreams are heavily mortgaged too. It takes a brush with tragedy to alert her to the very real possibility of losing all, if she does not take matters into her own hands.
Cards Drawn: The Empress, the Ace of Swords reversed, and Strength.
Card Interpretation: The Empress -- satisfaction, a competent woman spinning the future from the present.
The Ace of Swords, reversed -- Words, or the threat of them, used to destroy. A silence that is destructive. A refusal, or inability to speak up when words are needed
Strength -- Power, energy, a calm and soothing conviction. Fearlessness.
Author Notes: Thanks to the League of Extraordinary Betae: Jenna_Thorn, emessann, amanuensis1, and kaiz. And also, my plot doctor, the ever-patient aquila_dominus. The title of the song, and the verses used at the chapter heads come from the song Bullet, by Covenant.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 2a, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
~* Wine, and the Architecture of Reciprocity *~
Kisses on the dance floor in my past: I need some comfort just like you
They nearly lost Snape at the ceremonial robes. Apparently, he found the semiotic link to the magical lineage of the lost priesthood of Ys less than compelling in the face of looking rather silly for a few hours.
Luckily though, he'd already submitted (albeit with poor grace,) to taking the ayahuasca-laced potion, so between Harry working on him, and Ginny persuading Luna to cut a corner or two, the four of them had quickly reached a compromise of nudity all round. Harry stripped down first -- by way of enticement, Ginny felt certain as she watched his clothes peel free of his summer-damp skin, and fall, soundless as moth's wings in darkened corners. He was glorious; still slight from childhood’s hunger, and still too thin, for appetite hadn't yet replaced the tone his grieving had stolen, but oh, he was as sleek and fine as a panther in that peach-golden skin of his.
Severus watched him no less hungrily, a flush rising on his sallow cheeks that had nothing to do with outrage. By the time Harry was bare and stretching luxuriously to the sultry night, Severus wasn't the only one thoroughly bewitched. Ginny's fingers itched to stroke along the velvet of Harry's shoulder, to taste the back of his neck, and count the moans to be found between the bones of his spine... to climb into his skin and roll herself around in all of him. It was not the potion's amplification of her peaking hormones, either; there had always been a pure, breathtaking light in Harry, the more astounding for the fact that he just never seemed to see it for himself. His beauty was like his sweetness: unconscious, unpracticed, and as purely natural as his irreverent hair and quick, delicate hands.
And then there was Severus, revealed slowly as his robes dropped away, tall, pale, and spare -- a crescent moon slipping free of bleak woolen clouds. His scars were faint texture in the low, quiet light, blending with his pale, curling hair to somehow soften Severus from his normal, tight-buttoned and brittle rigidity to a softer, more pliant sort of intensity that Ginny supposed she must always have sensed was underneath it. He was not handsome, but somehow he made the word laughable, as though notions of aesthetic loveliness were cheap, and hollow next to a gravity like his. It was awesome. It was intimidating.
But then Harry, with an eyeroll and smile, reached into Severus' mist-pale hair, and gently pulled his face out of hiding for a kiss. His response could hardly be called submission; his hands, as they rose to cradle Harry's face, were nothing short of possessive. It was hard not to wonder what it would feel like to stand at the center of such blazing focus, but there was a part of Ginny that was perfectly content to watch as he devoured the mouth of the only man she had ever loved.
Somehow, entwined so closely, they were exquisite.
"Fire and water," Luna murmured beside her, reaching up to slide Ginny's blouse off her shoulders. "They're like a storm at sea, aren't they?"
"Yes," she heard herself breathe as Severus' eyes came open and fixed on hers like a dare.
Second thoughts? that look seemed to say, do you envy me this? Do you hate me for taking what should be yours?
And surprisingly, Ginny found she wasn't actually jealous -- or rather, that the slight jealousy she did feel was nothing compared to the luxuriant voyeurism of watching what they did to each other. She replied with a smile that felt cat-smug and daring, and shimmied her skirt and knickers down over her hips together.
“They are,” she said, hollowing her back as Luna’s cool fingers pulled at the catch of her brassiere. A click, and the bands went slack and the same, shockingly lush touch tickled them off her shoulders, and away. She gave a shiver, and a gasp loudly desperate in the candlelit gloom, and guided Luna’s hands up from her belly, to cup her breasts.
Harry and Severus both stared, rapt, erect, and distracted. Smug, she craned her neck to Luna for a kiss, and murmured. “What next, love? Do we just make a pile?” She glanced at the carpet, and the pile of pillows that surrounded a wide, shallow copper cauldron. Beside it lay a small collection - a bottle of something deeply red, a smaller bottle that looked like oil, a cordial glass, a plate of cakes, all of their wands, arranged in a square. One candle - wide and yellow and smelling of honey, with two wicks, -- took pride of place in the center of the dish, suggestively vertical in Ginny’s aroused state.
Luna’s smile ghosted along the cords of Ginny’s neck as she shook her head. “Not just yet,” she smiled, gently kneading Ginny’s nipples as Severus and Harry both prowled nearer. Each of them reached for one of Ginny’s hands, and Luna pressed her foreward from behind. “Offerings first,” she said.
Ah. She knew that. Ginny took a shaky breath, trying to think through the haze of building desire inside her. She’d read the ritual, talked it over with the rest - the risks, which parts they could not afford to get wrong. It was just so hard to keep that in mind when she wanted so very fiercely.
Ginny allowed the three of them to steer her to the copper bowl, then Severus and Harry dropped to kneel on the other side of it - elegant contrast as they reached for the candle, and lifted it together. Luna nudged her forward, and Ginny stepped into the cauldron as she reached out to wrap both hands around the heavy wax pillar. A shock coursed through her as she did so, and she could not bite back a groan at the sudden, brief feeling of connection.
She looked down at the two men, crouched and patient, with hungry eyes and eager cocks. Supplicants, but hardly humble. Awaiting her permission, but by no means submissive to her desire. Beautiful, but in no way hers - then again, perhaps they were. Ginny smiled, lowered her candle, and bent to sample their kiss-softened lips. Harry was shy, and needed her tongue to coax him out, but Severus was bold enough for both of them. And his tongue was anything but sharp.
She grinned wickedly as she released him. Not for her, the meal, but oh, that little taste was fine!
“What do you want?” Luna’s voice seemed to float from the darkness all around, tactile as the curling smoke from incense Ginny hadn’t noticed her lighting. But there was a strange, double tone to it, as though another, much more vast voice whispered just behind the familiar tone.
“A son of my blood,” the wizards answered in concert, and Ginny could almost feel it as they linked their fingers in the hollow between them. “Nurtured within your vessel.”
Ginny flexed her fingers around the candle, and rode out the echoing spasm those words aroused in her. Oh, that potion was potent - her knees were watery already, and they’d not hardly begun!
“And what do you offer me in trade?” the Not-Luna voice demanded, louder and closer now. Ginny imagined she could feel a chill breath against the back of her head.
Before her, Harry swallowed, his free hand twitching just the tiniest bit toward their gathered wands, before Severus’ finger-clench stopped him. Instead, he caught the wine and goblet, and passed them to Severus, before taking up one of the cakes, and rising to his knees.
“The work of my hands,” he said the words to Ginny, eyes intent and nervy upon her face as he offered the cake to her lips.
She bit, tasted honey and comfrey, poppyseed, oats, and sweet almonds. The crumbs tickled down between her breasts, and over her belly, each one a tiny, fizzling star. She licked Harry’s finger, suckled and bit on his thumb when she finished the treat, and was smug at the shaky breath he had to take to steady himself.
“What more?” The cold behind her moved closer.
Harry’s glance almost flickered aside, but then he set his jaw. “I offer you my eyes.”
“Done.” The reply came at once, and Harry’s green eyes clouded over at once - iris, pupil and sclera gone beneath an ink-stain swirl. Harry gasped, Severus made a tight, hurt noise in his throat, but placed a steadying hand on his lover’s hip as he too, rose to his knees.
“And you?” that couldn’t be mistaken for Luna anymore. Ginny tried not to think about where her lover had gone while the owner of that vast, cold voice was speaking. “What do you offer me?”
“The work of my hands,” he replied in turn, lifting the cordial glass to Ginny’s lips. It was fiery and fierce on her tongue, redolent with apple, spice, and something exotic, woody, and bitter. She drank it down, slipped her tongue deep into the cup’s throat, to catch the last drops. Snape’s eyes were hot on her own when she smirked at him.
But then he returned the smirk, and raised the bottle, to pour the rest of the liquor over her heated, sensitive breasts. She gasped, shuddered under the blaze of sensation, and had she not had the candle to hold, would have had to clutch at his shoulders.
The voice was unimpressed. “What more?”
Harry’s hand sought blindly just missing Severus’ elbow. Severus glanced at him took his hand, and leveled a look at Ginny that held no more merriment. “I offer you my voice.”
“No-“ Harry began.
Too late. “Done,” the voice answered.
“Shhh,” Ginny said over Harry’s protest. “It’ll be all right, Harry. It will.”
“Gin…” he said, but then Severus reached out and gathered him in, and silenced whatever desperate fear he had been about to voice beneath his own soundless lips. Ginny watched as restraint turned to comfort, and comfort to devouring passion between them.
Oh, she wanted Luna just now… Ginny sank to her knees in the puddle of spicy red, gasping as the liquor brushed the folds of her sex with fire. She wanted to spread herself, to stroke the welling heat at her center, to delve deep within as she watched those two lithe bodies straining each into each. She wanted to be touched, and clutched, and held so desperately as that - each curve of her body fitted to the hollow of another, so that only the gentlest rocking could push one in reach of release…
Hands closed over her shoulders; Luna’s by the size, but so hard and cold, her mind insisted they had to be bone. “And you, Lady?” the voice rumbled in her ear like a lover as she watched Severus urge Harry down into the nest of pillows. “Will you give to me what most you love?”
Ginny shivered as unbidden sensations flooded her mind. Jamie’s milky baby grin. The giggle Harry always gave when she tickled that spot on his back. The pillow of her mother’s embrace. Pride in her father’s eyes. Severus’ grudging welcome. Ronnie's offhand compliments. Milly’s hardnosed ribbing. Luna sleeping, golden and sweet in the morning light; Luna reading, ink-smudged and beautiful; Luna kissing her, blue eyes dreamy, soft lips welcoming her home…
She shook her head, and set her shoulders. “No,” she told whatever was asking. “That’s not mine to give.”
The chill descended a bit more, and Ginny had the sense of great, dark wings coiling around her copper bowl. “Then will you give to me what most you fear?”
Red eyes in a pallid, serpentine face. Golden hairs, caught bloody on the window of a train. A boy who walked away from her and never came back. A mother who died for love. A child who grew in darkness, and never understood that sunlight came for free…
“No,” she said, relieved when her voice didn’t shake. “That fear is dead.”
Half-shadowed, Harry made a desperate noise, one leg arching high over Severus’ back. His toes were flexed out wide, as though grasping in the dark.
One wick of the candle sprang alight.
“Then will you give me your name?” the voice asked, and Ginny imagined she heard a little, wheedling note come into it now.
But she knew better than that. Names were magic; names were control; names were power. She smiled, and shook her head. “Of course not. My name won’t fit you.”
The hands on her shoulder clenched. “Then what do you offer, to stop me keeping all I have taken, Lady?”
All he had taken; Harry’s eyes. Severus’ voice. Luna’s body. Could a single child be worth such loss?
Harry groaned again, this one a long, weaving sound. Sweat gleamed along the slope of Severus’ shoulder and hip as he surged down, down, down… then shuddered and was still.
The candle’s second wick took flame, blazed up bright and warm beneath her chin, and suddenly, Ginny knew. From the hollow of her empty belly, to the weighty crown of her head, she knew what she had to tempt the voice.
“Life,” she said, watching Severus collapse into Harry’s embrace, the candle light stroking back and forth along his ribs as he gasped soundless for breath. She leaned her head to the side, rubbed her cheek along the cold, bony fingers. “I offer you life. Love, Home, Family -- a place in my heart, and at my hearth, until the end. I offer you birth, if you will have it.”
“Done,” the voice said, warm and soft as a kiss in her ear.
And in the cradle of her hands, the twin flames blazed like stars.
~* Press, Promises, and the Naming of Cats *~
Drowning in the flood of morning light: I'm only human just like you
“No?” Harry repeated, and for a moment, his eyes blazed with hurt and confusion. Then he shuttered it away, buried it under a veil of unreadable, unassailable calm, and he nodded, rolling away from her in the bed, and staring at the morning-bright ceiling. “All… all right then.”
Ginny had to chew on her lips to hold back the smile. Her heart was hammering like a bird under her ribs, and the rush of adrenaline that followed Harry’s unexpected proposal had her just about ready to giggle like a loon anyhow. But it wouldn’t do to give in. Not with poor Harry looking so crushed. “I expect you’d like to know why I’m not going to marry you,” she prompted.
Harry foiled her there though, and offered only a sidelong glance, and a wry smile. “You don’t have to explain yourself, Ginny,” he said, and drew the duvet up to cover his chest. “I know I’m not-“
“Wrong,” she countered, and rolled onto her side to kick him in the ankle. “You are good husband potential. You’re kind, and generous, and honest and loving, and all those things I’d want to see in the father of my children. And that’s not even coming near the fact that you’re richer than Midas, and extremely easy on the eyes. Now that you’ve survived the worst grudge-match of our age, you can be pretty much summed up with the words “Bloody Fine Catch,” in fact.” She poked him in the armpit. “Next guess?”
His brow clouded as he flinched away from her tickle; a ghost of the stormy, volatile Harry from their school years, but he quelled it with a deep breath, and sat up in the bed. The duvet puddled around his hips, revealing a distracting trail of hair below his navel, but as usual, Harry was completely oblivious to his own beauty. And as usual, Ginny had to firmly quash the urge to touch, and help him see what she did in him.
“It wasn’t fair of me to ask you to wait,” he said, voice low and defeated. “I’ve… look, Neville told me some of what happened that year I was gone, and -“ he turned to face her, reached under the pillows for Ginny’s hand. She let him catch it. “We both changed that year. Nobody can deny that, and Luna’s the one who stood by you while-“
Ginny cut him off with a sigh, and a roll of her eyes. “Wrong. Luna spent half that year in the Malfoy’s basement, Harry.” She gave his fingers a squeeze, and used the leverage of his grip to hike herself up a little higher against the pillows. For as grim and tricksy as Grimmauld Place could be, she had to admit that its beds were the very definition of luxury. Once you got the doxies out, that is.
“I do love Luna, yes,” Ginny informed Harry with a level stare. “And yes, she is going to be a part of my life, just like Snape’s going to be a part of yours, and don’t you even start to deny that!” She warned as he opened his mouth.
He shut it with a clack, but at least he was intrigued, goaded into actually listening to her, instead of presuming the worst. Ginny turned her palm to his, and laced their fingers together against the pillows. “Harry, the only person I’ve ever met who loves as much as you, is Luna. And the only person who loves as fiercely as you is Severus.” He blushed, and looked away, but she wouldn’t have it. She poked his side again to make him look back. “Harry, there’s been a gravity between you and Severus Snape from the first moment you met, and everybody knew it! Yes, you had debts, and fears, and old wounds to work out between you, but you’ve done that! And now that force has finally taken the shape of love, rather than hatred, how could I be jealous of it? You deserve his love, Harry. I can’t begrudge you that. Who else in the world could have done for him what you have?”
Blushing, he ran his free hand through his hair, and turned his pillow-head into an even more shocking mess. “It was no more than he deserved,” Harry murmured. “After all he’d had to do, all he sacrificed to try and…”
“That’s right,” she agreed, and gave his hand a squeeze, “but you and I both know that wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been for you. You forgave him before anybody else did. You decided that he deserved another chance. If you hadn’t stood up for him - Merlin, Harry, you brought him back to life! I’m not so egotistical as to think I have the right to interfere with that!”
“But I love you too, Ginny,” he said, and gazed hopelessly through his fringe. “I always wanted to have a life with you.”
Which wasn’t exactly true, and both of them knew it, but Ginny was feeling generous, so she let the small lie pass. Shaking her hand free of his, she reached up to brush the too-long hair out of his eyes, then trailed her fingers down to cup his cheek. “Then that, is what you should have asked me for, you idiot.”
He blinked, was adorable, and did not understand.
Ginny sat up, grabbed his shoulders, and forced him to look at her square on. “Harry Potter, you don’t have to ask me to love you,” she said, and gave him a little shake. “I already do love you, and the fact that I love Luna doesn’t in any way lessen it!” His eyebrow quirked, Snape-like, and she quieted him with another shake. “And you don’t need to ask me to make a family with you… someday, because I’m already doing that.” She blushed to confess it, but it was truth. She had been imagining what their children might look like for months since the final battle.
She couldn’t decide whether she’d sooner see her own red hair above the lovely green eyes she expected their children to have, or the wind-tousle raven silk of Harry’s. Even when she was brushing up on her contraceptive spells to be sure there were no accidental endings to her Quidditch career, she knew that she loved the very idea.
“Then I guess I don’t understand,” Harry admitted at last, dislodging her hand as he shook his head. “If you’re not breaking it off with me, then why won’t you marry me?”
“Because I don’t need to,” Ginny replied, and a part of her rang with the truth of it. “Because we don’t need a ring to be what we already are. And we don’t need a piece of paper, or a change of names to make room for each other in our lives.” His startled blink encouraged her, and the ghost of a smile tickled his lips. Ginny met it with one of her own.
“I’ve just now learned to like being Ginevra Weasley. It’s taken me years to learn how to make that name into my own, and not just a platform for what my mum and dad expected of me - I know you know what it’s like; people thinking they can put their hopes and dreams on you without so much as offering you a choice, or sometimes even telling you about them.”
He nodded, and now his eyes were thoughtful. “This isn’t going to make the press leave you alone,” he warned. “You realize that, don’t you?”
She laughed. “I intend to make the press sit up and take notice of me without the benefit of your last name, thank you, Mr. Potter! Quidditch stars get much better press than National Heroes, after all!”
And by the time they finished laughing at that, it was somehow all right again. Mum would pester and disapprove; Ron would smirk, and wind Hermione up about her matchmaking; and Daddy would watch to make sure she was happy, and give her his blessing when he was sure Mum wouldn’t overhear it.
They would go on. Whatever came about, whatever challenge arose, Ginny was certain they could be a match for it - with Luna’s insight, Snape’s intelligence, and her and Harry’s well-matched stubbornness, what in the world could stop them?
“So…” she stretched, inwardly smug to note how his eyes followed the swell of her breast as it slipped from under the covers. “You ready for breakfast, or are we going to keep beating this dead thestral?”
But as it turned out, Harry wasn’t interested in tea, or conversation at all just then. Which was actually just fine by Ginny.
~* Albus Severus, Enter Stage Right *~
Do you hear the city waking up?: I will survive and so will you
"Where... Hah! Where are they?" Ginny gritted through her teeth, gripping Luna's hand fiercely, and trying to breathe through the contraction without sounding like the Hogwarts Express on a steep hill. "If Harry's fainted again, I swear to Merlin, I'll -- Aaaaowwww!!!"
"Breathe, dear." How Molly managed to speak with her lips pursed that tight, Ginny didn't know. She'd promised the second time would be easier. Had promised that it wouldn't be so bad, now she knew what she could expect, and her body had already done the flexing it needed to do when Jamie had been born.
The only thing stopping Ginny calling her mother a bald-faced liar was the empirical evidence of her own existence as seventh-born child, and the rather sensitive place that Mum had her fingers just then.
Luckily, Luna was there to distract her. "I think they're still arguing, actually."
"Arguing," Ginny huffed. "Imagine. What is it this time?"
"The baby's name, I think," Luna's chuckle cooled the sweat-slick hair at Ginny's temple. "The Professor wants to name him after Headmaster Dumbledore, but Harry's pitching for tradition."
Molly snorted loudly, "Funny sort of tradition, if you ask me. Naming a child after-"
"His father," Ginny gritted in reply. "Lots of parents do it that way, Mum. And from the way this kid's shoving about on my bladder right now, he doesn't seem much like a Dumbledore kind of boy, really!" She rolled her head back between Luna's breasts, and stared pleadingly at her lover. "Are you sure you couldn't get them in here? Because if all they're doing is more fighting, I could really enjoy kicking the both of them right now..."
"Breathe, dear..." Ginny huffed some more, but didn't relinquish her stare.
Luna smoothed Ginny's hair back from her brow, and smiled like an unruffled angel. "Well, I can see if the Professor is done throwing up if you like. Harry was holding his hair in the loo when I checked in on them earlier."
"What, still? He hasn't eaten anything since last time!" Ginny arched into a contraction, and groaned through her teeth. "What's he got left to throw up, his bung-"
"GINEVRA!"
"BOOTSOLES!" Ginny yelped, digging her heels into the mattress, and trying in vain to use Luna's arm to leverage her escape. "Bootsoles, Mum! And ow, that hurts!"
"Well, you're not nearly dilated enough yet, is why," Molly replied, smeared and pitiless as she stood upright and wiped her hands on a towel. "You should be focusing on breathing, and relaxing, not plumbing the depths of your locker room vocabulary at a time like this! And in front of your -- no no, James, leave Mummy be, there's a good boy."
"Jamie?" Ginny levered herself up, scrambling to pull her nightdress down. "What is he doing in here?"
The door hadn't opened, had it? How could he have gotten in without her noticing? And yet there he was, the fluffy-haired scamp, peering up from the foot of the bed as his tiny, sticky hand patted at her foot. "Ma!"
"No no, Jamie love," Molly cooed, disengaging the baby's hand as he tried to haul himself up onto the bed, "Mummy's busy, and there isn't room for you to help."
"Ma! Maaaa!" Jamie protested, flopping his rag baby up onto the bed and reaching for Ginny with his free hand.
"Jamie, baby, stay -- ah! Stay down please..." Ginny gasped, writhed under the cramp, but fixed her mother with a gimlet stare. "I thought Hermione was meant to be... watching him! Where's she got to if he's-"
As if in answer, the door burst open, and a flustered Hermione burst in, Hugo propped on one hip, Victoire toddling after, thumb fixed in her mouth. "Well, there's where you went!" She cried, spotting Jamie. "Sorry Ginny, Molly; seems this little boy's trying on his instinctive magic a bit earlier than most."
"He went!" Victoire said around her thumb.
"That's right, he did," Hermione agreed, straightening her robe, and juggling Hugo to the other hip. "I swear, Ginny, one minute he was right there helping me put a plaster on Harry's nose, and the next, there was no sign of him anywhere!"
"He went!"
Mortified and in pain, Ginny pulled Luna's arms up around her head and groaned. "If you love me, you'll kill me now!" Luna only laughed though, and settled Ginny more firmly against her body.
"That's right, Vicky, he did," Molly said, scooping James up into her arms, and kissing the squirming boy. "Well, Jamie can't be blamed for wanting his mum, can he?" She said, carrying him toward the door, and shooing Hermione and Victoire along before her. "Let's see about a bit of a snack to settle everybody's nerves then, shall we?"
"MUM!" Ginny cried, appalled, "You can't just leave me! You're meant to be the midwife!"
"Oh, you're just fine, girl," Molly tossed back. "This bout of cramping's nearly done, and you're still going better than ten minutes between contractions. You hardly need me hanging about while you've got your friend here with you."
And with that, she was gone, closing the door on Hermione's apologetic smile before a word could be said. Ginny said a few words to the closed door anyway.
"Maybe we should try St. Mungo's for the next one," Luna observed once Ginny stopped swearing. "They have this huge tank all full of the amnioserum of rare, deep sea Poeditzys, and they have mothers swim in it during labour, since the harmonic magnetism of the birthing fluid enhances the- ouch, you're squashing my fingers, Ginny!"
"Next one?" Ginny released the digits with a glare, then sighed, and stretched her legs out as, true to her mum's prediction, the contraction gave way to a watery, shaky buzz of aftershocks through her tired muscles. "What in Merlin's shaggy pants makes you imagine I'll be doing this again? Ever? For the rest of ALL of our lives?"
"You wouldn't want to have a baby with me next?" Luna asked, massaging her hand.
Ginny stared, but couldn't tell if Luna's placid, expectant smile was a put-on, or genuine. "It wouldn't take much," she went on when Ginny didn't answer, "to modify the spell we used for Harry and Severus, and I was thinking a pretty little girl might be nice." Luna gently combed her fingers through Ginny's tangled locks, and her smile went that extra, irresistible shade deeper toward perfect beauty. "I'd rather fancy a pretty, red-haired daughter..."
"Yellow-haired," Ginny replied, reaching up to free a loop of curl from behind Luna's ear. She smiled as it, and many of its fellows came slithering down all around her face in a silken whisper that smelled of mysteries, meadowsweet, and printing ink. "Yellow hair is so much prettier..."
Even upside down, weary, and sticky with sweat, the kiss was just as sweet as the first they'd ever shared. Ginny let her smile linger as Luna sat upright again, and twitched her hair back over her shoulder. "Help me stand up?"
Perplexed, Luna released Ginny's shoulders, and asked, "Do you need me to go get something for you?"
"No," Ginny replied, rolling to drop her feet off the edge of the bed. "I just need your help with the stairs if I'm going to kick some sense into the boys heads before the next contraction starts..."
~* Fin *~
Bullet Lyrics
Songwriters: Simonsson, Eskil; Montelius, Joakim;
Time is like a bullet from behind
I run for cover just like you
Time is like a liquid in my hands
I swim for dry land just like you
Time is like a blanket on my face
I try to be here just like you
Time is just a fiction of our minds
I will survive and so will you
We are the only ones right now that are celebrating
And we are joining hands right now
We are the only ones right now that are suffocating
We are the dying ones right now
As the water grinds the stone
We rise and fall
As our ashes turn to dust
We shine like stars
Kisses on the dance floor in my past
I need some comfort just like you
Beating like a bass drum, time goes by
I want the last dance just like you
Drowning in the flood of morning light
I'm only human just like you
Do you hear the city waking up?
I will survive and so will you
We are the ones, the only ones
We are the ones, the dying ones,
We are the ones, the only ones,
We are the ones
We are the only ones right now that are celebrating
We are the dying ones
We are the only ones right now that are dying
And we are joining hands
As the water grinds the stone
We rise and fall
As our ashes turn to dust
We shine like stars.