The characters do not belong to me. I do however, agree that the unfortunate things happening to them are my doing.

The Stillborn Potter Syndrome

Ginny screams. It's quiet in the waiting room but the sound carries clearly over the white noise and silencing wards common in Wizarding hospitals. Harry waits impatiently. He should be in the room with Ginny. He should be right beside her for their child's birth. But he's not. Evidently that's against tradition. They let him be there for little James' birth, surely they could continue to bend their stupid little Merlin cursed tradition but no. He grits his teeth as Ginny screams again. Somehow he'd done something wrong last time- upset Ginny and thus complicated the birth in some way. She'd been upset? He wasn't the one who'd been threatening his lover and wife with castration and a very nasty variation of the Bat-Boogey Hex. At the next scream he realizes his fingernails have drawn blood and he forces himself to unclench his fists. He can't think of any other thing he had ever hated more than this wait. Right now, he'd rather Voldemort be back if only he could be in there with Ginny. Ginny screams again- hoarse and long before tapering off. At a certain point the silencing wards cover it up again. This time a Healer opens the door and he stands excitedly. The Healer seems oddly grim for a delivery as she ushers him in to his wife's hospital bed. He looks around for the baby. Ginny is crying silently- tears trickle down her red splotched cheeks. The Healers are quiet and solemn.

He is handed the baby. The child is naked- Harry doesn't understand why they haven't cleaned him up, wrapped him in blankets. Little Albus Severus is even blotchier than his mother- red and with an oddly shaped head- is covered in blood and so very still. Harry understands then, like a bolt of lightning, the realization that his baby boy is not breathing, is not moving, is not alive. Harry staggers- nearly falls. He cradles the naked newborn to his chest. His baby boy couldn't be dead. No, he simply couldn't be. He'd been planned from the very night he was conceived- he'd been loved and talked to and wondered about and anticipated for nine long months. He was not dead, there was no way. Harry shifted the child to one hand, bringing the other- shaking and unsure- to the tiny face. He stroked a finger across the nose, a cheek, the thin little lips, the closed eyes. Harry wondered what color they were. They'd probably be blue but would they turn brown or green later? He touches a little hand that does not clasp his finger- nails tiny, paper-thin and nearly translucent, then a wrinkled little foot that doesn't clench its toes. He strokes the stomach around the umbilical cord and its barbaric looking clamp. His little boy is dead. But that wasn't right. He brings his hand up to the little face, cupping the huge head (relatively speaking)that had looked so funny on baby James. But there wasn't anything funny here. His beloved baby boy was dead, but that was wrong. The baby was meant to live. He could die, he wouldn't mind if only his baby would take a breath, would scream, would live.

The Healers were nervous. It wasn't often that they delivered a stillbirth. Usually a child would either miscarry early or be born with something obviously wrong with it and then die after. The natural magic present in both mother and child would ensure it. Usually they didn't deliver a child for the Man-Who-Had-Conquered and his wife either. Someone powerful enough that he still had accidental magic every now and again- it made the first page in newspapers every time. Yes, something that made the Harry Potter mad was usually made the news anyway but the sheer power he produced when angry made it to the front page every time, often with eyewitness accounts of people who it had frightened, or with stories of what it had damaged or destroyed. They hadn't been willing to risk being the bearer of bad news so they'd handed him the tiny corpse to see for himself. So he could understand it on his own and hopefully wouldn't get riled up at the one who would have had to tell him.

It wasn't going nearly as well as they'd hoped. Mrs. Potter had understood, she was quiet and crying, but something seemed wrong with Mr. Potter. He was staring at the body like he didn't get it, touching it as though it was alive and he was trying to get it to respond. He was upset. They could feel the magic coming off him in waves. They were even starting to see it. One Healer stepped forward.

"Mr. Potter, I'm afraid your child is a stillborn… Mr. Potter?" He took another step forward. Mr. Potter didn't seem to hear him. The Healer reaches out towards the body in its father's arms. This Mr. Potter notices. The Healer flinches back, the man's eyes were glowing, his face fierce and feral with some emotion the Healer didn't recognize. His magic abruptly becomes very visible, where before it had been faint golden wisps of something like fog, now it was long, violently lashing streamers in black edged laser yellows and acid greens.

Mr. Potter speaks, "He can't be dead."

The healer musters his courage and takes another step forward, arms still outstretched. He swallows as the magic's light throws the man's wild expression into sharp relief. "I'm sorry, sir, but the baby is dead." He speaks as gently as he can. It's not gentle enough. The father of the child takes a step back; the body is drawn closer, held defensively against the man's chest. The magic is condensing into a cloud, gathering close and ever brighter around him, ready and eager to be used. "Sir," the healer takes one more step and the magic reacts explosively. With a brilliant light it smashes the bold healer against the wall, the others stagger and falling over with a great shove. Ginny's bed rolls on its little wheeled feet until it hits the wall with a crack. Ginny herself cries out in pain as she's pressed hard into the bed by the shockwave. The shockwave is very hot and then it passes, the light fading slightly. The only conscious healer left, an amateur Muggleborn Astrologist in her free time, later swears the light looks like a supernova - a bright center with colorful bands pushed away by tremendous forces. She then witnesses the magic imploding, leaving a sudden, terrible cold darkness and a thin, high baby's wail.

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