Shock registered in the woman's slightly Irish features. A moan escaped from the lips of her tall, black-haired husband next to her. The disbelieving look quickly changed to despair as he searched the doctor's solemn face for any sign that this might be a sick, cruel joke. The silence in the consultant's office was deafening, as each of the occupants of the room were lost in their own thoughts. Who can say what the couple were thinking – whether it was the same thought or completely different things. However, the doctor allowed herself to sink into her chair and curse whatever god was out there for the injustice of burdening these undeserving people with something so horrific and life threatening. This was the part of her job that Dr Woodhouse disliked the most.
Without any warning, the woman rose and held her hand out to her doctor and, more recently, her friend. The three people exchanged pleasantries and parted. Karen Woodhouse sank back into her chair and shook her head. The couple walked swiftly and quickly outside the hospital and threw themselves into an embrace that seemed to last forever. They would never let go; they would never again have to face the horrors of the world around them; they would never lose each other; they would be together in their own world, forever.
The old wooden oak door swung open to a handsome cottage, set apart from the others in the lane by its exquisite characteristics. Whereas all the other houses had been modernised and renovated, this particular abode had rustic features, an overgrown cottagey garden and a thatch roof that had been falling apart when the house was purchased and been replaced and looked as good as the day when it had first been laid, more than 50 years ago. The couple from the hospital wearily walked into the hall, which had been painted a light cream colour, only another in the bright cheery palette carefully selected to bring happiness and harmony to their house, and filled with mahogany furniture. Usually the sight of her entrance hall, into which she had put such effort, brought a smile to Ginny Potter's face. Not this day, however. She barely registered her husband take her coat, the nanny's greeting, her children thundering forward and hurtling into her legs. No, there were other issues at the front of Ginny's mind today, issues that would, without a doubt, mean her end.
Harry Potter, the devoted and kind husband of Ginny, read his wife's face and knew in an instance that she needed to be alone with him, if only for a few minutes more.
"Ok, kids! Listen, Mummy's not feeling too good," he started, kneeling down to his three-year-old twins' height, and throwing a meaningful look at the nanny, who was his wife's close friend. "Why don't you go with Hermione? Lily, you can finish that painting for my office and James, you can show Hermione how you can write your name!" Eagerly agreeing, the twins ran off and Harry did not miss the tragic look of despair that flitted across his wife's face. Ginny's gaze moved from her best friend to her best friend's husband, then she turned away. She gracefully moved after the twins in such a manner that her golden hair swung form side to side and bounced up and down.
Harry gently took his wife's hand in his and lifted it to his lips. Ginny closed her eyes as his soft lips brushed along her skin. She would miss this most, the presence of her husband and her children. They walked together into the spacious and simply decorated living room, and sunk onto one of the sofas. Slowly at first, then suddenly, torrentially the tears came.
"I can't believe it didn't work," the distraught woman gasped in between sobs. "I can't believe the cancer has won." Harry, for once, had no words. He simply held his wife, the love of his life, in the knowledge that would have to pull themselves together later but allowed himself to shed the first tears in a long time in the company of his beloved.
Ginny woke up the next morning by two lumps landing on her bed – one beside her and one on her stomach. Looking down, the young woman saw a head of jet black hair, and exact copy to her husband's, and a cheeky smile not altogether unlike her own gazing back at her. Winking at her darling daughter, she flicked her gaze at the 'tickle war' that was raging between her husband and her son. Hearing one word from the slightly bossy but very loving Lily, the boys fell apart gasping for breath from laughing too much. The younger of the two flung himself at his mother planting a soppy, wet kiss on her cheek and the older of the two, the one who was married to the radiant creature sitting up in bed next to him, slid his arm around her shoulder and pulled her body against his.
"You know what," began Ginerva, mother of two, wife to Harry and sufferer of cancer. "I think you'll be ok when I go."