The Curse
Laying in each others arms, enjoying the post-coital flushes on each others' faces, Harry and Ginny Potter could not be happier. Harry reached over to pull his wife's body as close to his as he could, trying to be careful of crushing her heavily pregnant tummy. They kissed languidly, revelling in the early morning sunshine that peeped through the curtains, both fully aware that they had to make the most of the quiet that surrounded their bedroom, before it was disrupted by their two little boys. Harry laid a hand over Ginny's perfectly round belly, ecstatic that the new baby was due any day now.
"Do you think the baby will be a girl this time, Ginny?" he whispered, not wanting to break the silence, but doing so gently. Harry had asked this many times, and Ginny sensed that he really wanted this baby to be a girl, though she knew he loved their sons more than anything.
"I honestly don't know, because it doesn't feel any different, though if any thing, this baby has kicked me more!" she laughed.
"Perhaps a fiery little red-headed girl, then?" he said, sounding hopeful.
"Who knows, Harry? As long as the baby's healthy and happy, I don't really care," Ginny snapped, but added softly, "I could have fifty little boys with wild black hair, and still be beyond happy."
"Yeah, I know, me too I guess. It's just…I would hate for another child of ours to be cursed with this crazy hair," he said, running a hand through his own wild locks, "Could you imagine this on a girl?!"
Ginny laughed, replacing his hand with one of hers in his hair, "I love your hair!"
"Hmmm, I don't. It's the Potter Curse!"
"Well your sons have it!"
"It looks cute on toddlers and babies!" he exclaimed, thinking about his two precious little boys, first of James, who was Ginny's double, except for the mop of black hair that stuck out at odd angles at all times, and then of Al, who was himself in miniature, "Not so much on grown men," Harry grumbled, looking sorry for himself.
"Well I think it's perfect," Ginny replied with a soft sigh, clutching it in her small hands, "So soft," she said, and Harry watched as her eyes drooped, knowing that she would fall asleep any second. Harry glanced at the clock on their bedside table, noting that it was approaching 6am. He turned to Ginny once more, debating whether or not to keep her awake, knowing that they would be interrupted by the two little terrors down the hall any minute now, but he decided not to.
Moments later, out of the corner of his well trained Auror eye, Harry noticed that the bedroom door being gently opened and then closed, and heard the gentle footfalls of someone approaching the foot of the bed. Ginny had fallen gently back to sleep, if the soft snores that he could hear were anything to go by and he wondered when his son, or both, as was the norm, would make his presence known. He smiled, imagining that they would ambush him, like every morning, by jumping on the bed and causing havoc, the likes of which only little boys knew how to cause. He was surprised, therefore, when no such ambush came.
Some time passed, and Harry's curiosity got the better of him, and he regretfully pealed himself away from the embrace of his wife's warm body, in order to peer over the edge of the bed. What he saw caused his heart to soar. For there lay his two sons under Albus' baby blanket at the foot of the bed, wrapped up together, fast asleep. He supposed they had come, not to ambush, but to be closer to their parents. He picked them both gently off the floor, and brought them back to sleep between himself and Ginny. His last thought as he drifted off once more, looking at Ginny, and his two boys, tucked safely in the blankets, with only the tops of their heads and their identical tufts of wild black hair showing, was that the Potter Curse wasn't so bad after all.