Assignment Number: 1
Subject: Charms
Task: Write about someone who just won't wake up. This can be because of medical reasons, or something else.
Word Count: 585
The Born-dead
He kissed her hand again, gently urging her to push. The cries of the woman he loved so much echoed in the room, breaking his heart, but he couldn't do anything to ease the pain. Ginny had been in labour for past nine hours, and the baby was due anytime now.
With a last cry, and the shout of, 'It's a girl,' his heart skipped a beat. A smile tugged his lips in a slight curve, then changed into a grin. Trying to control his racing pulse, he settled down in the chair by the bed.
A moment later, he stood up, the father wanting to meet his baby daughter. But something which the Mediwitch, Andromeda Tonks, said made him stop in his tracks. The one line that slid the smile off his face, the one question that shattered all his happiness—'why isn't the baby crying?'
He saw Ginny's face pale in front of him, and Andromeda was in shock too. His own eyes were fixed at the small bundle in the Mediwitch's hands—holding his stillborn daughter, who would have been christened Lily Luna Potter.
The child's godmother, Luna Scamander, was downstairs with his two sons, waiting for the happy news of her godchild's birth, and here, all the dreams he had seen for the past eight months, since the day his wife had told him she was bearing a child again, were being trampled.
"Try r-rubbing her c-chest." Ginny's voice came out as a croak through her parched lips, but Andromeda complied. She rubbed the child's chest with delicate, yet firm strokes, her hands shaking more and more as nothing happened.
"J-James cried when he was turned up-upside d-down," he heard himself speak. Yet again, Andromeda obeyed, and yet again, nothing happened.
The next minutes were a blur to him: Ginny, weak from childbirth, standing up and taking the stillborn into her arms; the two women rubbing the baby's hands and feet; the baby being turned around in every possible way; Andromeda, who had gone pale by now, pumping the baby's chest—all efforts going in vain as the girl's lungs did not take in a single breath, her heart did not beat a single beat.
His chest clenched as unwanted scenes crept into his mind—his daughter's dead body, his daughter's funeral, his daughter's ghost, questioning him why he let her die.
He went over to where Ginny was sitting in the bed and wrapped an arm around her. She laid her head on his shoulder, sobbing quietly.
"I'm—I'm s-sorry," she said between her sobs.
He shushed her, telling it was not her fault and rubbing soothing circles on her back. His own mind was still trying to grasp the fact that he won't ever hear his daughter's laughter, won't ever hear her first words, won't ever hold her hands as she took her first steps.
He thought of how he was going to disclose this to his sons, who had been so excited about a new sibling, to the Weasleys, who had been placing bets on the gender of the child, and to Luna, who was sitting under this very roof, waiting to take her goddaughter in her arms.
A tear leaked out of his eye as he stared at the still carcass of the dead child that his wife had given birth to, and many more followed. The next few moments saw the young couple sitting in each other's arms, crying for the child destiny had snatched away.