Must Be Magic

by uptowardsthesky

A series of drabbles and short stories about the characters in the world of Harry Potter. Chapter Five: "since when had they become like that? they used to be so beautiful to her, to others, now they were sharp and wary all the time."

4. He

054: He

She smiled and told him over and over again that it was a girl, it had to be a girl, they were always girls. Her mother had gone through the same thing with her father, and hadn't they had two girls? Veela blood was funny like that: he'd never seen a male veela, had he?

Bill would just grin and ask her if she'd ever seen a female Weasley other than Ginny.

But Ginny broke it, she would inform him as if she knew all about these sorts of things. Ginny broke it thoroughly; no more curse (if you believed in that sort of thing, but she'd seen stranger in her time). And if it could really be called a "curse" anyway; it wasn't so bad only having boy or girl children. Her parents had managed, hadn't they?

But Bill would refuse to listen, running his hand on her inflated stomach and cheerfully rattling off a list of boy names (how the Weasley's hadn't run out yet, she'd never know).

He was stubborn. But so was she. And she had the last laugh in the matter when Victoire was born (although they were both too stunned at the new life to pay too much attention to the argument; they'd had so much death for so long).

The argument was dragged out again with Dominique. Bill would tell Fleur every now and then, it's a boy, I know it's a boy. It wasn't so much that he wanted a boy so much as it was a familiar argument to him. Every time his mother was pregnant (five times after him, six babies after him although he felt a sharp stab of sadness, guilt, pain at the thought) his family would argue. This one's a girl for sure, someone would pipe up. No, no, definitely a boy! and so on, and in his family that "so on" could last quite a while.

When Dominique was born, he accepted his defeat in the argument happily for once again he had a newborn daughter; wasn't that enough to be happy with? The argument was hardly brought up when Fleur informed him once more that she was pregnant (they were going to give his parents a run for their money at this rate).

He had begun to accept that perhaps this Veela blood was a little stronger than he'd previously thought and had readied his list of girl baby names with his wife and daughters when he was rushed into St. Mungo's with Fleur for the delivery of a newborn boy.