Ginny had stuttered, her mind completely blank as the weeks of denial came crashing down. Her hand flew up to clutch the pendant around her neck, only to drop it as if it had burned her fingers. Her eyes started to roll backwards and Neeko had leapt forward to catch her, steering her into a chair and pushing her face down towards her knees.
"Breathe, baby. This ain't no time for swoonin'." Neeko's firm voice and pats on Ginny's back helped her world swim back into focus.
"What am I going to do?" she wailed. "I don't want to marry him, I don't!"
This time Neeko's hand landing on Ginny's back was more like a smack. "So who says you have to?"
The very concept struck Ginny as outlandish, and she stopped panicking long enough to stare. Neeko stopped her assault on Ginny's back to put her hands on her hips and look at Ginny in exasperation. "Well, are you a grownup or ain't you? Jesus, child, sometimes you make things too complicated."
Ginny managed a smile through the tears that had been trickling down her face. Trust Neeko to lecture her on being an adult and call her a child, all in the same breath. "He'll want to marry me, you know. And my mother won't understand at all if I don't – she only managed to make herself accept that I was having sex by telling herself we were only anticipating the wedding."
Neeko snorted. "This the same woman who spent a week lecturing my little Angie to tears about how to be a good wife to her baby boy?"
"That's her. My mum, single-handedly defending the respectability of the Weasleys since 1965." Ginny giggled and all of a sudden the world didn't seem that bad. Her hand crept up to cover her abdomen, the outward curve barely perceptible. "I'm keeping the baby."
She hadn't realized she had made the decision until she heard herself saying it, but it felt right. Whatever was between her and Harry, there had been friendship, and affection. She might be rejecting some of her upbringing by having a baby out of wedlock, but she would not destroy a child created in love. And she wanted the child, she realized. It would be difficult, and it would change everything, but she wanted to hold it in her arms, to watch her son or daughter grow and thrive and learn to cook and play pranks and go to school. A baby, part of her and part of Harry, but entirely its own person.
Neeko watched the expressions chase each other across Ginny's face and nodded with approval. When the whirlwind of emotions seemed to have settled down, she said, "First thing you need's a doctor to make sure you and the baby're okay. I know one that'll be good for you. He's a cooter doctor, but he does general medicine, too."
Ginny blinked, then blushed as she figured out what 'cooter' meant. "I don't know… I've never been to a muggle doctor before."
"Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it." Neeko waved a hand dismissively. "You just think some more on what you're going to do about the folks at home… Including the boy who gave you that necklace."
"I… He's not the father, he's not Harry." Ginny's eyes were distant as she thought of Draco, remembering how his rare smiles always seemed to come out lopsided, how he would listen, actually listen when she talked, and how he would hear the words she didn't say. He had loved her, the real her, and she had pushed him away.
"That's as might be, but you don't clutch nothing from Harry like it's your last hope of salvation." Neeko moved across her kitchen to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee before coming back to join Ginny at the kitchen table. "Seems to me like you got something there that needs to be worked out, one way or another."
Ginny shook her head, not so much in rejection of the words as much as trying to reject the hope that tried to creep up on her. Firmly, attempting to convince herself, she said, "What kind of woman begs the man she loves for a second chance while she's carrying another man's baby? And it's not like he's been a monk - who knows if he even remembers me?"
"Child, if the man loves you, he'll want to hear from you, if nothing else but to know you're not kidnapped." Neeko took a sip of coffee, then lowered the mug to look at Ginny piercingly. "And if he don't, well, honey, you got to move on. Pining away is for sissies and Englishmen."
"Ah, giving Draco an out in the unlikely event he's actually done any pining. Very clever, I commend you." Ginny raised her mug in salute and then attempted to sip. The cup, however, was snatched from her hand, replaced shortly with a glass of milk.
"Better for the baby. And with a name like that, he might qualify for both categories," Neeko snickered.
Ginny walked over to the pile of Daily Prophets that Neeko was holding on to for wizard recycling. She'd said that she subscribed to it to feel closer to her sister, but Ginny had been the one lately to read it from cover to cover. She felt a pang of guilt every time she saw her name mentioned, which was fairly often, as Harry talked about her in every interview.
Soon. She would talk to Harry and deal with him soon.
In the meantime, she flipped to the society pages and turned the paper around to show Neeko. "That's Draco."
Neeko sucked in her breath sharply. "Ooooh, Lordy but that's a handsome devil. And he knows it, too."
The picture of Draco winked cheekily at Neeko before turning back to dancing with the latest sensation on the wizard wireless, a gothic brunette with a memorable bosom. Ginny smiled and traced her finger around the circumference of the picture.
"Baby, it about breaks my heart to see how sad a smile that is." Neeko shook her head, the beads in her hair clacking. "Call him! What's the worst that could happen?"
"The absolute worst? That he still loves me and his heart breaks because he can't accept Harry's child." Ginny shook her head and folded the newspaper back up, swiftly and precisely. "No, I hurt him once, I'm not going to do it again."
The subject was closed and Neeko did not open it again, although Ginny could feel those bottomless coffee-bean eyes on her every time she reached for the locket she couldn't bring herself to put away.
Soon enough, Ginny found herself sitting on a hard leather chair, clutching her handbag in front of her as a friendly looking man with a short beard covering his double chin asked her questions. She answered in monosyllables, her nerves fraught as she remembered with horror some of the stories about muggle medicine in her Muggle Studies textbook at Hogwarts. Finally he said something that made her blink. "Pardon me, could you repeat that?"
"Of course, my dear. I had simply assured you that we do use the best potions when it is appropriate." He smiled beatifically and leaned back, his arms crossed in front of his paunch. "Of course, sometimes normo medicine is better as, of course, all magical healing requires a cost be paid."
"Normo?" Ginny felt dazed. Was this chubby little man in a white coat a wizard?
"It's what we call muggles, honey." Neeko patted Ginny's hand comfortingly. "Don't you worry, Doctor Jones is one of the best doctors in the South, both magically and not."
Ginny sagged with relief. Knowing magic was available for health care made a big difference. Her grip on her handbag relaxed, which reminded her of another detail. Opening the small clutch, she withdrew her Gringotts card, and offered it to the doctor. "I know that here you don't have the national health, so I wanted to assure you of payment."
Doctor Jones took the card affably, but his smile melted away to leave a hard, piercing stare as soon as he read the name on it. "Care to explain why you're giving me a card that belongs to a kidnap victim, Miss Kingsley? The aurors-"
The doctor's harsh words were cut off by a wave of Neeko's hand. "She's no more kidnapped than I am, and if your mama knew you was talking to a pregnant lady like that, she'd snatch you bald."
Ginny stared at her feet for a moment, then brought her eyes up to the doctor's. "I left a note, and I sent a letter to my mother when I first saw the kidnap story, but… They'd rather believe in foul play than accept that I needed to be on my own for a little while."
Doctor Jones grunted. "I can't pretend to fully understand your circumstances, but I remember a time I lived in Chicago just because I needed to be away from my mama."
Neeko's teeth gleamed whitely as she laughed. "The boy had me sending him Vidalia onions and pralines by Express Owl until he finally got over his hissy fit and came home."
"And chili dogs from the Varsity in Atlanta. It was when she cut off my chili dog supply that I had to come back to Georgia for good." Doctor Jones laughed and the tension that had arisen was completely dispersed.
After they discussed what kind of care she would need, what could be expected, and he had prescribed some vitamins, Doctor Blank ran some basic tests with his wand over her clothes and declared her mostly healthy. "I'd like you to stay off your feet a bit more, and we'll run some normo tests next week. It's probably nothing, since you're otherwise healthy, but it's worth keeping an eye on."
Ginny nodded and rose to leave when he handed her some papers his secretary had laid on his desk earlier. "These are consent forms and authorizations, for both your normo and magic names. Read carefully, because it sets out who makes the decisions if you can't."
Ginny sat back down and filled them out quickly, reading as she went. "I want Neeko in charge. She can handle everything."
"She most surely can, and she's been that way ever since we were itty bitty kids and she bossed all us neighbor kids around." Ginny's eyes cut from the doctor to her friend as they laughed, and she wondered. Deciding to tease Neeko about it later, she thanked the doctor again and they made their goodbyes.
It was less than two days before there was cause to be grateful for Ginny's decisiveness in signing those papers. She and Leela had been getting some groceries, and as they walked home, Leela was teaching Ginny a Girl Scout song about silver and gold friends. There was a squealing of brakes and Ginny looked up to see a car swerve to avoid a bicyclist, only to jump the curb and come straight towards them.
With a strength born of desperation, Ginny lifted the young girl and threw her out of the car's path. She just had time to hope the landing against a tree hadn't hurt Leela too badly before the car struck and everything went black.
(Author's Note: It's the fic that wouldn't die. I don't normally write a whole lot of angst - you'll have to tell me how I'm doing, so I know whether to post some of the other five chapters I wrote.)