Ginny smiled broadly as she felt a small, sticky hand slip into hers. She looked down at Julius, now four, who had just finished an ice cream and was licking his lips and beaming up at his aunt.
The sun was high above their heads at about two in the afternoon. It was the middle of May, and everyone on the street was wearing their summer robes already. A light breeze occasionally whisked about their faces, but the heat was still easily felt by everybody.
Ginny had taken Julius out that morning as a surprise, because his mother needed a little break from the four-year-old while she attended to the new baby, Nicholas. The boy was oblivious to this reasoning, and was having a grand time walking with his aunt as she did her shopping.
He had grown into a maniac. He couldn't stop moving, talking, and eating. With his father's red hair and his mother's large front teeth, he reminded one of a frenzied squirrel. Julius was well loved by the family as an entertainer, and his grandmother especially loved to watch his attempts at juggling. So far, he'd exhibited many signs of being magic. While Corinthus had demonstrated conventionally useful magic such as stopping a dungbomb from hitting his uncle Harry's head and making his bed on accident, his little cousin was more interested in using his fundamental magic to nip sweets from the kitchen and evade parental capture.
As they passed an apothecary, Ginny saw Julius reach his hand into a barrel of some sort of bubbling yellow slime and pulled him back by the collar just before he grabbed a handful of the stuff.
"Julius, you mustn't touch the merchandise on the streets. Especially at the apothecary. That could have been a very dangerous potion in that barrel," Ginny wasn't exactly sure how to discipline this child, because she didn't often do it, but he ended up putting his hands in his robe pockets and smiling at her. In essence, he was a good boy, she thought.
"Jules, I need to go into the robe shop and be measured. Will you sit still for a few minutes while I do that?" Ginny had serious doubts as to whether he could sit still for half a minute, much less ten, but she supposed she could keep one eye on him. She led him into Madam Malkin's and sat him in a corner, where she made him promise not to get up until she came to get him. She stepped up to a pedestal where she was measured for some summer robes. A shop girl bustled around her, pulling at the tape around her waist, levitating it to her arms, and then dropping it to her hips. Ginny kept craning her neck to see Julius, who was now drawing colorful, smoky lines in the air with his fingertip. The attendant chuckled.
"He yours?" She jerked her head toward the boy.
"My nephew. I've got him for the day," she replied cheerfully.
He was now drawing stick figures in the same smoky medium, one of whom looked like him, and the other of which was probably a very unflattering impression of Ginny, complete with lots of wavy red hair.
"Right. Finished. Now, you can look at our color swatches and decide how you want it cut. Erm…" she glanced at Julius, "You should probably bring him along."
Ginny motioned to the youngster to come join her. As he left his seat, he stepped through the mural of colorful smoke he'd created in the air: it dispersed quickly and disappeared.
The shop girl opened a large leather folder with a plethora of fabrics in it. Ginny saw reds, blues, greens, and a large, fuzzy patch of violet. She was examining aquamarine cotton when she heard the bell over the door ring, signaling someone's entrance. Immediately she felt Julius clasp her free hand and scoot in to hug her skirt. Wondering why the boy would react in this fashion and to whom, she turned halfway. Standing just a couple of meters away from her was a thin, elegant man in expensive robes with his white-blond hair combed back smoothly. Draco Malfoy had a somewhat disgusted expression glued on his face. Ginny's jaw dropped.
He was gazing at her and at Julius with a nasty glint in his eyes. He said nothing but smirked and asked for assistance. Madam Malkin herself sashayed over to Mr. Malfoy and instructed him to step up to the platform for quick measurements. He didn't take his eyes off of Julius. Clearly, he though that the boy was her son, and therefore Harry's.
Ginny was not surprised that the proprietress of the store personally saw to Malfoy's needs; although his father was permanently in Azkaban, Draco was still one of the wealthiest wizards in England. Had Madam known that Ginny was Harry Potter's wife, she would certainly have acted in the same way, but Ginny didn't usually like to disclose this information to strangers.
She selected the blue cotton fabric and waited as the shop witch departed to the back of the store to fill Ginny's order. As Madam Malkin did the same with Malfoy's robes, he stepped off the pedestal and moved toward her. He stopped a foot from her face and smiled brightly.
"How long has it been, Mrs. Potter? Eight? Nine years?" His bright smile had turned a little sour.
"I couldn't say," she answered shortly. His eyes traveled to the small child who was standing half-concealed behind her skirts. "I didn't realize you had a son."
"This is my nephew."
Malfoy now saw that he couldn't torment them much more, gave a terse nod, and awkwardly shuffled to another part of the store. Julius came out from behind Ginny.
That night, after finishing her shopping and returning her nephew to his parents, Ginny related the incident to her husband.
"He was actually quite decent. He scared the goblins out of Julius, though. I dunno. He seemed really interested in him until he figured out that he's not your son," she trailed off. Harry had an odd look on his face that she couldn't read.
"Look, I don't think he's out to get our unborn children, if that's what you're thinking," she looked quizzically at him. "He probably just wanted to point out that Julius looks nothing like you and accuse me of sleeping with the milkman." She grinned at what she thought was a great joke, but Harry was frowning heavily.
"I had hoped that we'd never see him again," he finally voiced. He got up and started unbuttoning his shirt.
"Harry, please, you dirty boy. Close the blinds first!" Ginny said this in her most seductive, tarty voice, but didn't get a peep out of him.
"This is really bothering you, isn't it?"
He looked at her and the lines on his forehead smoothed out.
"Yeah. Look, I had nearly forgotten about his existence, but after all that money he gave to the primary school…" Malfoy had given a whole sack of Galleons to pay for a primary potions lab in the grammar school down the road from the Potters (Corinthus currently attended Wheffle Grammar School and was in his third year).
"Harry, he can throw as much money as he wants to as many charities as he wants, but it won't change the fact that his father's in Azkaban and the family's name is mud," Ginny hated seeing Harry agitated like this, and she thought she was seeing more and more of his irritation lately.
On a whim, he had tried out for a community Quidditch team and made it on as Seeker. He played at least once a week and was letting some frustration out, which Ginny knew was good for him. But she also knew that what he really needed was to decide what to do for the rest of his life. She finally got him alone one afternoon and told him this. He had yelled, "You too, now, huh?" and stormed away. Later, he told her that it seemed like everyone was pressuring him to do something that he didn't want to do. She'd had enough.
"HARRY! Do you know WHY everyone's telling you to get a job? It's because you're wasting away. You're not doing ANYTHING! You want to know what I think? You want to be an Auror still. You just don't know you want it. Don't you think your parents would want you to fight the sort of vile creatures that killed-?"
"NO! I'VE ALREADY KILLED THE VILE CREATURE WHO KILLED THEM. NO MORE! STOP TELLING ME TO DO THIS! IT'S THE LAST THING ON EARTH I WANT TO DO!" He was nearly in tears. She hadn't at all intended for it to turn into an argument, but here it was. Harry climbed upstairs and Ginny heard him wash his face and brush his teeth. She sat reading in the living room for a couple of hours before nodding off and spending the night on the couch.
In the morning, she awoke to Harry standing over her, smiling like a lunatic.
"You're right, Gin! Of course you're right! I had a dream…I'll do it. I'm going back to the Ministry to get my certification renewed. I'll be an Auror. It's the right thing to do, isn't it? Yes, yes…" He continued mumbling his convictions about the meaning of life as he put the kettle on and boiled two eggs.
Ginny sat in awe. She had married a very complicated man, hadn't she? He stopped what he was doing every few seconds to glance back at her and grin.
And that, as they say, was that. It was no problem for the Ministry to accept Harry into the Auror program. He had already completed training and passed with flying colors, so he had been gleefully admitted onto the team. He recognized many members of the old Order; he renewed his friendship with Nymphadora Tonks, who had been a great mentor of sorts throughout Harry's training; and he finally had something to occupy his mind.
He had spent a decade trying to figure out how to do just that. In any other pursuit he was listless and felt that his talents were going to waste. Being an Auror, he was truly being challenged, and was happy about it.
He did have some serious issues to deal with before he could be satisfied fully. He remembered all the Aurors who had been killed or tortured…the Longbottoms, Alastor Moody, and Kingsley Shacklebolt. But in time, Harry recognized that the great sacrifices these people had made were not in vain, and that should he be called upon to surrender himself as such, he would have no choice but to do so.
He began to spend more time at the Burrow now that he wasn't being condemned from all sides about his idleness. Everyone was quite pleased to see that he was content in his work, finally. The Daily Prophet also got wind of his decision, and Harry granted them an interview, as he was in such good spirits.
A whole year passed quite happily as Harry became adept in his field, helping to capture several foreign magic abusers and getting paid handsomely for it. Working at the Ministry was a pleasure, now that Amelia Bones had been elected as Minister for Magic. Harry wasn't sure what had happened to Fudge. He was very quietly retired somewhere in Wales, and that was the last they had heard from him.
Ginny climbed the career ladder considerably when a whole branch of Whizz Hard opened to accommodate specialized books written by non-humans. The two of them were so happy with their professional and private lives that they felt no need to change anything at all.
Nevertheless, a few changes were indispensably in order.
On a sunny Sunday morning in June, Harry woke up early, looking forward to reading his entire Daily Prophet and drinking a whole pot of tea. He was surprised to see that Ginny was already awake. Her spot in the bed was incongruously empty but Harry didn't hear her making breakfast or listening to the WWN. He pulled on his bathrobe and slippers and wandered downstairs, a little concerned. He found her curled up on the sofa, reading a manuscript.
"What are you doing up so early?" he asked brightly.
She looked up from her text. "I'm pregnant," she said, and went back to work.
Harry had crossed the entire room and almost grabbed the kettle before he comprehended her words. He spun around and stared.
"What?" He wasn't completely sure he hadn't been hallucinating.
"We're going to have a baby. In the winter." She didn't seem very excited about this at all, and just kept reading. Harry wasn't going to let her get away with that. He dashed over to her, snatched her papers and chucked them onto the floor, then scooped her into a bizarre hug, where he had one arm around her neck, the other round her thigh and she was laughing hysterically. He rocked her a little, and then raised the normal questions: "Are you sure? How long have you known? What should we name it?"
"Whoa, Harry. Jumping the wand a little there, don't you think?"
He looked at his wife's pretty, smiling face for a full minute before kissing her deeply, setting her back down on the sofa, and running outside to take his broom for a ride.
