When Ginny was fifteen years old, a few days before Harry first kissed her, she sat down with Harry, Hermione, and Ron in the common room. Shaking, pale,looking more upset than Ginny'd ever seen him before, Harry told them about what happened to Malfoy. Sectumsempra, he said. The curse he discovered in the Prince's book. In Snape's book. He'd been more upset than she'd ever seen him before.
"I didn't know," he said, back then. It'd been the only defence he'd been able to offer. "I didn't know what it did. I wouldn't have… if I would have known what it did, I wouldn't have."
She came to his defence then, because he hadn't known what it did. It was one of the first and only arguments she'd ever gotten into with Hermione. It was clear to Ginny that Harry wouldn't have ever, ever considered using Sectumsempra on anyone if he had known what it did. How could he? Dark magic like that, it wasn't something he was capable of.
A little while before her sixteenth birthday, she had to see her brother without an ear. Pale and injured on the sofa in the living room of the Burrow, George managed to joke about it. Saint-like, he said, because of the hole in his ear. She smiled at his joke, but for the next few months, even as everything went to hell around them, up until she had to go back to Hogwarts, she had to force herself not to flinch when she saw the sight of it. Snape's work, Lupin had said. Sectumsempra. One of the worst curses.
And now, in a perverse, terrible sort of way, history's repeating himself, she thinks, as she holds onto Harry's hand, watching Hannah run a diagnostic spell on Scorpius, who's lying in bed. Another Malfoy, another Sectumsempra. Another person she loves, after George, who she couldn't protect from the curse. This feels worse, though. Worse than when Harry used it on Malfoy, worse than when George had gotten hit by the curse. A thousand times worse. He looks pale and small, and Ginny wants to wrap him up in blankets and make sure nothing bad ever happens to him. What makes it worse is that Scorpius didn't know, had no idea he was in any sort of danger at all. Mafoy had been trying to use the Cruciatus Curse on Harry; George had willingly volunteered for a fight against Death Eaters if it meant getting Harry home safe. All Scorpius had been doing was going about his day at school.
She's had Scorpius stay at her home before. It's impossible not to be attached to him. She thinks about her own mum saying about Harry, back at Grimmauld Place, that he's as good as her son, and she thinks she understands where she's coming from. She feels as bad about Scorpius being hurt as she feels about Albus and Rose.
Albus is sitting down next to Scorpius's bed, having adamantly refused a bed of his own. Rose is next to him, and Lily's perched on the end of the bed. Ginny looks at the way Albus is holding Scorpius's hand, and it takes all her will power to not tear up at the sight. She doesn't like succumbing to tears; she never has, but it's taking all her effort to not give in now. She thinks Harry knows, because his hand is tight around hers – or maybe he needs it as much as she does.
Once she finished the diagnostic spell, Hannah nods at Harry and Ginny, and they follow her a little bit away, out of the children's earshot. "How bad is it, Hannah?" Ginny asks quietly.
Hannah hesitates before she answers – never a good sign, Ginny thinks. "It's not as bad as it could be," she says finally. "That was incredibly quick thinking, repairing the cuts like that," she adds to Harry.
Cuts is a trivial word to describe the gashes on Scorpius, the ones that had ripped open his robes. Ginny shivers at the memory of Scorpius, lying on the ground with Albus, seconds away from passing out.
"Wasn't the first time I've had to do it," Harry says, very quietly. "Or the first time I've seen it done." He squeezes Ginny's hand, and she squeezes it in return.
"Well, you healed them just in time. But there's internal damage," Hannah continues. "It appears as if more than one student cast Sectumsempra on him. More than once. If you hadn't repaired the cuts…" she actually shudders and then takes a moment to compose herself before she continues. "You saved his life, I'd say. Scorpius will need to be here for a week. Maybe more, depending on how he responds to everything."
"But he'll be okay?" Ginny asks softly.
"He will," Hannah says. "Eventually. He needs some time to let himself recover. I've got some potions that will help, and I'll keep a close eye on him. I've seen people recover fully from far worse spell damage, so I have no doubt that he'll make a full recovery."
"And… the others?" Harry asks.
Hannah gives them a sympathetic look. "Rose and Albus were both hit with curses of some kind. It seems to be… like the Cruciatus Curse, but less forceful. It isn't like anything I've seen before. I'd like to keep them overnight to observe them, to see if there's any lasting effects."
Harry frowns. "A new curse?" he says slowly.
Ginny didn't think it was possible for her heart to sink more than it already has. She wishes she wasn't, but she's well acquainted with the Cruciatus Curse. She knows Harry is, too. And her son and niece now know a little bit about the horrors of it. The only tiny thing she's grateful for is that it seems to be a modified version of the Cruciatus. That's something, she supposes.
"It seems like it to me," Hannah says. "I'm going to have to owl Scorpius's parents, though. And maybe Ron and Hermione, too, because Rose might like to see them…"
"Don't bother. I'll get them a message," Harry says. "An owl might only reach them in an hour or so. I can get them a message right now."
"Oh, good. I'll go back to the children, then," Hannah says. She Summons a potion on her way to Scorpius's bed, bustling with worry. Ginny's suddenly reminded of Madam Pomfrey.
Ginny watches Harry as he sends a Patronus to Malfoy and then one to Ron and Hermione, and then looks up at him. "So," she says. She doesn't have to say anything else.
Harry meets her eyes. "Malfoy's going to kill me. I promised him I'd keep Scorpius safe. And look at me now," he says, almost bitterly. "My son and niece hit with a new torture curse. Scorpius… hurt. And it all happened right where we were, Gin."
Ginny doesn't say anything for a moment. She doesn't know where to even begin. Ever since Rose burst into her room, looking worried and frantic and injured, she's been running on adrenaline, and she doesn't want to think about what will happen once she sits down and lets the events of the last few hours sink in. Finally, she squeezes Harry's hand and says, "It wasn't our fault. It wasn't your fault."
Harry looks miserable, absolutely miserable. "Wasn't it, though?" he says quietly.
Ginny shakes her head. "No. The people who attacked our children, it's their fault," she says. She doesn't think twice about including Scorpius in that category. "But if we don't talk to them now, and we don't deal with it, and we don't do our very best to make sure whoever did it is caught, and that they're alright, then that will be our fault."
Harry brings a hand up to cup her cheek. She nudges her head into his palm without thinking about it, grateful for the comfort. "You're right," he agrees.
"I'm always right. Almost twenty years of marriage and you don't know that yet?" Ginny says, and offers him a tiny smile.
"Yeah, how very dare I?" Harry says dryly. He lets her lead him to the others.
Scorpius is fast asleep now (A Dreamless Sleep Potion, she suspects). Hannah seems to have forced Albus into the bed next to Scorpius, but he's still leaning across to hold onto Scorpius's hand. Rose is sitting up in the bed on Scorpius's other side, curled up like a cat. She and Albus look completely exhausted. Jamie and Freddie are perched on the ends of Al and Rose's beds, respectively, and Lily's sitting down next to Jamie, cuddled into his side. Ginny sits down in a chair in between Albus and Scorpius, leaning in and pressing a soft kiss to the top of his head.
"How are you feeling, Al?" she asks him softly.
"Awful," Albus admits. "But I'm fine, Mum, really."
"Do you think you'd both be up to telling us the entire story?" Harry asks gently. He sits down next to Ginny, and Lily hesitates for a moment before she climbs off Albus's bed and sits down in Harry's lap. He wraps his arms around her immediately. She seems smaller than usual to Ginny, small and vulnerable and scared in a way that she usually doesn't let herself be.
"Yeah. The sooner you tell us, the sooner we get the bastards who did it," Jamie says, and leans over to ruffle Albus's already messy hair.
"Hear, hear," Freddie agrees.
Rosie and Albus exchange glasses. "You can tell them," Al says. Ginny distinctly sees him give Scorpius's hand a squeeze.
Rose clears her throat, and then gets up, carefully moving so she's sitting on the edge of Scorpius's bed, closer to them. Freddie gets up, comes to sit with Jamie on Al's bed. "Okay," Rosie says, "but I don't know how well I remember it."
"Come on, Rosie. You remember everything," Albus says.
"It's why you were always the best at telling on us when we were younger," Freddie says with a snort.
"Back when we were young and mischievous, of course," Jamie says.
"Definitely. Not now, because we're serious and well-behaved," Freddie says.
"Don't step a toe out of line, that's us," Jamie agrees.
Albus grins at that. "Would you still describe yourself that way if I told Mum and Dad about the Dungbombs incident?"
"What Dungbombs incident?" Ginny asks.
"Nothing," Jamie says hastily.
"Just some ribbing among brothers, Aunt Gin, you know how it is," Freddie adds.
"Exactly. Brotherly joking," Jamie says. "Now onto the story. You were saying, Rose?"
Rose, who's smiling at them, takes a deep breath and then slowly starts talking, filling them in on what happened. Now and then, Albus interjects, correcting a detail or (more likely, Ginny thinks) giving Rose a quick break for her to take a moment.
"And then Lily showed up," Albus concludes. "And I told her to get you, Dad. So she went to the Defence classroom, and Rosie went to get Mum."
"Holy shit," Freddie mutters at the end of it.
Ginny can't say she disagrees. "Are you—are you both feeling alright?" she asks. It's very much an insufficient question, but it's all she can manage right now. She feels a wave of protective rage wash over her, and she doesn't think she's ever been this angry before, not ever. Next to her, Harry's gone completely still, and she knows that he's every bit as angry as she is, if not more so.
"We'll be fine," Rose says quietly. "Really. We will be."
"It's Scorp I'm worried about," Albus says. "What happened to him?"
"Yes," says a cold voice at the door. "I'd like to know the same thing."
Ginny turns to look at the doorway, and sees Draco Malfoy standing there, cold with fury, and Astoria standing next to him, still wearing her Mediwitch robes. She gets up immediately, walks over to Astoria. "He's going to be okay," she whispers to her. If it was her, and she'd walked into the sight of her son in the Hospital Wing, the first thing she'd be worried about is that.
Astoria looks at her, her eyes bright with tears, and offers her a grateful smile. Malfoy ignores her completely, however, and walks towards Harry and the others.
"Potter," he says, "would you care to explain what the hell my son is doing in the Hospital Wing?"
