A/N: Written for Camyj for the GGE17.
Warnings: miscarriage, still birth
I sit and I stare at your clothes in the drawer
I cry and my knuckles get sore
'Cause I still believe it won't be like before
Now somehow I just want you more
More, by Halsey
The first time she hadn't even wanted it. She was eighteen, and the world was still broken and burnt from the War. She was broken. Fred was dead. She retched until she was hollow inside. This thing growing under her cold skin was going to suck the last dregs of life out of her.
But it fell through, like rickety beams crumpling in a dilapidated hayloft. It was storming for a week, like heaven was angry for her loss. It didn't feel like a loss then. She had been relieved. She later wondered if she hadn't cursed herself. If she hadn't wished it away and damned herself to never hold life again.
The next time she had a ring on her finger and room in her heart to love. Victoire was two and they babysat her every couple of weeks. Ginny missed her when Bill picked her up and took her back home.
They didn't have to try long. Harry teared up, kissed her face, cupped her belly with reverence. Molly squealed with the news and spun her in a crushing hug, lined face lit up with joy. She had already knitted a wardrobe of size double zero by the time Ginny showed up at the Burrow, doubled over in agony. The sky was clear, sunny, mocking. She cried a sky full of tears to make up for it.
The third time was a year later. They had gone slow. They didn't tell anyone else until the second trimester. The mediwitches told her they looked healthy. They. Twins. Ginny followed the dietary guide religiously, let Harry take over the chores, kept her feet up. It was all going well until it wasn't.
She tore her nails off with her teeth. She bled.
The knitted jumpers she pulled from the drawers scratched against her raw fingertips. Harry tried to hold her, but she pushed him away. The wall was dented, and her knuckles were swollen.
The next time, she told no one, not even Harry. She cast glamours over herself, took Pepper Up Potions to mask her exhaustion. She ate whatever, kept going to work. The months ticked by. She left their cottage for a foreign city. She got round and bloated in an apartment with no Floo, surrounded by Muggles. When her contractions started, she Apparated herself to the hospital.
There was no crying. She held the still baby, his lips blue. She didn't know if he had Harry's eyes or hers.
She buried him in the garden back home, amongst the wildflowers. Next to Fred. Molly was the only one that knew. Though she didn't know his name.
She decided to name all of them. She wrote their names on fine parchment, quill curling beautiful letters. She held the parchment over a candle, so it shrivelled to ash, and she watched their names rise in the smoke.
She tried to be content with being an aunt to her nieces and nephews. She loved them. But she still ached. She felt poisoned. Cursed. Bereft.
Harry spoke to her softly, tentatively. About their options. Alternatives.
She felt sick. Why couldn't she do this one thing? The daughter of Molly Weasley, it should be in her blood.
But if she wanted to mother a baby who would grow into a child (she did), and if she didn't want to risk losing a pregnancy again (she didn't), Harry's suggestion was a life line.
Their sons were biological siblings, adopted at three years and thirteen months respectively. Their daughter was a gift from Luna. She offered to be a surrogate, because of course she did. Ginny loved her so much, her heart could burst. She didn't dare to hope those long nine months, but Luna carried Lily gently and carefully and delivered her safely.
And so Ginny got a little family of her own, not in the way that she had imagined, but it had only made her want them more. She had loved them for all of her life.
One day, when James, Albus and Lily were all at school, Ginny led Harry to the field of wildflowers.
They held warm hands as butterflies fluttered like fairies over the tall grass. They shared memories of their babies that they had never heard cry. Their babies that they had loved before they had ever met them. Babies they had sung to and stroked through stretchmark-streaked skin. Babies whose lovingly knitted clothes had been passed down to their little sister.
Ginny told him about Gabriel, who was watched over by his Uncle. She held Harry while he sobbed.
Ginny still didn't know if she was cursed. But even if she were, she was also blessed. To have a husband, parents, brothers, and friends who loved her. And children she would love through this life and the next.