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Starfall	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 32486 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two—Slow Motion
            “I don’t know what to do.”
            Harry hesitated, rather than walking right into the kitchen, the way he had planned to do when he realized that Ginny had come back from the Burrow. From the sound of things, she was talking to someone. It was probably someone from the Harpies. Just like Harry had Ron and Hermione, those were her friends, the ones she confided in.
            Harry edged away from the kitchen. He didn’t want to overhear things like this, even accidentally. He and Ginny trusted each other too much for that.
            “I want you to follow your heart,” the other person responded, and Harry froze again. That was Molly, not someone from the team. “It’s always the best guide you can have.” A soft silence; Harry could easily picture Molly squeezing Ginny’s hand, the way she had done for Harry so many times. “You’re a Gryffindor, you should know that.”
            Ginny laughed, a watery sound. “But what if my heart is telling me two different things? What if I want Harry and I want children?”
            “Then the best thing you can do is be honest with both him and yourself, as soon as you can,” Molly said firmly.
            Harry slipped away then. He shouldn’t have stayed as long as he did. He wasn’t entitled to overhear what went on between a mother and a daughter.
            And he didn’t want to have heard what he did. When he got up to their bedroom, he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes in case Ginny came in and wondered what he was doing there, but his heartbeat wouldn’t shut up and let him relax.
            Of course he knew that Ginny could still have children. The curse only affected him, and those experimental Healers he had visited, although they couldn’t recreate the circumstances that had made him infertile or reverse the hex, had been able to reassure him that he hadn’t passed on his infertility to Ginny by sleeping with her.
            He had just never considered that she might choose to leave him.
            Maybe that wasn’t what that was about. Maybe you’re paranoid. Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking so hard about something you were eavesdropping on anyway. Aunt Petunia always said that you never overheard anything good about yourself when you were eavesdropping, anyway.
            Harry had to snort at that, because his life had got pretty low if he was reduced to thinking of something Aunt Petunia had said as advice.
            But his head continued to reel, and when he eventually heard the flash and flare of the fire that marked Molly’s departure, he didn’t go down and talk to Ginny the way he half-wanted to. She wasn’t the only one with conflicting desires. He fell asleep with his cheek pillowed on his hand instead, and only opened his eyes when he felt her fingers touch his hair.
            “Harry?” Ginny’s voice had a soft little whistle in it, the way he had heard before, but only when she was sick. Harry, still yawning, rolled over and took her hand.
            “Yeah?” His voice was soft, too. That seemed to help Ginny. She looked off to the side for a second, took a deep breath, and met his eyes again.
            “I thought of something that could help us have children,” she said. “It would be hard for both of us, but I think it would be the best solution, in the end.” Her voice was rushing along like a stream by the time she reached the end of the sentence, and her hand tightened on his in a way that made Harry gently force open her fingers and run his over them to soothe her.
            “You know I would do anything,” he said quietly. “You know I want children. I want to raise them and teach them and protect them and—I just want family again, you know? I can’t know my parents, so I wanted to know my kids.”
            Ginny was looking down at the bedspread, but Harry saw her wince. From that, he knew what would come out of her mouth, although he didn’t say anything. Let her get through it, say what she needed to say.
            “They wouldn’t be your kids, exactly,” said Ginny. “I mean, they would be mine. And yours, because you would help raise them. I was thinking that I could—there are people who could help. People who wouldn’t mind sleeping with me to give me…” Her face trailed off. She was as red as Harry thought he must have been when he was speaking to Yellowborn. They just didn’t invite other people into their sex lives.
            Harry closed his eyes. “And could you be absolutely sure that someone else you wanted to sleep with wouldn’t insist on being part of the kids’ lives?” he asked, voice tight. “That he wouldn’t want to be a father to his children? Because I would, if I was still capable.”
            “Well, no,” said Ginny, in such a reluctant voice that Harry thought she probably had considered that and hadn’t been able to think of someone she would want to sleep with but who wouldn’t want contact with the kids. “But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t both be fathers. You would be the father in the most important ways—I think. I mean. I think I could convince him that he—that it was okay—”
            “No,” Harry said softly.
            Ginny looked at him with anxious eyes. “You think I couldn’t convince him? But I wasn’t thinking of asking him to give up all rights to the kids. Or not saying they’re his. I was just going to ask him not to go around saying or acting like he’s their only father.”
            Harry looked away from her. “Maybe it’s selfish, but if it was okay with me to just have adopted children, then I’d already have Teddy and any kids Ron and Hermione have,” he whispered. “I want children of my own blood, Ginny, without another bloke who could say that he’s more their father than I am.” He hesitated, then blurted out the next idea that had arisen in his mind. “I know Muggle women get donations. They don’t have to know who the father is. The father doesn’t have to sleep with the woman or have any idea the kid is his.”
            “Donations of what?” Ginny asked, but she figured it out before Harry could say anything. “Harry, no, that’s revolting.”

            “How?” Harry demanded, sitting up and turning around. “I mean, I don’t think it would work, because I still want kids of my own, but that would solve the problem of the kids’ father wanting to step in and interfere.” He grimaced. He could imagine little worse than a conflict between two fathers over whether it was the right thing for a kid to be punished, or to start flying early, or to visit the Muggle world. He didn’t ever want to subject children to that kind of thing. At least, if he played with Teddy or Ron and Hermione’s kids, they would always know that Andromeda or Ron and Hermione were the ones who were really raising them.
            “It’s revolting,” Ginny repeated, and wrapped her arms around herself. “I want to make love with someone, and look in his face, and know that his children are growing inside me.”
            Harry winced, feeling as though someone had pinched all the nerves in his arms at once. “Well, that’s nice, but you can’t do it with me anymore,” he snapped, and looked away.
            “If you would be—if you would think about it,” Ginny began, evidently deciding against using some word that might be “reasonable.” If that was the word, Harry was glad she’d changed her mind.
            “I don’t want kids of someone else’s blood,” Harry whispered. “I don’t want you to make love with someone else.” He glanced sideways at Ginny. “And you already have someone in mind, don’t you?”
            Ginny flushed redder than he’d ever seen her go. “So what if I do? At least I’m trying to solve the problem!”
            “Well, I told you about the Muggle solution,” Harry snapped. “Anyone can go there! It’s not like that—at least that way, there’d be no other father interfering. They wouldn’t even know who you were or that your children were being born.”
            “That’s revolting,” Ginny whispered again. “That’s the really revolting part, that they would never know. And what if I couldn’t find a wizard who’d—donated?”
            “I assume that most people who do donate are Muggles,” said Harry. He couldn’t understand what she was on about. “Unless there’s some wizards living in the Muggle world who do. Why is that important?”
            “If we had a child who wasn’t magical because the father was Muggle,” Ginny said, “how would you feel?”
            “I would love a child who was a Squib!” Harry had to turn around and stare at the wall. He took a deep breath. “I had a dream last year that we had a son who was a Squib. It didn’t matter. It would never matter. Not to me.”
            “If it was a child of your own blood,” said Ginny. “But what if it wasn’t? Would you really be able to look at a child who wasn’t of your own blood and never feel resentment towards him or her if it turned out they didn’t have magic?”
            “And you think I would never resent a child who wasn’t of my own blood if you conceived them with someone else?” At least Harry was calm enough that he didn’t want to stomp around the room and fling things at the thought of his wife in bed with someone else. “Besides, what if they were a Squib? There’s a lot of pure-blood inbreeding.”
            “Not in the Weasley family!”
            “You interbred with the pure-blood families just like everyone else!” Harry swung around and glared at her. “And didn’t your mum have a second cousin who was an accountant or something?”
            “I can’t—how could you fling that back in my face?” Ginny was shivering, facing away from him. “You can’t understand how afraid I am to go into this Muggle bank and do something with somebody’s—things, but you can tell me that it would be my fault if I made love with someone else and we had a Squib child?”
            “You were the one who was afraid that we would have a Squib if the father was a Muggle!” Harry raked his fingers down through his hair. Sometimes the gesture soothed him, because it reminded him of all the times in the past when he’d done that and had problems and managed to overcome them, but it wasn’t working this time. “Listen, Ginny, it’s too soon to be talking about this, all right? I still need time to absorb that I won’t ever have kids.”
            “I want them,” said Ginny quietly, with dignity. She stood up and looked him in the eye. “I want them soon. And if you can just see things my way, then you’ll have them. With me. They just won’t be half yours.”
            Harry closed his eyes. He wondered if he was being selfish, if he was being unreasonable. Maybe it was silly to think that whoever Ginny slept with would want to be in the kids’ lives every second, or that they would be confused about who their real father was. Maybe it was worst of all to deprive Ginny of her chance to have children.
            “I always wanted to have kids who were mine by blood,” he whispered. “There was none of my family left alive. I want them to be alive.”
            “I know,” said Ginny. “Harry, I know. But adopted kids are the only way that you’ll ever have them now.” Harry winced, but he’d been telling himself harsher things for the past week, trying to get used to the facts. “I just thought—you love me so much. I know you do. Couldn’t you love my children, too?”
            “Why can’t we both adopt?” Harry whispered. “Why can’t we adopt one of those children we’re hearing about now who lost their families recently because their parents died in the war and their grandparents adopted them, but their grandparents are dying now?”
            “Because I want children of my own!”
            Harry looked at her, and spread his hands. “And so do I.”
            Ginny closed her eyes, then uttered a quiet laugh that would have cheered Harry up if it was less soaked in despair. “Yes, that was sort of stupid of me, wasn’t it?”
            “Not stupid,” said Harry. He licked his lips and found them coated with a dry saliva that felt like fuzz. “I think that we’re both having a hard time dealing with it. I know I am. And we’re not thinking about things, and we’re not thinking about consequences. I’m sorry.”
            Ginny reached out and took his hand. Her hold was fragile, and so was her smile; it faded a few minutes after she had taken his hand. Harry waited. He thought things were better than if they were screaming at each other, but—he didn’t think Ginny had completely changed her mind and decided not to sleep with someone else to have children.
            “I really want kids,” Ginny whispered. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, deciding whether I would leave the Harpies at the end of next season, or whether I would play for a while when I was pregnant. I can’t give up that dream.”
            “And I’m sorry,” Harry said, his voice stiffening in spite of himself, “but I really don’t want you sleeping with someone else to get pregnant.”
            Ginny stared at him. “You couldn’t learn to love—my kids? You love me, Harry. I assume you would love my children.”
            Harry shut his eyes, exhausted. “You know what I think about that already. If we weren’t married and you had children, I would be happy to be an uncle to them. But Ginny, I’m in love with you. I think adopting children together is our best bet. You want to begin looking for them? I don’t mind a boy or a girl first. We can think about it.”
            “I just want them to be of my blood so much,” Ginny whispered. She hesitated, and then added, “And I can still do that.”
            Harry heard the very slight emphasis on the word I, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it. It hurt too much. He turned his head away, and dropped her hand.
            “Can’t you compromise a little?” Ginny was stroking the bed near his fingers, without quite touching him. “Meet me in the middle?”
            “How can I do that, when you want to have children with someone else?” Harry opened his eyes and blinked at the window. He’d thought he’d slept until the evening, but no, the light of late summer afternoon was still coming through it. It was strange, and made him feel stranger.
            “I mean that one of us can have children,” said Ginny. “And that means that one of us should be able to. We can’t just go off and adopt a child when we could—we could be depriving a couple where neither of them can have children from having one.”
            Harry rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I don’t think there are many couples like that,” he muttered. “One of them might be infertile, but the other partner accepts it and they both adopt a child together.” He knew that Muggles had different ways of handling it, but he wasn’t going to discuss that, not when Ginny was so revolted by the one situation that Harry knew anything about in detail.
            “You could learn to love a child who was related to me.”
            Harry shook his head. “I can’t compromise on this, Ginny. Maybe if it was the Muggle way, then I could, but I can’t stand the thought of you sleeping with someone else.”
            Ginny closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her face was still and cold. “Well, you’ll have to. Because I want a baby, and this is the only way to have one.”
            “Not the only way—”
            “The only way I’ll accept.”
            Harry stared at her. He thought now that the note she had left him the other night had been the beginning of the end, but not in a way that he’d anticipated. Or maybe the conversation with Molly telling Ginny to follow her heart had begun it, and Ginny had decided that she wanted children more than she wanted her marriage.
            “What will happen if I go out today and find someone to give me children?” Ginny asked, with a bright, false tone to her voice that Harry knew well. It was the one she used when she was hoping that he would contradict her.
            But Harry only shook his head. He didn’t have the words. He had tumult, and nothing else, spilling up behind his eyes and staying there. He bowed his head and turned his back on Ginny.
            He heard her short gasp, the sign of such hurt as he’d only caused her a few times since they got married. He thought he could repair everything now if he turned and took her in his arms. That was what he had done the other times. He and Ginny both had tempers, but they did love each other. Harry could feel the love beating in him like another heart, the same love that didn’t want Ginny to sleep with someone else. He would have let her go and do it if he didn’t care.
            Or if you were unselfish enough to let her follow her desires.
            Harry hunched his shoulders. And maybe he could have been that way, but this was so sudden. He and Ginny could wait, couldn’t they? She didn’t have to have a baby right away. He thought she was just running off without thinking because the news of Harry’s infertility had been so sudden, too. Harry wanted time to come to terms with it. He thought she should have that, too.
            He turned around. Maybe he had found the words that would make her listen to him. “Can we wait a while?” he asked, and he thought he had the eloquence to make her change her mind.
            But Ginny was no longer there. Listening now, Harry thought he could hear her talking to someone in the kitchen below, probably through the Floo. Maybe she would spend the night over at the Burrow again.
            Harry buried his head in his hands, and sat there until his stomach calmed down, and so did his emotions, a little. Then he looked up. He really needed to talk to someone, and he thought it would have to be Hermione. Ginny wasn’t her blood sister, and Harry reckoned that the slow-motion collapse of their marriage would put Ron in the middle more than it would Hermione.
            Slow-motion collapse. Was that really what was going to happen to them, all because they had got impatient and couldn’t wait?
            Harry shook his head. He didn’t want to think about such things, not alone. He wanted to talk to Hermione and have her laugh at him and tell him that it was crazy and he was mental and there would be a way to work this out.
            But he had a rush of adrenaline through his veins, the way he got on a bad case, that warned him it might not happen. Not this time.
*
            “I don’t know what’s got into Ginny.” Hermione was frowning, pushing her hair out of her eyes so that she could concentrate on Harry and the cup of tea in front of him. “I don’t know why she wants to get pregnant so suddenly. Were you talking about it?”
            “We were talking about it, but we hadn’t decided on a date or anything.” Harry sipped at the tea, more because Hermione was looking at him than because he wanted it. His throat felt too dry for the tea to affect it. “She wanted to see what would happen in her current season with the Harpies, and then—then decide.”
            “And now she wants something that she thought she could have, that she could think about in the future, and which she’s afraid that she’s lost forever,” Hermione whispered, her expression lightening. “Oh, I think I understand now. It’s not right, but she wants to rush into something to celebrate still being able to have children herself.” She reached out and gripped Harry’s hand tightly.
            “Celebrate?” Harry thought he would choke on the word, but he did manage to get it out enough for Hermione to understand.
            “Do you remember what happened at Fred’s funeral?” Hermione asked, instead of responding directly.
            Harry clucked his tongue and looked away. Fred’s funeral had been sadder for George than anyone else, but sad enough for the rest of the Weasley family. Molly hadn’t stopped crying during the entire burial. Arthur sat there like a stone, not even able to pat Molly’s back or say anything comforting to her. Ginny had held on tightly enough to Harry’s hand that his fingers were mashed when he finally managed to take them out of her hold.
            And when the burial was complete and the small stone tomb rose above Fred’s body, Ginny had taken Harry’s other hand and drawn him to his feet, not saying a word, and they had Apparated home and made love for two hours.
            “It wasn’t at Fred’s funeral,” he muttered, for a final rebellion, even though it was weak and he knew it.
            Hermione gave him a smile that was almost too gentle and understanding to be real. “Ron and I did the same thing, Harry. It’s natural to want to celebrate life when you’re in the midst of death. Maybe not every time or just in that way, but I also think it’s why so many people get drunk after funerals. Some kind of celebration, some way to spit at death.”
            Harry shut his eyes. He and Ginny had only been teenagers then, not married, but maybe it would have been better to conceive a child then, so that they wouldn’t end up like this.
            “And so this is what she’s trying to do,” he whispered. “Run out and—and mourn and celebrate that she’s the one who escaped being infertile?”
            “Yes, I think so,” said Hermione. “It’s only a theory, but it’s one that would make a lot of sense.”
            Harry bowed his head, and said nothing in response. It did make sense, and in some ways he couldn’t blame Ginny for it. This whole mess was the fault of no one but the wizard who had cast the curse on him in the first place—or the whole lot of them who had attacked him, since their magic had combined with a relatively minor hex to render him infertile.
            It still hurt like hell, though. He wanted to rage and scream and stomp his foot, and there was no way he could do that.
            “D’you think Ginny is going to come back?” he asked then, the question he had told himself he wouldn’t ask because it wasn’t fair to Hermione, but which burst out of him anyway. “Once she gets past this notion that she has to have a child right away to celebrate being able to? Do you think she’ll come back to me?”
            Silence. Harry had thought Hermione would offer some sort of reassurance or explanation right away. It was what she did. He ended up opening his eyes to look at her.
            Hermione just sat there staring at him. “I really don’t know,” she said.
            Once again, Harry felt like he was falling, but this time, he thought it likely he would never land.

*
BAFan: Poor everyone, really.
delia cerrano: It’ll be a few chapters yet, but it will get there.
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Starfall