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Starfall	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 32486 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
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Chapter Three—Starfall
            “I didn’t really do it, you know.”
            Ginny’s voice came from behind him. Harry had taken the day off work after Kingsley talked to him about yelling at people who had nothing to do with the case that had made him infertile. He sighed and rolled his head on his neck hard enough to pop a few things, then turned around.
            “You didn’t run off and sleep with someone to get pregnant?” he asked.
            Ginny walked into the drawing room and sat down on the couch next to him, the same couch where Harry had held her while she cried at the news that they really couldn’t have children. She sat a distance away from him, her head turned to the side. After the last fight they had had, though, Harry couldn’t really blame her.
            “No,” she said. “When it came down to it, I discovered that one thing was missing.” She turned and met Harry’s eyes expectantly.
            Harry had no idea what could be missing. Ginny had made it obvious that she wanted to sleep with someone, and she seemed to have a candidate in mind. “Love?” he finally asked, when the silence had stretched so long that it would be more uncomfortable to let it go on than to break it.
            Ginny did a whole-body flinch. “No,” she whispered. “Your consent, Harry. I want to know that my child is going to be loved, and brought into a home where it’s loved.”
            “You said it,” Harry said, and turned back to the paper. “Your child. Not mine.”
            There was a long pause. Ginny was fighting a battle, Harry knew, but he didn’t know what the stakes were or what the outcome would be. She had made it clear that she cared more about the chance of having children right now than she did anything else. She probably should finish the battle and make her decision.
            He was trying to pretend it didn’t hurt him, and of course it did, it hurt like a shard of ice shoved into his lungs. But trying to hold her back or change her mind could hurt worse. He didn’t want to fight constantly with Ginny. He wanted them to stand together and have love and support and find a way to overcome this.
            “It could be ours,” Ginny said. “Not many people would ever have to know that they weren’t yours. The father would, of course, and my family. But not many other people.”
            Harry glanced at her sideways. “I don’t want rumors circulating, though. Does the man you were planning to sleep with and ask to give you children look much like me?”
            Such a deep blush overspread Ginny’s cheeks that she looked fevered. She took a sheet of the paper that had escaped onto the floor and looked at it. “No.”
            “Well, then,” said Harry, and snapped the Prophet straight.
            This time, Ginny’s hand tore straight through the paper, snatching it up and discarding handfuls of it on the floor. Harry stared at her, frankly shocked. He had never thought he would see her like that.
            “We have to have children somehow,” Ginny hissed. “This is the best way. We don’t have to go into the Muggle world, we don’t have to worry about our child not being magical, we don’t have to wait to adopt one. We can have a baby as soon as we want one, and the child will be healthy and—”
            “Not mine,” said Harry firmly. “And apparently you want to sleep with someone who’s going to look different enough from me that lots of people might get the idea that the kid isn’t mine, either.” He took a deep breath. “Listen, Ginny. I thought about this the other day, but not in time.” He stopped himself from saying “in time to stop you from walking away.” He had to be so careful. “Why don’t we wait a bit? Maybe in time, I’ll get used to the idea that I can’t have children. Maybe one or both of us will lose this attachment to the idea that we have to have children of our blood.” He knew it would be difficult for him to lose, but he thought he could. “Just—right now it’s still too overwhelming.”
            “I want a baby.”
            “It can wait.”
            “I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to.”
            “Why?” Fuck Hermione’s theory, Harry was going to ask the question outright. “Why does it have to be now, when you were even discussing waiting until the next season was over? What happened?”
            “This happened!” Ginny flung a hand at him. “I want a baby now, before someone finds out about the infertility and starts spreading rumors around! We can have at least one. We can have a few.”
            Harry stared at her. “You’re worried about rumors, but you want to sleep with someone who looks really different from me.”
            Ginny shut her eyes and looked away. “I don’t know if I can explain it. I don’t know if I should have to. All right? All I know is I started thinking about all the chances that we’ve already missed, the babies we could have conceived years ago if we were working on it! And I don’t want to take the chance that someone will curse me, too, or I’ll be in some kind of flying accident and die. I want to have children.”
            It was what Hermione said it was, after all. Harry bit back the impulse to snap, given that. He swallowed deeply and nodded. “Okay. Okay. But if you want to quit the team for a while and stay at home, then you won’t be in danger of getting cursed or dying in a broom accident. I can make enough to support both of us. In the meantime, we can think about it and work on it.”
            “I don’t want to.”
            Harry felt as though a dragon had given him a dull blow to the chest with its tail. “What?” he whispered.
            “I didn’t want to do this.” Tears were slipping down Ginny’s cheeks. “I didn’t want to choose between you and having children. But I want them so badly, Harry, and I really don’t want to wait. I can walk out this door and be pregnant in a few hours. That’s never going to happen with you. Never.”
            Goddamn it. Less than a month had passed since Yellowborn had walked into that room and told Harry what was the matter. He ought to have had more time to deal with it than this. He needed more time to deal with it than this.
            Ginny ought to have given him that time.
            “If you choose your children and whoever this man is you want to father them over me,” he said, “fine. I’m moving out.”
            Ginny’s mouth drooped open a little. “What?” She stood up and reached out to him, then clasped her hands back together against her chest.
            “You heard me,” Harry said. His teeth felt as if they would crack, he was pressing them together so hard. “You made your choice, and you can’t stand staying here with me and trying to adopt or work out a solution so that you’re not—you’re not sleeping with someone else. Your children and having them now are more important than waiting. Well, waiting is important to me. Your life changed, but my fucking life changed too, Ginny!” His voice finally escaped his control, but Ginny wasn’t frightened; she just went on staring at him. “I want to think about this and try to come to fucking terms with it instead of just having to jump into something new! So I’ll move out.” He turned and began Summoning his clothes and Auror robes and everything else he could think of from upstairs.
            “You’re not being reasonable,” said Ginny. “You’re talking like we’re going to get a divorce right away.”
            “You want children right away,” Harry said, spinning around to sneer at her. “Why not a divorce?”
            Ginny tried to touch him. Harry avoided her. He was burning hot and bitter and angry. He’d been denying himself time to mourn, trying to be sensitive to everybody, Yellowborn and Ginny and Ron and Molly in case he put them in the middle of a divorce, and he hadn’t been able to sit down and cry for long.
            Now he felt he was about to. He was going to do it in private, though, away from someone who was already daydreaming about the man she was going to fuck and the children she was going to have.
            “Harry.”
            “No.” They were both being unreasonable and stubborn and wrong, maybe, but Harry was not going to sit around being the patient one in that situation. His clothes had come flying down the stairs by now, and it was a simple matter to Summon that old trunk he’d had with him so long ago, at the Dursleys’. He’d kept it for sentimental reasons, but it was useful now, as he stuffed his clothes in it and then shrank it and tucked it in his pocket.
            “You need to calm down and listen to me.” Ginny spoke as though she was going to restrain him simply by moving around in front of him and lifting one stern hand.
            “You’re the one who wants to walk away from me because I’m defective now and get pregnant right this minute.” Harry glared at her. “Get out of my way.”
            “I never said that!”
            “I could get pregnant in a few hours,” Harry told her in a mocking voice. “I want to stare into someone’s eyes and know that he loves me and—”
            “This is horrible.” Ginny’s eyes were filled with tears again. Harry thought he had seen her cry more in the last month than in the entire five years of their marriage. Well, fine. He had felt more like shit in the last month than in the entire five years of their marriage. “You’re horrible! I told you those things and they were real and sincere and only meant for your ears, and now you’re throwing them back in my face?”
            “I’m throwing them back in the face of the woman who chose having children over me,” Harry said, barely holding onto his temper. “Get the fuck out of my way.”
            “We could still be a family if you would make the choice to love them!”
            That was so ridiculous that Harry didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing. And he didn’t try to go to the Floo or the door, since Ginny was blocking him from both of them, and he didn’t try to tear open the wards and Apparate, which would leave Ginny and anyone else in the house without defenses. He touched the emergency Portkey coiled around his throat instead, the one that was made to replace the upper button in any shirt he wore.
            The flowing colors snatched him away and deposited him in his office. Harry wavered for a second on unsteady legs before he collapsed into his chair. Thank Merlin, it was the middle of the afternoon and most people had already left. Including Ron.
            Harry flung a locking spell at the door, though, because it would be just his luck that someone would hear him and get curious, and then buried his head in his hands.
            He didn’t cry as much as he had thought he would. His shoulders heaved, and there were a few dry sobs. But the rage was worse than the sadness, burning up the sorrow like a forest fire devouring trees.
            He sat there and let it pass through him, and when it got bad enough that he had to do something with it or go insane, he hurled the ornamental paperweight he’d got for finishing Auror training at the wall. He’d never liked the stupid thing, anyway.
*
            “You look like hell. And Ginny said that you didn’t come home last night.”
            Harry lifted one shoulder in a weary shrug. Ron had come into the office and stood studying him for some time from the doorway, while Harry slogged through paperwork and didn’t look up. “So speaketh the trained investigator, right?”
            “So speaketh the concerned best friend and brother-in-law, too.” Ron walked over to his own desk and started rearranging his files with careless hands. He didn’t take his eyes off Harry.
            Harry held back the jolt that came from hearing those last words, and swallowed. “Well, you might not be that much longer.”
            “Which one?” Ron gave up on pretending to pay attention to the files and turned to look at Harry. “The best friend or the brother-in-law?”
            “Ginny and I are getting a divorce. And I’m not sure that you want to stay my best friend now that you’ve heard that.”
            Ron looked down at the floor and clenched his jaw. Harry waited. It seemed to take a long time for the words to creep up Ron’s throat, but then, he finally shook his head and spoke.
            “I don’t think you did anything deliberately to hurt Ginny. She wants children, and you can’t have them. That’s it, isn’t it?”
            Harry frowned. He wondered for a moment if Hermione had mentioned their conversation to Ron, but he didn’t think so. Ron had probably just figured it out based on what he knew about Ginny and the hex that had hit Harry. “Yes. Basically.”
            “Then that makes it sad.” Ron’s throat worked, and he turned away as though he couldn’t look at Harry any longer, sitting down behind his desk. “But not anyone’s fault.”
            Harry was quiet. He wanted to believe Ron, that the rest of the Weasleys would think the same thing and not exile him completely from their family, but Ginny was their daughter and their sister. Harry would expect them to choose her over him. They couldn’t give up on being related to her because her marriage to Harry didn’t work out.
            The way he sometimes did when it was really important, Ron heard his thoughts and answered them without being a Legilimens. “We can’t give up on you being my best friend, either. Unless you’re going to walk away from me now, because you’re afraid of what I might do in the future.”
            Harry stood up and walked over to him. Ron still hunched at his desk as though he was uncertain, so Harry clapped him on the shoulder, and made Ron look at him. “No,” he said quietly. “I might have to stop coming over to the Burrow for a while, or to your house, but I’m going to be right here.”
            Ron exhaled shakily and reached up for one second, catching Harry’s hand in a grip so firm that it left bruises on his wrist. Then he turned around and picked up the file in front of him. “Good, because we have a case to work on.”
            Harry smiled.
*
            “You know I don’t mind if you stay here, Harry.” Dean’s voice was soft, and he held open his door to Harry. “Better than staying in the Leaky Cauldron or sleeping in your office anyway. You know, the way Ron said you did last night?” There was a sharp edge to his voice there.
            “Well, I was going to get a room in the Leaky Cauldron,” Harry said mildly, looking around the drawing room that Dean had ushered him into. It had enormous walls, bare except for a huge painting in the middle of each one. The painting directly in front of Harry was a seascape with waves crashing on the rocks in the foreground, and things that might have been dolphins or whales leaping in the background. The one over to the side had lots of hot colors, red and gold.
            Dean didn’t give him time to work out what it was or look at the rest. He walked around in front of Harry and scowled at him. “When were you going to tell me and Seamus and Neville what was going on with you and Ginny?”

            “Er, well,” said Harry, and spent some time scratching the back of his neck and walking over to look at the red and gold painting on the wall. “Did you paint this? It’s really good. Is it the Gryffindor common room?”
            “It’s a rose the way a bee might see it,” said Dean, and shook his head. “You’re not going to get me off-track. I know you weren’t planning to meet us there and talk about Ginny and whatever is happening between you, but I need to know.”
            Harry sighed. He had been out with Ron, and Seamus and Neville and Dean had showed up unexpectedly to celebrate Dean selling a painting to a rich patron. They’d joined him and Ron without waiting for an invitation. Apparently they’d overheard more than Harry meant them to first, or at least Dean had.
            “I found out about a month ago that I couldn’t have children,” he said. Make it as blunt as possible and get this over with. “A curse hit me and combined with other curses, and there’s no chance of reversing it now.”
            “Jesus, mate,” said Dean, one hand going out as though he was going to touch Harry’s shoulder. He hesitated, letting it hover in the air. Harry sighed and clasped his hand. Dean shook his head. “What an awful thing.”
            Harry nodded. “It hit—I mean, Ginny and I were planning on starting a family soon, you know? And it hit her hard when she figured out that she wouldn’t have my children.”
            “But there are so many ways around that,” said Dean, with what Harry knew now was the enviable certainty of someone raised in the Muggle world. “You could ask about artificial insemination, or adopt a child, or see if there’s a Muggleborn who’s being mistreated by their family—”
            “I didn’t even think about that last one,” Harry admitted. Since the war, there were better mechanisms and spells in place to track children and figure out if anyone Muggleborn had been mistreated by their parents since their accidental magic started to show itself. Harry had been instrumental in helping McGonagall set those up at Hogwarts. “But Ginny doesn’t want artificial insemination. She wants to know who the father is. And she wants—well, both of us want a blood child more than an adopted one.”
            Dean stared at him. “Even though you can’t have one?”
            “Ginny still could.” Harry rubbed his face, then took off his glasses to clean them. Just talking about this was making him tired all over again. “That’s what our fight was about. She wants to have a child with someone else. I don’t want her to.”
            “Well, you’re still married,” said Dean. He went into his kitchen and came back with a can of Muggle beer, raising it in silent invitation. Harry nodded and accepted it gratefully, popping it open and drinking what felt like half in one gulp. “You don’t think that you’re going to get back together?”
            “No.” Harry sank down on Dean’s couch, where he could see the rose painting. “If you still fancy her…”
            “That was a long time ago,” said Dean, his voice neutral. He sat down on the couch across from Harry, beneath the rose painting. “Besides, I’m not sure that I want to sleep with her if all she’s interested in is my sperm.”
            “Point.” Harry sighed and shut his eyes. He was still trying to be fair to Ginny, but it was nice to be talking to someone who wasn’t a Weasley by blood or marriage, and wouldn’t expect him to be completely fair all the time. “I keep thinking that we could work things out if we’d just waited. But she wants a kid now.”
            “Hmmm,” said Dean, and drank most of his own beer.
            “And I can kind of understand it, and I kind of blame her.” Harry drank some more and decided that he didn’t really want to talk about Ginny after all. “Are you sure that me staying here is no problem? I mean, I can pay you all the Galleons you want—”
            “I’d prefer Muggle money.” Dean grinned at him. “A lot of my clients are Muggles. Less to explain when they come into the flat if I don’t have gold lying around. And there’s no problem. I took this place because it had a room I wanted to use as a studio, but the light isn’t nearly as good as I thought it was. Feel free to use that room. If I want it back, I’ll let you know.”
            “Thanks, Dean,” said Harry, and choked down a hiccough. That would be too embarrassing, show that he was drinking that much already. “You’re a mate.”
            “I’d do it for a lot of people,” said Dean, and gave Harry what Harry thought was a compassionate look, although by closing his eyes, he managed to avoid seeing it. “And you sound like you’re in a lot of trouble.”
            “Not that much,” Harry said, and wrapped a hand around his eyes. “I just wasn’t expecting this, and I have to spend some time over the next few days moving things out and reckoning out how much in the vaults is mine. Or which vaults.” He and Ginny had established a new, joint vault when they married, but Harry had kept some money back, with the vague intention of using it for their kids’ Hogwarts schooling someday.
            Thinking about that now was like a blow to the throat.
            But he would have to think about lots of other things and get used to them, and he was determined to change the subject instead of dwelling on his own problems all the time. “So tell me about your paintings and what you’ve sold recently.”
            Dean opened his mouth, caught Harry’s eye, and seemed to realize that now would be the wrong time to press. He cleared his throat. “Well, that rose-painting you were admiring? I’ve sold a copy of it to someone who wants to keep secret, but I can tell his name to a real friend…”
            Harry listened to Dean for the rest of the evening, managing to enjoy the fact that one of his friends was prospering even if he wasn’t. And he could laugh and love and be happy with the rest of them, he thought, as long as he thought about his friends’ success and didn’t concentrate on his own lack of success. It was important to him, but it couldn’t be the consuming importance of his life. He would have to learn to rise above it.
*
            Still, that night, as he lay in Dean’s spare bedroom and listened to Dean’s comfortable snoring from down the corridor, the thought of it returned full force, clawing at the inside of Harry’s skull and skin until he felt that he’d like to explode out of both of them.
            Harry shivered and laid an arm carefully over his eyes. He was a little drunk, but not enough to think that leaving Dean’s house and going flying, the way that he usually did when he was this upset, was a good idea. He would probably crash the broom into something, and besides, this was a Muggle neighborhood.
            But he had to have some outlet. And that was what finally made him stand up and go searching in the little trunk he’d left, tossing robes around until he found one that was weighed down by the extra bulk in one pocket. He pulled out the flat journal and stared at it.
            Hermione had given it to him a year ago, saying that she thought writing down some of the thoughts and emotions he battled would help him. The same day, a stone propelled by a curse had failed to damage Harry as thoroughly as it could have because the journal was in his pocket. He had carried it since then, to honor Hermione and the luck she’d given him, but he’d never seriously considered using it. Only Ginny had a better reason than he did to be wary of diaries.
            Ginny.
            The tide of grief came back, and Harry tore open the cover of the journal and groped for a quill, finding one finally in the bottom of his trunk.
            He had to have some escape, or he was going to go mad. He couldn’t have a Time-Turner. He couldn’t make it never have happened with a wish. But he wanted to be someone it had never happened to.
            More than anything, he wanted to be normal. He wanted his parents back. He wanted the war not to have happened. He wanted a wife and a family and friends who adored him, and even though he had the last, all the rest was aching like a wound in the back of his head now.
            Maybe he could never have that. But he could create someone who did.
            So he scribbled on the first page of the journal, My name is Ethan Starfall, and I have three children and a wife who loves me and parents named Isidora and Julian who love me.
            Harry’s breathing slowed. He found his eyelids drooping, as if the words were a draught of Dreamless Sleep. He dropped the journal back in his trunk and curled up in his bed, sighing as sleep came sweeping towards him.
*
            That was how it began.

*

            moon: Meanwhile, Ginny thinks Harry is selfish because he cares so much about the children being fathered by someone other than him.
I think it depends a lot on your perspective.
delia cerrano: Ginny hasn’t been cheating, but she has been dwelling on the thought of children and being childless more than Harry ever knew.
And I think Molly was actually trying hard not to be involved, by telling Ginny that she would have to follow her heart.
SP777: Well, that’s why the angst warning is on it.
Chester: It depends on what you mean by “what she lost.” If she can have children, she might consider that worth any sacrifice.
kit: There will be more details about Starfall in the next chapter, but I hope the transition there makes sense!
WorldePARALLEL: Ginny hasn’t been cheating. She didn’t mean everything she said in the last argument, but I think that things have gone too far at this point to mend. And I think that spouses have an obligation to support each other; that’s one reason that I’m trying to portray Ginny as sympathetically as I can, because neither she nor Harry are really capable of doing the support.
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Starfall