Ginny's body felt heavy, as if something were holding her to the ground. She finally managed to get her eyes open and realized that she wasn't on the ground, and she most certainly wasn't in the Quidditch pitch anymore. “Hello?” she tried to call, but her throat was so dry she could barely speak.

It took all her efforts to raise her hands to her eyes and rub them, and as she did she realized that she couldn't really feel her body at all.

What's going on?

She heard muffled footsteps and the the curtain around her bed opened. “I thought you might be awake by now,” Madam Pomfrey said, holding a goblet of water to Ginny's lips.

“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked when Ginny had finished drinking.

“Heavy,” she croaked.

“That would be the anti-pain potions,” Pomfrey told her. “I had to give you some rather potent ones. You took quite a fall. It broke many of your bones, punctured a lung and ruptured your spleen.”

And then it all came back to Ginny. The nasty argument with Draco about whether or not she should be playing Quidditch (he said absolutely not, she had told him that she was going to play in the final game of the season and there wasn't a thing he could do about it), and then spotting the snitch, diving for it... and then what?

“Did I fall off my broom?”

“More like you were knocked off,” Pomfrey told her, taking her temperature. “You were hit with a bludger.”

Ginny bit the inside of her cheek, scared to ask the obvious.

“Mr. Malfoy is asleep in the chair out there,” Pomfrey continued, motioning to an area behind her. “He refuses to leave.”

Ginny craned her neck to see him, but the curtains were drawn too close together. “Is he still mad at me?”

The look Pomfrey gave her confused Ginny. “No dear. He's very worried about you.” She looked at Ginny for a long moment. “I'm going to give you something to mend your bones. It's rather nasty though, I'm sorry to say. Do you feel like you need anymore anti-pain potion first?”

“I don't think I should have it,” Ginny told her nervously, unable to meet her eyes. “I'm... I'm pregnant.”

Madam Pomfrey tucked her wand away slowly, straightened Ginny's bedsheets, wrote a few notes on her clipboard, and then finally picked up Ginny's hand, holding it tightly between hers. Her face was drawn and weary. “No love. Not anymore. I'm so sorry.”

Suddenly it didn't matter that she had been given anti-pain potions. The pain that cut through her body was so sharp and so heavy she knew it would last for an eternity. Her hand came to rest on her stomach, where she had been convinced she could see her baby bump. “No.”

“I'm awake,” she heard Draco say, but she could barely see him for the tears that had obscured her vision.

She felt the edge of her bed move as he sat down beside her and picked up her hand. "Our baby," Ginny whispered. "Draco..."

His grip on her hand tightened but he said nothing, and she felt her heart completely shatter. Oh, now her mum would be pleased, she thought and then admonished herself for having such a horrible thought. She wondered if you were supposed to have a funeral for a lost baby, a child you never even got to meet.

The pain tried to rip her apart, and she rolled to her side, pulling her knees up to her chest and cried loud, hot tears that would not stop coming.

“Can I get you anything?” Madam Pomfrey's voice sounded shakier than Ginny had ever heard it. “A potion, food, tea, anything?”

“Tea please,” Ginny managed to say, not bothering to hide her tears.

“Sugar in it? One lump or two, love?”

“She takes it with milk only,” Draco said sharply.

The nurse hurried away, and they sat quietly for a long time, holding hands as tears rolled down Ginny's face. Their relationship had been hanging by a thread already, and Ginny was certain that this was the beginning of the end.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Ginny sat in the field behind the Burrow, her knees tucked up to her chest, and her fingers resting on a small mound of dirt. The dirt had finally quit looking fresh, but was now the same color as the rest of the field. If the mound hadn't been there, she wondered if she would have been able to find it. Her heart say she would have. The late spring sun was nice on her arms, but it didn't make her feel warm. She wondered just how long it would be before she could feel warmth again – or feel anything but emptiness, for that matter.

She had picked wildflowers on the short walk the the tiny grave where she had insisted on burying the baby. Everyone had tried to talk her out of it, and she knew that most people wouldn't bury a four month old fetus, but she had. She knew her family wanted to help her forget and move on, it was only natural of them, but she also knew that wasn't going to happen. Burying the baby just seemed like the right thing to do. She hadn't told Draco about it because they had broken up by the time she'd made up her mind to do so.

Draco had help on for as long as he could, she supposed. Longer than most people would have. After all, it was her fault that all this had happened.

Thinking about Draco gave her an uncomfortably tight feeling in her chest. If she could have felt anything, she would have called it pain, but lately it had been hard to separate pain from just living. She had cried for a solid week after the fall, but then there had been nothing. There was just a blank void, a big spot of nothingness.

Draco hadn't really needed to tell her it was over – it was more than obvious – but he kept coming around, politely holding her hand when she cried. When she finally ran out of tears, she told him he didn't have to keep coming around; she knew it was over. She wondered if he had been relieved. She would have been.

It wasn't fair, she told herself, to allow him to be obligated to her. She was the one who had made the mess. It wasn't right to make him suffer anymore than he already did, with how his parents had reacted and the gossip and the absolute scandal of it all.

Her mum had asked her to come home and be home-schooled for the rest of the year, but she had refused, choosing to stay at Hogwarts and just go through the motions of living. Get up, shower, brush teeth, pretend to eat, sleepwalk through class, pretend to eat lunch, practice with the DA, sleep. Some people avoided her. Some people were kinder to her than she had ever imagined they could be. Everyone talked about it, she knew that. Dean Thomas had been especially nice to her, but it wasn't the same. It didn't help seeing Draco with Lavender Brown either.

Ginny shook her head, wanting all thoughts of him out of her head. He was allowed to date whomever he wanted. After all, if she hadn't been so stubborn, so angry, so determined to prove everyone wrong....

She'd spent every day out by the tiny grave since the Hogwarts Express had dropped them off the previous Saturday. Her mum tried to distract her with chores and requests for assistance around the house, but Ginny couldn't bring herself to do any of it. She had watched the sun rise and set every day from her familiar spot on the ground. Her da had tried to call her in for dinner several times, but they gave up on that too. Instead they took turns bringing her meals, which she couldn't even bring herself to pretend to eat. Ron had even brought her tea and sat with her for several hours.

“Here Gin. I made you some tea. I made it myself,” he had told her, “but I couldn't remember if you liked sugar, so I brought it.” He handed her the tea cup and saucer before producing the sugar container. “One lump or two?”

She had managed to smile at Ron and his surprising thoughtfulness. “Just milk please.”

It was now the last day of the spring holidays, and even though there were plenty of other things Ginny could be doing, there was nothing else she wanted to do. Sighing loudly, she gathered the blossoms she had picked and began placing them in a small mound around the little grave.

“Gin?”

She looked over her shoulder and squinted into the sun. Raising one hand to shield her eyes, she tried to make out the person standing behind her. “Draco?”

“Can I sit down?”

She nodded in confusion, motioning to the grass around her.

He sat across from her, on the opposite side of the mound.

Draco looked terribly. He had dark bags under his eyes, bruises marred his pale skin, and Ginny wondered how long it had been since he changed his clothes or had even taken a shower. “Are you okay?” she asked slowly.

“No.” He shook his head, but he didn't elaborate.

She wanted to ask him what he wanted, but it didn't seem appropriate. “How'd you get here?” Draco had never been to the Burrow before, and she was certain she hadn't exactly drawn out a map for him.

“With Lupin.”

“Oh.” She didn't know what to say, as she had no idea why in the world Lupin would tell him where the Burrow was.

“Is this,” he asked slowly, “where the... baby is?”

Glancing at the small mound of dirt, she nodded.

“It doesn't have a proper stone.”

“I know. We couldn't afford one. Besides, I didn't have a name to put on it.”

“You should have told me.”

Ginny swallowed hard. If he hated her only half as much as she hated herself, it was too much to bare. She had no desire to fuel his anger with a request for money.

“We should pick a name,” he told her. “And then I'll buy a stone.”

Ginny plucked a sprig of grass and crumpled it between her fingers. “Why are you here?”

Draco stared up at the sky for a moment, before bringing his eyes back down to focus on the grave. “My family is falling apart. The Dark Lord is staying at my home. Lupin wants me to go into hiding.”

Ginny's mouth hung agape. “Are you... okay?”

It took him a long time to answer, and he ran his hand through his messy hair. “I don't know.”

Ginny bit her lip, unsure if she should move to hug him, or just sit still.

“Did you have any baby names picked out?” he asked.

Ginny just stared at him. “Um,” she said finally, “no. Not really.”

“Mm.”

She didn't know what to do or what to say. Her heart was breaking for him but she had no idea how to help him. “Do you want to talk about it?” she finally whispered.

“No. We can talk later.”

“Okay.” And then it occurred to her that her heart was breaking and she could feel it. She could actually feel something besides her own pain. Merlin, she could feel. “Draco, do you want to go back inside? You can shower and I'll get you some lunch.”

He shook his head. “I just want to sit here with you.”