“Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco started, jumping to his feet at the sight of the approaching Healer. “Yes?”

The man sighed, hanging his head with a remorseful look in his eyes. “I’m sorry. Your son has-”

“Ginny!”

Her eyes snapped open to see Draco leaning over her. His anxious stare told her she had been showing signs of a nightmare.

Bright, blinding lights hung along the ceiling, and she blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted. People were rushing everywhere. Ginny scrambled to sit upright in her chair, her fingers wrapped around the armrests with viselike grip. “Where is he?” she whispered.

Draco shook his head sadly, his jaw clenched tight. He looked just like the Healer in her dream. “No one’s come out yet.”

He rubbed his eyes tiredly, and Ginny looked around the waiting room. Albus was flipping through one of the magazines, his hair much messier than usual on one side where he had slept on it. Lily lay asleep under Draco’s cloak, her head on James’ lap. Ginny saw Draco watch them for a moment, but then look away, his face twisted with disgust.

He brought his fist down upon the table with a sudden thud, making everyone else jump. “Goddamn it! How long does it take to-?”

“Draco, please,” Ginny soothed, placing her hand over his. She cast a worried glance across the room at a pair of witches who were staring.

“No, Gin. No. My son is in there. I don’t even know how bloody serious it is!” he ranted, his eyes wide and bloodshot.

Ginny almost couldn’t hear him over the erratic heartbeat pounding in her ears. She shot a nervous look at James. The boy was a sickly shade of green under his freckles and watching Draco with terrified eyes. Lily shifted restlessly against him in her slumber.

Ginny shook her head angrily and grabbed Draco’s arm, dragging him down the hall. She pressed Draco against the wall as a group of hurried Healers rushed past with their wands drawn.

“I know how hard this is, Draco,” she seethed. “I care about Scorpius too. I know he is your son, and not mine,” she added with a hand held up as he opened his mouth to retort. “But James is my son, and I know he feels horrible about this accident.”

“It was no bloody accident,” Draco hissed, his eyes narrowed terribly.

“Yes it fucking was!” Ginny cried, stamping her foot. “You can’t seriously think that James intended to seriously injure Scorpius! They took the boys’ wands to see exactly what happened, and they’ll tell us it was a simple accident. They both had their wands drawn.”

“God, you forced this on them! I knew it wouldn’t be good having them come, especially after Easter! But you just couldn’t see it! He – that boy – Potter’s brat has had it out for Scorpius since the second he arrived! He hates me and my son, just like his father does! Scorpius tried his hardest to be civil. He told me so! He was just trying to protect Lily from that-”

“You had best choose your next words very carefully,” Ginny said quietly, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“Look, Potter maimed me when we were in school with that curse! What was it, Setu – Seck-”

“Sectusempra,” Ginny finished coolly. “Yes, I know. I heard all about it in the Gryffindor common room that night. Or did you forget that I’m one of them too?”

He was silent for a moment, his scowl frozen on his face, and Ginny couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit triumphant.

“Harry never meant to seriously injure you, and James certainly didn’t mean to hurt Scorpius,” she added, her mouth drawn into a grim frown.

“Maybe not,” Draco spat, “but if Scorpius isn’t going to be all right – and by all right I mean one hundred percent, exactly the same – I will never be able to forgive him, Ginny. Not ever.”

He brushed past her back down the hall to the waiting room, and Ginny felt the weight of his last puncturing blow. The anger was draining faster than she could call it back. She blew out a sigh heavy with unshed tears and lowered her hands to the curve of her abdomen, left with nothing more than sadness.

She swung her legs beneath her, letting them bang loudly on the cabinets, and stared at the clock. The hands seemed to be moving more slowly than usual, but she watched anyway, counting down into her fifteenth hour at the hospital. It was almost midnight – almost Lily’s birthday.

Ginny sighed loudly, tugging at the hem of the cloth hospital gown and then reaching a hand up to scratch just below the clip that held all her hair piled up on top of her head. She was uncomfortable and cold, but she knew the Healer wouldn’t be back with her results for at least a few more minutes.

Her heart twisted at the thought of her three children curled up in the waiting room, nestled against one another in sleep. The fact that Draco was there with them was supposed to make her feel less anxious, but in reality it was doing the opposite.

She had seen something so reminiscent of their Hogwarts years flash in his eyes when he talked about James. It was unadulterated hatred, and it made her heart ache violently to think about it.

She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her folded legs, rocking gently. It was taking all her control not to leap down from the table and rush back down to the waiting room to be with her kids, but she needed to be here right now. She needed to know.

She held her breath as the knob twisted and Healer Sawyer came back in with his nose to his clipboard, making little checkmarks against the parchment.

“I still can’t believe you needed this done at this hour,” he said in his monotone voice, not looking up from his papers. “If it were anyone but you, Mrs. Potter, they would have said-”

“It’s Mrs. Malfoy, actually,” Ginny corrected, her tone calm but her heart pounding frantically.

He cleared his throat, looking at her over the top of his notes with disapproving eyes. “Ahem. Yes, of course.”

She banged her heel against the counter again, not able to control her fidgeting.

“Well, Mrs. Malfoy. The tests have come back.”

“Yes?”

“And I have the results. They’ve been confirmed twice. Completely accurate.”

Ginny refrained from banging her heel again. “Well?”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You were correct. You are, indeed, pregnant.”

She could hardly breathe as she shuffled along the corridor back to the waiting room.

“Two and a half months along. The baby’s due early to mid January.”

A baby? They had never talked about a baby. Draco might not even want a baby. How could she tell him? Especially when he hated her own child?

“What was she like as a baby?”

He had never been there for Lily. He had never known. He had never reached down into her crib and had her wrap her tiny fist around a single finger. How could she expect him to understand how attached she already was to the baby growing inside of her? What if he didn’t want it?

Tears began to well in her throat, and she let them fall this time. Probably a result of my stupid hormones, she thought bitterly.

She looked up from the floor, finally in the waiting room, to see no one. All four chairs once occupied by her family were empty now. She whipped her head around frantically, thoughts of her unborn child wiped from her mind for the first time in the past half hour.

Ginny rushed to the desk, leaned over, and blurted, “Have they been allowed to see him?”

The woman behind the counter looked up at her bewilderedly. “What?”

“Has family been allowed to see Scorpius Malfoy?” she demanded, her voice rising.

“Yes, they were called in ten minutes ago,” she replied, checking a sheet on her desk. “Room 627.”

She found the boys sitting in chairs outside the room, looking teary eyed and miserable.

“Mummy!” Albus cried, leaping from his seat into her arms. “Where have you been?”

She hugged him tightly and ruffled his black hair affectionately, trying to swallow down tears. “I just had to take care of something, Al,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “James didn’t mean to, Mum, honest. He just…”

“I know, sweetie,” she told him.

She turned to James, curled up in his own seat with wide, blank eyes. “James?”

He turned his head to look at her, but his eyes seemed to be staring past her. Ginny sucked in a worried breath. “James?”

He nodded at her. “Yeah?” The word came out as a croak.

“It was not your fault. It was an accident, James,” she said firmly.

“I really didn’t mean for-”

“It was an accident,” she repeated. He nodded glumly as she kissed his forehead. She saw him draw back into himself as she straightened up and squared her shoulders to enter the room. Her chest was tight with swallowed tears, but she pushed the door open anyway.

The room was filled with light. It floated down from the hanging lamps and streamed in through the windows, illuminating the blond figure lying in the bed.

He looked up and smiled at her, his hair glowing like a halo under the bright lights. She bit her lip at the sight of his pale, pinched face, which looked so haggard and drawn that she wondered if he was still in a dire condition.

“Hey, Ginny,” Scorpius said softly, smiling weakly.

“Hi.” It was all she could get out.

There was a knowing spark in the boy’s eye as he turned his gaze back upon Lily. Her red hair was hanging limply about her shoulders, and her face looked just as tired as her brother’s, but her eyes were shining brightly and her face was lit up with a smile.

“I promised not to let anyone ruin your birthday, Lily,” Scorpius told her with a grim smile quirking his lips. “I’m sorry that I ended up ruining it.”

Lily shook her head, her eyes swimming with tears. “You didn’t ruin it,” she whispered.

Draco leaned forward and hugged her tightly, kissing her temple. “Happy birthday, dragon.”

Ginny felt her stomach flop uncomfortably.

“Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy?”

Ginny turned to see a Healer poking his head through the door. She nodded, wiping a fallen tear from the corner of her eye.

“Could I speak to you for a moment?”

Draco cleared his throat and gave the man a curt nod. He stepped carefully over Lily and walked past Ginny into the hall. She hesitated only a moment before following.

The Healer led them silently down the hall and into a small office. The door clicked shut, and Ginny felt the tension of everything explode in the space of the cramped room.

“How is he really?” Draco asked, anxiety cutting his calm tone to shreds.

The Healer gave him the briefest of smiles. “He’s doing fine, and he’ll make a full recovery.”

Draco opened his mouth to ask another question, but Ginny beat him to it. “What caused the damage? I’ve never seen adolescents-”

“Oh, they’re quite capable of doing some damage,” the Healer said with a chuckle. “But in the case of your sons, neither cast a destructive spell. It was the collision of two enchantments cast at the exact same moment. They repelled each other, and both your boys took the impact of a surge of force. Scorpius’ head just happened to hit the corner of a piece of furniture.”

“But then why couldn’t we heal him?” Draco demanded harshly, and he shot her a look that warned her from cutting him off again. Ginny quailed under his hard and spiteful glare.

“I’m afraid the contact of such a strong magical force sent him into shock. His body didn’t respond to any form of healing magic for several hours.”

“So he’ll be all right, then?” Draco asked slowly.

The Healer nodded. “You’ll be able to take him home tomorrow. If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded at each of them once more and then strode back out into the hall.

There was a heavy, awkward silence. Ginny almost couldn’t stand the pressure between the two of them, and she focused her gaze on the floor, too afraid to look him in the eye.

“Where were you?” The question, while it set her nerves on edge, was not accusatory or belligerent. He was trying to overcome the silence.

“I had to take care of something,” she replied quietly. She forced herself to look up at him, and she was immediately consumed by that hard gray stare. His eyes were swirling with a million different shades of gray, like the sky before a storm, like the choice of life, all blurred together and impossible to read.

“I actually have something to tell you.”

But the gaze kept boring into her, lifting away layer after layer until he was staring at nothing but her core. She was completely naked under that stare. He could see right through her.

“Yes?”

“I’m…” He looked at her expectantly, and she saw it then. The anger churning so clearly in his eyes. The anger at her son and the anger at her. The magnitude of the hatred hit her like a blow to the stomach. Her head was spinning.

She knew he had demons to fight. She had seen him flail in his nightmares, running from ghosts that she couldn’t see, and she knew that he would someday share them with her. Or she had hoped.

He had told her the memories that haunted him were from after the war, and she had seen the way people stared at him in Diagon Alley. They could work through those issues; she knew they could.

But she couldn’t handle this. She couldn’t handle the leftover hatred of his Hogwarts days and her ex-husband. She couldn’t handle when he looked at her and saw Harry. She couldn’t handle when he looked at her son with total loathing in his eyes. Would he always?

And if it would always be like that, how could she live her life? How could she live with him and Lily and another child, yet still have her two sons from her first marriage in a separate world?

She took a deep breath.

“I’m going to take the boys back to Harry’s tomorrow. For at least a few weeks while Scorpius gets back on his feet.”

He kept staring at her, and she stared back, daring him to ask her. He had to know already, didn’t he? Or at least suspect?

He tore his gaze from hers and fixed it on the floor. “Okay.”

He turned and walked back into the hall, and Ginny lowered herself into one of the chairs, too afraid to even cry.

Author notes: More reviews, please! You guys have been fantastic.