The Baby in the Closet
Chapter 2: The Sign in the Plaza
By the time Ginny awoke for the first of her frequent daily trips to the bathroom, occasioned by the pressure of her greatly expanded womb on her bladder, Harry had put his disturbing dreams out of his mind and was focusing on his upcoming tasks at work. Ginny chattered cheerfully about how much little James-or-Lily was moving, and how he-or-she would stretch out his-or-her legs, making obvious small protrusions on the upper half of Ginny's abdomen.
"I hope it won't be so hot this afternoon. There's a limit to how much clothing I can take off and still remain decent. Maybe being pregnant during the summer wasn't such a smart idea."
"No, next time we'll have to plan better, delivery on June first. But if you get too warm, it's always cooler in the kitchen."
"But I can't spend all day down in the kitchen! There are things I need to do. I was going to sort out those boxes of baby clothes from Fleur and put them on the shelves in the baby's room, and I thought I would make little paper labels and put them on the edges of the shelves, to organize the clothes by type and size."
Harry resisted the impulse to try to solve Ginny's problems by pointing out that the mornings were cooler and therefore the best time to be labeling the shelves in the baby's room. He knew that Ginny didn't want suggestions, she wanted understanding.
"I know this is not easy for you, Ginny. I'm glad there's only six more weeks to go. I don't imagine we'll ever be truly ready, but we'll muddle through somehow."
Ginny looked down at her protruding stomach and said, "It's hard to believe I can get any bigger, but I know I will. Who would have thought I could balance my teacup on the top of my stomach when I'm sitting down? That's crazy. But Mum says that we short ladies stick out more because we don't have as much place to hide it as the tall girls do, like Fleur. I guess it's true."
August was warm this year. People were on holiday, and London was full of tourists, walking slowly down the streets, tourist guidebooks in hand, looking all around them at the buildings, shops, letter boxes, telephone booths, everything that looked different to what they were accustomed to in their home country. The Quidditch season was over, and there were no more "Flying With the Harpies" columns for Ginny to write. Her attention was focused increasingly inward as the physical changes of pregnancy became harder to ignore. Harry tried to keep her diverted by suggesting activities out of the house, such as evening concerts in nearby parks and weekend art fairs, and she visited her mother more often now, as if she wanted to review the mother-child relationship, now that she herself was about to become the mother and someone else would be the child.
When Harry and Ginny had first learned that she was pregnant, and the due date was eight and a half months in the future, the baby had seemed far away and unreal. Eight and a half months was almost as long as a school year, and Harry remembered how long a year at school had seemed to be, almost endless. But now there were only six weeks left, and these final weeks were draining away as quickly as the final pints of water swirling down the bathtub drain. Ginny was alternately bubbling with excitement, withdrawn and pensive, and commenting (Harry would not characterize it as complaining) about the discomforts of the final weeks. The prenatal visits with the healer at St. Mungo's Hospital were becoming more frequent, and the baby clothes still needed to be sorted. Ginny's plate was full, Harry decided. She did not need to be plagued by a discussion about his bad dreams also.
Harry left Grimmauld Place promptly at seven fifteen a.m. for his walk to his office at the Ministry of Magic. He valued the brisk forty-five-minute walk in the morning and in the evening as good exercise on days when he might otherwise spend hours sitting indoors in meetings or doing paperwork. It would be foolish to waste the chance to be outdoors during the time of year when the weather was mild and the hours of sunlight were long. In the commercial blocks many business had flowerpots on the sidewalk in front of their doors, and flower baskets hung from some of the lampposts. At the beginning of his morning walk the streets were fairly empty, but by the end of it there were many Londoners on the sidewalks hurrying to their jobs, and seeing them reminded him that most people were kind and good. He did not want the nature of his work to cause him to fall into the belief that everyone was a criminal except his family and his fellow Aurors. Even the late, famous Auror Alastor "Mad-eye" Moody, whose unforgettable mantra had been "Constant Vigilance" and who had been ready to detect enemies around every corner, had believed that the majority of people were good.
He came to a newspaper kiosk and stopped briefly to buy a copy of the daily Muggle newspaper; this was his custom, in order to stay informed of the events of the Muggle world. A generation ago the wizarding community had been distinctly more isolated from the Muggle community, but many wizards and witches of Harry's age were now familiar with using mobile phones, driving cars, wearing Muggle clothing appropriately, and reading British newspapers. He reflected that there were times in history, tipping points, when long-established social structures reconfigured rapidly, and he suspected that he was living in one of those times.
Harry passed a small open park with brick pavers, raised planter beds full of flowering shrubs, and empty park benches. The streetlamp poles along the curb side had hanging baskets of flowers, and between the poles, large placards were supported on low upright metal stands, The placards were colorful advertising posters of art gallery showings, newly opened businesses, summer festivals.
Suddenly Harry's eye was caught by a new placard he had not seen before. Unlike the other placards with their lively colors of pink and red and yellow, this one stood out for its stark appearance. The center was a grainy, high-contrast black and white photo of an adult and a child in what looked like a domestic indoor scene. The upper and lower parts were solid dark blue, and on the upper blue area was printed "When you hear the words 'child abuse and neglect', do you think of your own childhood, or the parenting you are doing now?"
Harry stopped in his tracks and stared at the poster. His eyes moved up and down between the bleak photograph and the arresting question, the joyless faces of the adult and child, and the brutally frank words.
As he gazed, motionless, he felt his breathing getting slower and tighter, and still he could not turn away or resume his walk. Finally the paralysis in his brain began to ebb, and he thought to himself, Is this an omen? Are these things linked? The events of my childhood and the parenting I am going to be doing now? What are they suggesting? The flowers, the sunlight, the other pedestrians all faded from his attention, and his mind was totally consumed by this suddenly overwhelmingly important poster of blue, black, and white. The lower third of the poster contained a telephone number and the name of a national organization for prevention of cruelty to children. Harry took a little spiral bound notebook and a ballpoint pen from his inner coat pocket and wrote down the telephone number. He was not sure what he was going to do with the number, but he didn't want to lose it, just in case.
He began to walk again, heading toward the Ministry of Magic, but his relaxing early morning stroll had been converted into a painful recapitulation of issues he had thought had been put behind him. When he was a little boy, he had accepted his life as the way it was. He had been an orphan living with guardians, his aunt and uncle, who were harsh with him, never tender, and impossible to please. Although Harry had never gone naked or lacked a roof over his head, there had been no warmth, no love, no fun. What he had experienced was a cousin who was a constant source of torment, and a very unequal distribution of family support and resources. But he had never run away because he had no other family and no other place to go. He had not played at the homes of other children and had not had friends at school, due to his shabby appearance and his cousin's intimidation, so he had not seen examples of other families' relationships.
Now, looking back, he could see how dysfunctional that family had been. Nothing about it had been normal, at least from the point of view of the skinny little boy who had been made to sleep in a cubbyhole under the stairs. He had not known what a loving family environment could be until he had visited Ron's family.
As the years had gone by, the realization had formed and grown that no child should have had to endure what he had endured. It was far beyond the usual bickering of children or discipline by adults, beyond the typical clashes between adolescents and adults. The words "child abuse and neglect" described it completely.
The wizarding world knew him as The Boy Who Lived, The Hero of Hogwarts, the awardee of the Order of Merlin First Class, the most rapidly qualified Auror in the modern history of the Aurors' Office. They saw him as strong, clever, persistent, talented, principled, lucky. Only Hermione, the Weasleys, and a few others knew him also as the Survivor of Sixteen Years in the Dursley Household.
Now that time was behind him, but not like a distant scene, becoming dimmer as it recedes into the past. He dragged it behind him like a log tied to a rope fastened around his waist. No matter how far he walked, the log was always just behind him, slowing him down, holding him back, wearing him out.