The Bathroom
Harry is awake at three in the morning scrubbing the bathroom. Ginny can never understand how he can wear the same socks until she physically takes them off his feet but take up to hour to scrub the kitchen every night and always makes sure the bathroom is spotless before he leaves for work. Ginny is not a particularly tidy person and when they first moved in together Harry had to readjust a lot of ideas of home that he didn't even know he had. The tension between them sometimes seemed insurmountable. Harry had no idea how to even begin to fix it.
Harry's worked at it, they both have. They've listened and compromised. Things are better, but Harry still can't explain everything to her and at some point they are going to have to have a conversation about hand-me-down clothes and endless chores and the cupboard under the stairs. He rehearses it in his head, but he can't start the conversation right knowing Ginny like he does, knowing that she would jump in, would try to make him feel better. Her room at the Burrow wasn't much bigger than his cupboard and, like all her brothers, had to make do with hand-me-down everything.
Harry doesn't know the words to make his childhood different from hers, to make it so much less than the sum of its parts.
Harry finishes on the wall above the length of the tub and turns his attention to the taps. He selects a new bottle of cleaner and a new cloth and scrubs around base until his fingertips turn red.
Or maybe he does know the words, maybe he jut can't say them out loud because then they would become real, become solid, become a burden of blame that he would eventually have to lay down on someone before it crushed him.
Harry scrubs and scrubs until he can make out his own face in the taps, distorted as it is. He pauses for a moment and just reflects. When a shape appears in the surface behind him it makes him jump.
"Hey."
Harry stands awkwardly. He's inside the tub still, looking at Ginny where she leans on the door frame. Ginny drops her eyes to the cleaning supplies but looks back at him with a tired smile. (This is compromise.)
"Did the baby wake up?"
Ginny shakes her head and holds out her hands for Harry to take as he steps gingerly out of the tub. When he has both feet on solid ground he tugs her towards him and she steps easily into his embrace. They stay for a moment and in the silence of their own house, Harry feels his muscles relax, his mind start to drift.
"Did you - " Ginny starts, then stops. She steps back and Harry sits down on the side of the tub.
"Not yet."
"Harry," Ginny starts, "the ceremony's tomorrow, we can't put it back again..."
Whatever she wants to say next is interrupted by the baby crying, followed by James. Ginny sighs and rubs her eyes.
"I'll get the baby," Harry tells her, sliding past.
"He needs a name Harry," Ginny calls after him.
Harry rocks his new son back to sleep and stands for a long time with this small life tucked against his chest. He can hear James and Ginny next door and smiles. They talked about names of course, when James was born, and then again when the light on the end of Ginny's wand glowed green for a second time. Some Wizarding traditions are buried deep, even amongst the Weasleys, and while Ron and Hermione find a compromise on this point, Ginny wants Harry to name their children.
He can see the names he would chose every time he closes his eyes, trapped in flashes of memories. His parents, dancing in the autumn leaves. Sirius, sliding into Padfoot; Snape, the first time he spoke to Lily. Dumbledore, the first time Harry remembers seeing him, shouting nonsense words with a sly, teasing smile.
James was simple enough to name. He slid out fast and easy, eager to see the world, desperate to be a part of it. Of course he'd be named after two of the fathers Harry had, and grow into those names; brave and foolish, and so unlike Harry that he wonders if he'll ever understand his oldest son.
His second child, whoever he will turn out to be, is more difficult to name.
Or rather, his name is harder to say out loud.
That night he dreams that he's back in his cupboard, curled up into a ball in the dark. Broken Lego men that he rescued from the bin dance a delicate pattern across hand, their sharp feet leaving tiny indentations in the fleshy part of his thumb. The Dursleys are out, he remembers, and they locked him in here not to keep him safe but so the house would be.
The Lego man with no legs reached up his arms, a parody of a hug.
When he looks sideways he can see Snape in the opposite corner, slumped where the two walls meet. He looks young, as young as Harry. He's still bleeding, like he always is in Harry's dreams, the sticky memories spilling out of his shredded skin and on to the floor with no one left to catch them.
Harry wonders what Snape has done, to get left behind in the darkness. He tries not to look, in case the other boy starts to talk, want to tell him things Harry isn't ready to know yet.
Harry can hear something else in the dark, under his bed. He draws his feet up to protect them from the monsters he imagines in the shadows.
He hears the Dursleys come back, but it's not Vernon who opens the door. Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkle and his glasses glint. He doesn't look at the shadows under the bed, doesn't look at Snape, he just places a hand on Harry's chest to push him back onto the bed and says you have to stay here, just for now. It's not just for your own good.
There's something small and lost crying, distantly.
When he wakes up, just after dawn, he can hear the baby whimpering quietly. He collects his son and goes back to the bathroom. The rest of the house is still dark behind closed curtains, but the sun shines brightly through the bathroom window, bouncing and gleaming off all the clean white tiles. Harry holds the baby against his chest as he opens the window - he needs fresh air, needs daylight, needs to look at the sun until all he can see is the light, the white space, the certainty that all will be well.
Harry concentrates on the name his chosen, letting it fill his head until it's all he can see. He finds his mouth, chanting it like a charm. Why not? A spell is just words after all, words and meaning, and not so different from a name. In his arms, the baby's mouth moves too, his eyes bright and watching Harry.
Everyone arrives a few hours later. There's noise and laughter and a house full of light. James toddles unsteadily around the room, running before he can walk. Harry holds the baby, as is tradition, and carries him the garden. There's no other words, no spell or charm or ceremony. Ginny stands next to him, Molly and Arthur behind her. Hermione holds James on her knee, hands clasped tight around his tummy. The garden is quiet and bright in the noon sun. Harry can imagine his parents doing this, once, just like this.
"Albus," he says, passing the baby to Ginny at last. "Albus Severus." The name sits heavily on his tongue for a moment in the silence.
"A fine name," Arthur comments, his throat sounding choked. "A fine, fine name."