A/N: I was trying to explain to someone how I wished the epilogue had gone, and this happened.

Life Is What Happens

"Harry?" Ginny asks.

Harry sits across the room at the old roll top desk, an array of papers in front of him. "Hmm?" he says, clearly distracted and only half-listening.

Ginny isn't sure why she's waited until he is buried in a report to broach this conversation. She's had his undivided attention for most of the evening. They have learned the necessity of it, of carving time out for each other during the last few hectic years. Harry's gotten pretty good about it, despite his tendency to obsess and his job's ability to flow over into his private life with the fury of a tidal wave. For an Auror, there really is no separating work from home.

Like many things, that seems a bit more problematic today.

Ginny gnaws at her lower lip. She considers that she waited until he was distracted because she's a coward, and this is easier to say while he's not looking at her.

"You know how we talked about having a family?" she says.

Harry doesn't noticeably react, but she waits, knowing it won't take long for the words to sink in.

One, two, three…

Harry's quill stops mid-movement. He slowly turns his head to look at her, the chair creaking under his weight. "Yes," he says, drawing the word out slightly as if very wary of where this conversation is going. "You said you wanted to wait."

Ginny nods, remembering the conversation perfectly well. They'd made a plan. A very good one. A nice, careful, perfectly planned vision of the future.

She blows out a breath. Best laid plans and all. "Whoops?"

Harry's eyes widen. "What do you mean, whoops?"

"It's not like those charms are 100% foolproof," she points out.

Harry sets down his quill, turning his body around until his attention is fully latched on to her.

Her fingers twist in her lap. "Well, I'm certainly going to write an angry letter to whoever developed that charm. I mean, they've probably been dead for a while, but still." They'd had plans, dammit.

Harry lifts his hands as if he's having a hard time keeping up. "What exactly are you saying?"

She thought that was obvious. Then again, she hasn't actually said it yet, has she? "I may, possibly, be kind of…pregnant." The word rolls out into the room with all the elegance of a drunken troll, smashing its way across their lives.

"Kind of?" Harry says, his voice a little weak.

"Okay. So not kind of or maybe. More like, actually. Definitely." The mediwitch had been pretty clear.

"Definitely?" Harry repeats. He looks ashen, swaying slightly in his seat like the floor isn't quite as reliable as it was a few moments ago.

She knows the feeling.

Pregnant. Baby. Parents. Them. Parents.

Oh, sweet baby Merlin.

How did this happened? Well, no, she knows how this happened. It's just–.

"Ginny," Harry says, the slight awe in his voice dragging her out of her spiraling thoughts.

She looks up at him, and he's still pale, but as he stares back at her a slow smile spreads over his face, something blinding and glorious, and Ginny feels something untangle in her chest.

She nods, her hand going to her stomach. "Yeah. I know." She smiles back at him.

He crosses the room, gathering her up in his arms and squeezing her. He almost immediately pulls back, like he suddenly remembers that maybe he shouldn't hold her that tight.

She punches him on the arm. "So help me, Potter, if you start treating me like some delicate flower…"

He laughs, pulling her back into a hug, only slightly more restrained this time. "I can't believe it."

She buries her face in his neck, breathing deep, feeling everything begin to settle at last. "Me either."

"When?" he asks, his fingers trailing through her hair.

"Sometime in February," she says.

"February," he repeats, voice almost reverent.

Ginny nods. "I'll be able to finish the season, at least." She hasn't been able to think any farther than that. Her contract…

"Any chance this means that you'll change your mind about marrying me?" Harry asks.

Right, that.

"I never said no," Ginny reminds him, leaning back to look at him. "I just never got around to saying yes."

It's been a really hectic few years. And the actual ceremony has always seemed like a mere formality, a confirmation of what they already both know.

He laughs. "And now?"

She wraps her arms around his neck, lifting up on her toes until her mouth is near his. "Yes." She kisses him.

Might as well do this thing right, if not slightly out of order.

A few nights later as they lie in bed, Harry asks, "Are you really ready to give up Quidditch?"

Ginny hesitates. She knows she's supposed to say yes. That the baby trumps everything else. Doesn't it?

Somehow it isn't as easy as that.

"I don't know," she admits. "Sometimes I feel like it was always going to take something like this for me to retire. An injury. Getting released." She loves Quidditch too much for it to go any other way. She's lived and breathed it for far too long.

"Or getting pregnant," he says.

She tries to smile. "That's a better reason than the other two at least. Right?"

She's only been on the starting team for four years after spending half a decade working her way up from the reserve squad. She tells herself four years is enough.

Harry is still regarding her closely. "Moran played well into her forties."

That may be true true, but it's not really a relevant measuring stick. "She never had kids."

They are both quiet for a while, staring up into the darkness shrouded ceiling of their room.

"You're just…you're at the peak of your game," Harry says, frustration clear in his voice.

The thing is, she doesn't think she is. She thinks she can be even better. She's on the upward slope, that's for certain. But there is room left. Potential.

"Maybe that's a good way to go out," she says, closing her eyes.

There's been talk of her making it to Captain, maybe as soon as next season. And, as always, there's the illusive draw of the World Cup. She really hoped to play in the finals some day. To win the damn finals.

"Ginny," Harry says, voice soft with understanding.

She sits up in bed, suddenly angry at him for even bringing this up, for voicing what she has been trying so hard not to think about. "What exactly are you trying to say, Harry?" She wraps an arm across her stomach. "You think I should end it?"

It was an accident after all, and there are ways to undo accidents. Make it like it never was. Only not.

He looks at her in confusion for a long moment before his face seems to drain of color. He sits up, touching her back. "God, no, Gin. That's not what I meant at all."

"Then what are you saying?" She's trying to be happy about this, not mourn all the things she'll be losing. Can't he see that?

"I was thinking that maybe I could do it. Stay home with the baby."

Everything seems to tilt for a moment. "What?" she asks, voice faint.

"Well, there's nothing that says it has to be you, is there?" he says, sounding slightly defensive.

No, there isn't. She turns to look at him, trying to gauge how serious he is. "What about your job?"

He shakes his head, his dark hair an endearing mess about his ears. "I never wanted to be in the field forever anyway. And if I'm going to be a dad…" He looks up at her, and she's never been more aware of his past—orphan, godfather to an abandoned child of war. "I won't do that."

He won't go out and risk his life, risk his kids growing up without a dad. Not now that peace has finally settled around the wizarding world like a cozy quilt.

"You don't have to be in the field," she says.

He shrugs. "It's not like I'm looking forward to a desk job."

"But you've worked so hard to get where you are," she points out.

"And you haven't?" he counters.

She can't argue with that. It's been a decade of sacrifices. But then it's always felt like that is what your twenties are for. Progress. Driving forward.

"Gin," he says. "The Auror office will always be there. Quidditch won't."

She regards him for a long moment, perfectly aware that he isn't being completely honest. And they need to be, at this moment more than any other. "That's not a good enough reason," she says.

He sighs, taking her hands, his fingers playing with hers as he works out what to say. "Sometimes I feel like I never really got to be a child, you know? To have a real childhood. I want to be there for it. I want to be there for every nappy and scraped knee and silly joke. I don't want to miss any of it."

She wonders what it says about her that she might be willing to miss any of that. But isn't all that should matter is that someone is there?

"And what about me?" she asks.

Harry smiles, reaching out to touch her face. "You can stay home with the next one."

Her eyebrows fly up. "The next one?"

They look at each other, laughter bubbling up between them. This whole thing is so surreal.

Harry pulls her down onto the bed, the two of them snuggling down into the blankets. "We'll figure it out," he promises.

Ginny's nearly six months pregnant at their wedding, the swell of her belly defiantly visible under the soft fabric of her simple white gown. Muriel can be heard to loudly sniff at the impropriety of it, but Ginny just beams, her face glowing with happiness as Harry reaches out to take her hands as she approaches him at the altar.

He thinks she's never been more beautiful.

"You and me, Potter," she says, squeezing his fingers. In it together, just like always.

He leans in and kisses her, not caring that the ceremony hasn't even begun. They're doing everything else out of order anyway, so who cares? It's not like they've ever particularly cared about rules.

It's their life.

Ginny laughs, pulling their hands in to brush against her stomach.

Just the three of them.

"No P names!" Harry says, refusing to open his kid up to pee pee jokes about their initials.

"And no names ending in Y," Ginny says. "I couldn't stand the cutesiness of Harry, Ginny, and their kid Barry!"

When their daughter is born, head capped with flaming red hair, they name her Kelsa. She is full of laughter and smiles and a stubborn streak a mile wide.

"The stubbornness came from you," Ginny insists.

Harry just laughs.

Three years later they have another red-haired girl, this one quiet and watchful and completely incapable of accepting "just because" as an answer to anything. Harry knows they are in trouble the day he finds Acacia taking apart the family clock to see how it works.

Harry stays home with both girls, and Ginny becomes the first mum to ever participate in the Quidditch World Cup finals, let alone win it. She becomes an icon to be both revered and criticized.

"Are you trying to make some sort of social statement?" a reporter inevitably asks.

Ginny shakes her head and smiles, knowing they are missing the point entirely.

When she gets pregnant with twins seven years after their eldest was born, she decides it's finally time to be done with Quidditch. She's creeping towards forty and getting her body back to form after the second baby had been a struggle. But mostly, she's achieved her dreams, and she's at a point where she wants to be home with her daughters more than she wants to be slogging away on the field. It's started to feel like work.

She knows she's lucky to get the choice.

When the twins turn out to be girls, there's amusement, but mostly relief. Ginny isn't ready to look down and see miniature versions of Fred and George, even if it's been nearly twenty years. She thinks she'll never be ready to face that.

The twins are both black-haired with green eyes like their father, but in every other way different from one another. They are more trouble than their older sisters ever could have dreamt of being, only even more dangerous because while Moira always instigates, Devon makes sure it's done in a way that they never get caught. Caution and bravado all wrapped together in one terrifying united front.

Harry and Ginny stay home together when the twins are little, supported by Ginny's promotional deals as a famous Quidditch player and the Potter fortune. So it's Harry and Ginny and their four daughters together and it's glorious and difficult and utter and complete chaos.

It doesn't go unnoticed that the first Weasley daughter in seven generations is having nothing but girls. They begin to joke that it will take seven generations for there to be another boy.

Ginny asks Harry once, if it bothers him, if he would like to keep trying for a boy. He just kisses her and teases her about ending up with seven kids. Only later does he give her a serious look and say, "Why would I want anything other than exactly what I have?"

"Being surrounded by Potter women?" she asks.

He smiles. "Exactly." It's no secret at all that he still has no idea how he got so lucky.

As the twins get a little older, Ginny starts writing letters to various journals, explaining why this Quidditch team or that team utterly failed or succeeded. They get printed, first because of her famous name, but eventually because of how popular they are. She gets her own editorial corner in the sports pages, people appreciating her keen eye and sharp tongue. (Well, at least the people not being written about.)

Harry goes back to the Auror office after a decade at home with his daughters—ten years he wouldn't trade for anything in the world. He doesn't regret a single moment of it.

When it comes time for their eldest to go to Hogwarts, Harry and Ginny are both nonplussed to hear that she has been sorted into Hufflepuff. But when they take a few moments to think about it, Hufflepuff makes perfect sense. She's always been the peacemaker, the one full of compassion. But also the one willing to dig her heels in when it matters most.

When their second goes to Hogwarts, she gets sorted into Ravenclaw.

"Now that," Ginny says, "has got to be all you, Harry."

Harry glances at the stack of books by Ginny's side of the bed, but decides it's better not to say anything.

Of course, of all their daughters, Acacia is the only one to show any interest in Quidditch. As a Keeper.

"Better than nothing, I suppose," Ginny sighs dramatically.

When it's the twins' turn, one goes into Gryffindor and the other into Slytherin.

"One of each," Harry notes as he puts down the letter from Devon.

Ginny laughs. "It's perfect."

No wonder their family has always been the epitome of chaos and balance.

Ginny and Harry decide with all of their children at Hogwarts it may be time to rethink their careers. Ginny gives up writing for the paper and instead takes a position as an assistant coach to the Chasers on the Chudley Cannons of all places.

Ron is over the moon.

"At least now they have a tiny chance," Ginny observes.

By this time, Harry is the head of the Auror's office. He gets increasingly pulled into the political side of things. People begin to talk about him being the Minister of Magic one day. But a few years after the twins graduate from Hogwarts, Harry quietly retires from the Ministry and applies for the open Defense Against the Dark Arts position. This only comes as a surprise to people who don't know him.

They settle into a nice cottage with a bit of land on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, only a few miles from Neville and Hannah. A decade later Ginny takes the open position as flying coach and Quidditch program coordinator at Hogwarts.

When their nieces and nephews and grandkids come through Hogwarts, they get no special treatment at all. Not that Harry and Ginny don't occasionally turn a blind eye to perfectly reasonable rule breaking. It is Hogwarts after all.

When Harry is seventy-five, he becomes Headmaster. His hair has long since gone a deep peppery grey, and Ginny teases him that he'll have to start growing a beard if he hopes to have it down to his knees by the time he's ninety.

They can still be seen, walking hand in hand around the Black Lake.

"Hard to believe it's come all the way back around to this, isn't it?" Ginny asks.

Harry squeezes her hand. "I never would have had it any other way."

.fin.