Hi! If it’s not too much trouble can we get some head canons for Harry and Ginny as parents? Thank you! ☺️
In the previous episodes:
Harry headcanons Potter kids + Teddy headcanons Ginny headcanons
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(There are no headcanons focused on Ginny changing jobs for the kids because I have such specific takes about her career, they require their own post)
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While they definitely have worries and can be strict on certain things, they are fun parents, and once their kids become adults they are friends with them
But if we have to pick the fun parent, it's obviously Ginny
I think it would be really important for them that they all spend the holidays together: no staying at Hogwarts, no staying at a friend's house for more than a couple of days once they start going to Hogwarts. That's how Ginny was raised, and Harry was always at the Weasleys only because the Dursleys sucked. But if their friends want to come over, they are always welcome. That said, I don't imagine this as a dynamic that's imposed, it just sort of naturally ends up being like this, and I think it's something they value a lot
They are genuinely cool parents, and their kids' friends love them. The Potter siblings have a love/hate relationship with this fact
They raise the kids to be very comfortable with physical activity, especially in the open air. They seem like the kind of people who would have a fitness trail in the garden
Andromeda wasn't particularly thrilled initially about their insistence on being very involved in Teddy's life: they are very young, very public figures. But she grows into loving them (it takes her a few years)
When Teddy starts going to school, a lot of parents assume Harry and Ginny are his parents and judge them for it due to their age
They have nannies, but not random teenagers (something that wouldn't even be possible for most of the year in the Wizarding World). They have hyper-qualified professional nannies with 20-30 years of experience.
Harry actually considers putting them under an unbreakable vow but apparently it's not ""legal"" (whatever)
Ginny has a bit of a hard time with this initially: she grew up with a stay-at-home mother, and while she wouldn't want that for herself, she worries she is not being a good enough mother
They send them to some fancy muggle school. Unless the wizarding world decides to create pre-schools, elementary school, and so on... something that would frankly be necessary for women's rights. Though maybe even in that case, they would send them to muggle school to shield them from the fame thing. But I'm not sure if they would send them to muggle nursery school and pre-school because of the control on their magic thing, so maybe in those years they would stay a lot with the nannies or be in a magical version of those schools if they exist and then go to muggle elementary school.
Choosing a posh school would be a matter of security for them, but I also think that while the Potter kids aren't spoiled in the strict sense of the word, Harry and Ginny have no limits with money when it comes to the important stuff for their children. I think they wouldn't throw away money, but on major things for their children like school, they would end up overcompensating for their own childhoods (poverty/the cupboard). Also, the children are going to go to Hogwarts anyway, so Harry and Ginny don't have to worry about them being stuck in the elite bubble. [I also just find really funny the idea of those two having to find a way to justify having all that money to muggles]
They are a wonderful example for their kids on what love should be like, but they accidentally set an impossible standard for what a love story should be like. I think that if you grow up with stories about your mother writing poems to your father as a child, your dad saving your mum form a basilisk, your mum never stopping to love your father despite him not seeming interested only for your father to realise he was in love with her, hearing about their super scenographic epic first kiss, the break-up out of love in the middle of a war, and so on and on... You are going to grow up with very unrealistic expectations of what the story with your "right person" should be. Like, ok this person is nice but would they save me from a basilisk? And even if they would save you from a basilisk, it's not like they are going to be able to prove it. I feel like they all need to find partners who are into very dramatic displays of affection or they are never going to feel truly loved
Ginny is obviously the child Molly has the closest relationship with but I think it becomes somehow even more obvious once Ginny becomes a mother
When Ginny is pregnant, Harry is very overbearing, in a charming and caring way, but still... But I like to imagine those are the only times when Ginny actually enjoys Harry's moments of overprotectiveness that border on light insanity. This does not stop Ginny from doing all the things that give Harry anxiety, she just finds it really adorable (and sometimes hot) when he gets all worried
All the kids are raised to be masters in the art of sarcasm, it's a necessary surving skill at the Potters
One thing that for some reason I've always been conviced of is that the Weasley brothers (+ wivies) would be quite judgmental of Harry and Ginny as parents (despite the fact that through Teddy they would be the ones with more experience than everybody else). They are the youngest, and I believe that would play a factor, but I think the main thing would be that they would be the ones with the more "relaxed" parenting style. I know everybody likes to imagine the extended Weasley family as perfect and without any possible conflict, but they are a lot of people, all with very strong personalities
On a similar topic: Harry and Ginny are very intimidating people who also happen to be quite witty and sharp and as we all know that means that when they get really angry the person they are going to get angry at is not going to have a good time. But it would get only worse when they are both angry at the same time at the same people because they are for each other the person that can help them cool down. They also egg each other on so much when they joke that if they started injecting a nasty vibe into it, it would get ugly really fast. And in my opinion, their main trigger by far, besides negative comments on the other one, would be negative comments on their kids. Not in a "every critique from the teachers is stupid" kind of way, but more in a "if someone in the family tries to police how they raise their kids they are going to be so verbally destroyed they'll need twenty years of therapy". You can also extend this to the press, Rita Skeeter and so on, but I think that's a very shared opinion in the fandom, not my personal headcanon.
Arts and crafts is a serious business at the Potters, Ginny makes sure of it
Harry, meanwhile, makes sure everybody knows The Poem; on Valentine's Day it's a whole thing
There's only one true religion in the house: The Holyhead Harpies
For reasons that are too long to explain in this post: I think Ginny and Harry as adults would be social democrats even if they wouldn't really be politically active. But they would still raise their kids with those values, and that would "accidentally" turn them into very politically active young people. I think we tend to forget that in their world, Harry and Ginny are part of the silent generation, while their kids are baby boomers. And while boomers nowadays have a terrible reputation (understandably), they were also the young people in the streets during the late 60's and 70's fighting for civil rights. [the wizarding world would so have their version of the years of lead]
I think Harry and Ginny would be really proud of them, but also develop a sudden immense empathy for Molly during the war (it would also get a bit complex with Harry in the aurors, and then Lily)
Without getting into a full analysis of Ginny and Molly's relationship, its thematic end is in the epilogue with Ginny having a daugther who is the only girl and the youngest. Similarly to Harry, the idea is that Ginny is going to be better than those who came before her. I thought a lot about what this would mean for Ginny because if Lily and Ginny just naturally don't have conflict, Ginny wouldn't be better than Molly, she would be luckier. But I had a really hard time imagining what conflict Ginny might have with her daughter, considering that she is a character who was written to have the perfect personality for a mother. The more I thought about this, the more I kept focusing on how, in the epilogue, it's implied that Lily is very similar to Ginny, but the thing is: Lily didn't go through all the terrible things Ginny went through. Which means it would take her a lot more time to reshape her romanticism and optimism into something that doesn't make her seem a little naive. And for Ginny, seeing a mini-her being a little naive would probably be very triggering and make her so worried about Lily, and that's where Ginny would have to prove to be better than Molly.
They have board game nights, but they get really intense because, really, what do you expect from two incredibly competitive people and their children?
They have managed to control the press a bit about the kids by publishing the occasional family photo
Harry and Ginny would actively make sure their children are not socially isolated
What traumas they would keep from them
Harry would teach them DADA
They would encourage their interests
The Potters are a very close family unit, a bit due to the isolation caused by fame, but mainly because I think Harry and Ginny would be a rare case of people who genuinely find fun being parents. Harry and Ginny are the only characters who end up being parents as the conclusion of a proper character arc and expression of core traits/values of their characters, and I think we should remember this more when talking about them
