#weasley week

That trust had come back, bit by bit. She had made friends, eventually. She had gone on dates, had been heartbroken, had battled, had grieved. She had carved out a career for herself, made a name for herself, had finally gotten to know herself and trust herself again.

So why, on what should have been the happiest day of her life, was she doubting herself?

She loved Harry. She had always loved Harry, even when her definition of love had been a schoolgirl’s infatuation. He made her happy, understood her in a way few others did, and loved her in spite of that. When he had asked her to marry him, her answer had come as swift and as sure as she was on a broomstick.

Right now, she was less sure. Which was unfortunate, because right now, there were only minutes to go before she was supposed to walk down the aisle and marry the wizard.

In moments like this, Ginny preferred to be alone. Declining her bridesmaids’ offers to help her with her dress, she backed out of the vestry and headed for the bathroom, where she stood facing a mirror and holding on to the edges of a sink. Her head was spinning, her heart racing, and her stomach churning. She felt unbearably hot, though the room was cold. She took several breaths, annoyed by how shallow each one was, and found that this was useless. In a final desperate attempt to cool herself down, she turned on the tap and let the water run over her hands before splashing it onto her face.

That was a mistake. Now she had yet another thing to worry about. Her make-up, which she had painstakingly spent the morning doing — she hadn’t permitted anyone else to do it for her — was now entirely ruined. And, even worse, she had left all of her belongings back at the Burrow, not thinking that she would need them over the course of the ceremony. All she could do was try to clean up the mess she had made of her own face.

As she used her wand to remove the smudges from her cheeks, a toilet flushed behind her and a beautiful woman and small girl, both with the same shade of silvery-blonde hair, emerged from a cubicle. Ginny forced a smile as the woman helped the little girl to wash her hands in another of the sinks. Her niece looked particularly cute in her bridesmaid dress, but there was no one she wanted to speak to less at this moment in time than her sister-in-law.

Fleur Delacour-Weasley eyed Ginny over the top of her daughter's blonde head for a few moments before telling her, “I ‘ave makeup in my bag, if you would like some.”

Ginny couldn’t see that she had much choice but to take Fleur up on her offer, so she nodded. Her sister-in-law passed her a dainty clutch bag, which on opening, Ginny found to be far bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside.

“Va chercher ton grand-père, Victoire.” Fleur placed one hand on the back of her daughter’s head and stroked her hair gently as she spoke, and Ginny’s niece skipped out of the bathroom with her clean hands. Ginny expected Fleur to follow Victoire, but instead she turned back towards her and asked, “Would you like some ‘elp with zat?”

“I can do it myself, thanks,” Ginny replied, but her hands were shaking so badly that she was struggling to do anything by herself.

Fleur stood stock still, watching her as she tried and failed to wield mascara with any form of precision. Ginny was growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with herself, with Fleur, with everything. Eventually, she held out Fleur’s bag at arm length and snapped:

“Fine, you do it then, if you think you can do better than me!” Her sister-in-law blinked at her slowly, her lips pursed, and Ginny sighed. “I mean, yes, I’d like some help. Please can you help me?”

Her tone hadn’t been friendly in the slightest. Fleur shrugged and took back her bag.

“Close your eyes,” she told Ginny, who did as she instructed. A soft brush swept over Ginny’s cheeks, and Fleur’s voice spoke to her. “Victoire ‘as freckles like you now. ‘Ave you noticed?”

“No.”

“Zey look quite cute, I zink. A proper Weasley, no? It is a shame zat I’m covering yours up.”

“Yeah, well.” Ginny swallowed. “I’m not going to be a Weasley for much longer. Might as well get rid of the freckles while I’m at it.”

She sounded far more bitter than she intended. She could not see Fleur’s face, but by the way her sister-in-law continued to work on her face, she supposed that she might not have noticed.

“And ‘ow are you feeling about today?”

“Great, obviously. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because it is a big change,” Fleur said. “And because you are in ‘ere splashing water on your face when you should be about to walk down the aisle.” Ginny opened her mouth to argue, but before she could say anything, Fleur instructed, “Open your eyes and look up at the ceiling.”

It was hard to focus her eyes. Ginny could almost feel them filling with tears as Fleur applied mascara to her lashes.

“How did you feel on your wedding day?” Ginny asked Fleur, trying her hardest not to either cry or blink.

“Probably the same as you. ‘Appy, but also a little nervous.”

Ginny looked down from the ceiling and at her sister-in-law. “Really?”

“Yes. I wanted ze day to be perfect, and zere was a war going on, so…”

“So, you weren’t nervous about actually getting married? You didn’t have any… second thoughts or anything?”

Fleur seemed to consider Ginny’s question. When she answered, she did so with a small and almost secretive looking smile:

“Yes.”

“You did?” Ginny was relieved, for some reason. “What about?”

“What are your second thoughts about?” Fleur asked. Ginny sighed.

“I dunno, I just… I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am, Quidditch-wise. I’m worried that once I’m married, no one will care that I’ve done that, they’ll just think of me as Harry’s wife and not my own person, because I won’t be, will I? I’ll be Mrs Potter, not Ginny Weasley, not… Not me.”

Ginny cast a look at herself in the mirror. She never usually wore white, it was too easily dirtied, and she couldn’t remember the last time her hair had been restrained in such an intricate up-do. Even her freckles had been covered with makeup. She scowled at her own reflection.

“I already don’t look like me,” she muttered. “What’s to stop me from just slowly disappearing altogether?”

“I cannot imagine zat will ever ‘appen.”

“It almost did, once,” said Ginny. Fleur was looking at her, and she avoided meeting her eye. “Back when I was younger, that year… That diary, his diary… I put so much of myself into it, I poured myself into it, and before I knew it, there was almost none of me left. I was nearly lost forever, and I…” Her voice tailed off. “I don’t want to lose myself, not ever, not to anyone or for anything.”

Fleur put one hand to Ginny’s hair. For a moment, Ginny thought she might stroke it, the way she had Victoire’s, but instead, she reached back and undid one of the clips. A strand of Ginny’s hair came loose.

“I can see zis,” Fleur said, reaching for another hairclip, “but I don’t zink it is something you need to worry about. Zat diary, it was evil. It wanted you to lose yourself. ‘Arry would never want zat for you, ‘e just wants you, as you are. It is all ‘e ever wanted.”

Ginny took a deep breath. Yet more locks of her hair tumbled around her shoulders as more clips were removed, and Fleur continued:

“Getting married, it does not mean zat you are losing yourself. You are gaining another piece for yourself, making a family zat is yours and someone else’s. It means you ‘ave to share, but you must be used to sharing, with all those brothers you ‘ave.” She chuckled softly, and Ginny felt her own lips twitch. It was true, she was used to sharing. “The only piece of yourself you are giving up is your name, which you don’t ‘ave to do. And zat was ever really your name, either. It is all your family’s name, no? And even if you don’t have zeir name, you are not going to lose your family. Especially your family. You are all very stubborn.”

In spite of everything, in spite of herself, Ginny laughed out loud. Fleur smiled triumphantly and nodded her head at the mirror.

“See? You look more like yourself now.”

Fleur was right. Ginny’s hair was now almost entirely loose, a mane of red curls framing her face. Her freckles were still invisible, but her laugh had caused her cheeks to dimple and her brown eyes to shine with mirth.

Thinking about it, Fleur was right about a lot of things. Harry was not Tom Riddle. He had nothing of Tom Riddle about him, not anymore. And even when he had, he had never once allowed it to consume him, not the way the diary had consumed her. He had never wanted anything from Ginny, except for her to be… well, Ginny. Not Ginny Weasley, not Ginny Potter, just Ginny. In all the time she had been making a name for herself, Harry had accepted her and loved her for herself.

And she loved him. Had accepted him, the way her family had accepted him as one of their own. He might not have their name, but he was still a part of them. She would still be a part of them, even if she didn’t have their name anymore. She wouldn’t lose them.

Harry had lost his family. All he had left of them was their name, the one that was written on a pair of tombstones in the graveyard behind the church in which she stood, where he was standing at the altar waiting for her. Waiting to begin their life together, to share that life together.

There was a knock on the bathroom door, and Ginny’s father’s voice sounded from the other side of it.

“It’s eleven, Ginny. Are you ready?”

Ginny glanced at Fleur, and again at the bathroom mirror, where her own face stared back at her, defiant and stubborn and entirely her own.

Ron couldn’t have cared less about the tournament, not anymore. He just wished that it was over with already, so that everybody would move on and he wouldn’t have to hear about it.

He kept himself to himself for most of the morning, eating his breakfast in a sullen silence and barely uttering a word during his lessons. At lunchtime, the only reason he didn’t seek further solitude in the library was the protest of his groaning stomach. It was fortunate that he decided to pay attention to his appetite, however, for as he was halfway through his sandwiches, an owl flew into the Great Hall and dropped a letter on his plate.

A little confused, Ron opened the letter, which read:

Come to the Quidditch stands after your lessons finish for the day. And try to be subtle about it, please.

Though the letter wasn’t signed, the handwriting was familiar somehow. Frowning, Ron peered around the Great Hall to see who might have sent him the message, but no one was looking his way. Of course they weren’t. No one ever did.

No one was looking at him when he left his last lesson of the day and headed straight for the currently disused Quidditch pitch, wondering as he walked whether he was making a mistake in following the nameless instructions. What if the letter had been sent by Fred and George, hoping to make him the butt of yet another of their practical jokes?

This concern grew in Ron’s mind when he saw a stockily built wizard with red hair on the edge of the pitch, leaning against the stands. But though this wizard looked like both Fred and George, it became clear as Ron grew closer that this was neither of them.

It was Charlie.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” Ron asked his second oldest brother, who half-smiled at the question.

“Great to see you, too,” he said, before laughing good-naturedly and giving Ron a handshake that turned into a hug. “How’s it going, mate? Alright?”

It was not going alright at all, but Ron wasn’t ready to admit that, not even to Charlie. He nodded and made a humming noise before frowning again.

“Seriously, why are you here? I thought you were back in Romania.”

Charlie hesitated for just a moment before answering Ron’s question. “I’m here for the Triwizard Tournament. First challenge is tomorrow afternoon.”

“I know,” Ron muttered darkly. “So, you’re coming to watch it, too?”

“Er, sort of,” said Charlie, with a shrug. “Yeah, I guess I’ll be watching it in between.”

“In between what?”

“Working.”

“Working? But why would you be working here during…” Ron’s voice tailed off, and his eyes widened. “No!” he half-gasped. “No. There’s no way they’d let a bloody dragon loose in the school.”

But even as he heard himself say the words, Ron doubted them. The look on Charlie’s face only served to confirm his suspicions.

“Dragons? That’s the first task? Dragons?”

“I didn’t say that,” Charlie said slowly.

“So…”

“I didn’t say that. You guessed.”

Ron blinked twice, hard. “What?”

“You guessed, so no one’s cheating. Right?” asked Charlie. The look in his eyes was pointed. Slowly, Ron nodded his head. “That means that if you tell your mate Harry that I was here, and he guesses, that’s not cheating either.”

It might not have been cheating, but Ron still couldn’t tell Harry anything. He stayed quiet, hoping that Charlie would change the subject. He didn’t.

“How is Harry getting along, anyway?”

“I dunno,” replied Ron, after a short but awkward pause. He avoided looking at Charlie as he explained, “We aren’t really talking at the moment.”

“You’re not?” Charlie sounded more surprised than he did judgemental. “Did you have an argument or something?”

“Not really, we just… I’m just tired of it.” Ron sighed angrily and kicked up a patch of mud with the toe of his shoe. “He’s already this prodigy at Quidditch, and he’s not bad at school either, and now he’s School Champion as well.”

Charlie raised one red eyebrow. “You didn’t really want to be the school champion, did you?”

“I’d have liked to have the chance, at least. But I didn’t get to try, because Harry didn’t tell me he’d figured out how to get past Dumbledore’s age line. I mean, he’s supposed to be my best friend, but he entered the tournament and didn’t even tell me about it!”

Ron had been bottling up his feelings ever since the champions had been announced. Now that he was letting them out, he couldn’t stop.

“After all we’ve been through together for the last few years, I would’ve thought that he’d have wanted to do this together, too. Or maybe even let me have a chance at being the one who gets to have the glory for once, but no.” Ron shook his head. “It’s like he likes the fact that I’m always in his shadow, or something. I dunno.”

A few moments passed before Charlie said anything. When he did, his response came as a surprise to Ron.

“I do,” he said sincerely, before almost laughing at the look on Ron’s face. “Come on, Ron. Of course I know. What do you think it was like going to school two years after Bill? You weren’t here while he was getting twelve O.W.L.s and being the Head Boy. You didn’t see the girls tripping over themselves to get him to notice them. I did. So, I get it.” He leaned back against the stands again. “But, you know, being overshadowed has its perks. There’s less pressure, fewer expectations of you. You get more freedom. Merlin, I wouldn’t swap places with Bill for the world. Would you really want to swap places with Harry? Really?”

The obvious answer to Charlie’s question was ‘yes’, but Ron knew that answer wasn’t entirely truthful. Charlie seemed to know it, too, because he continued:

“It’s tough, being so close to the one who gets the glory, but that gives you something. Strength or… I don’t know what it is exactly, but from my experience people who always get the attention need that. They need people like us, even if it’s only to keep them grounded sometimes.” Charlie gave Ron a sympathetic half-smile. “I bet he really misses you.”

“I miss him, too,” Ron admitted. He swallowed hard. “I dunno what to do.”

“You know what I’d do?” asked Charlie. Ron shook his head, and Charlie’s gaze drifted towards the direction of the Forbidden Forest. “I’d do whatever it took to not lose my best friend.”

There was a stubborn finality to his tone that made it clear that he didn’t expect an argument. But Ron was stubborn, too.

“Why do you care so much?” he asked his brother, who shrugged.

“Real dragons aren’t like the ones you read about in stories, Ron. You met Hagrid’s Ridgeback, you know what I mean. And that was just a juvy. These ones, the one’s Harry will be facing, they’re the real deal. They’re dangerous. Your mate deserves to know what he’s up against.” Charlie’s expression became less grave as he added under his breath, “Also, there’s a small but very scary woman who won’t forgive me if anything happens to him.”

That didn’t surprise Ron one bit.

“Yeah, mum’ll lose it if Harry gets hurt,” he agreed. “Hermione too.” An idea struck him. “That’s it! Hermione!”

“What about her?”

“She’s still talking to Harry, and me too, sort of. I can tell her what you’ve told me—”

“I didn’t tell you anything.”

“— and she’s bound to help Harry. If anyone can come up with a way to get him to beat a dragon, it’s her.” Ron glanced over his shoulder at the castle. It was almost dinner time, and if he ran, he might just manage to intercept Hermione on her way from the library to the Great Hall. “Thanks, Charlie. Good seeing you.”

And, barely noticing his brother’s wave goodbye, Ron returned to the castle, where he found Hermione just leaving the Great Hall.

“Hermione,” he said, taking hold of her arm and pulling her into a corner to speak without anyone over-hearing them. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

“Can it wait?” asked Hermione impatiently. “I promised that I’d help Harry with… something.”

That ‘something’ could only be the challenge the following day. Ron didn’t let go of her arm.

“Dragons,” he whispered.

“What?”

“That's what the challenge is tomorrow. I saw Charlie by the Quidditch pitch, he said he’s here working. It’s dragons.”

Ron was not sure how he had expected Hermione to react to this revelation, but he certainly had not been expecting her to tut and roll her eyes, nor to tell him: “Yes, I know.”

“Wait, what? You know? But how—”

“Hagrid saw the dragons this weekend. Harry and I have been preparing for them ever since,” Hermione said matter-of-factly. She softened slightly, and looked almost apologetic. “Look, Ron, I really do have to go and help Harry. It’s just that the task is tomorrow, and… well, it’s dragons.”

An hour ago, Ron would have been annoyed at the fact that Hermione was leaving him so abruptly to help Harry with the challenge. An hour ago, he might have been annoyed that the two of them had figured it out without his help. But now, he only felt relief that Harry had Hermione on his side.

He let go of Hermione’s arm and nodded. “Fine. Go and help him, then.”

“Thank you,” said Hermione. Her large front teeth grazed her lower lip. “Ron?”

“Yeah?”

“You will come and watch the challenge tomorrow, won’t you?”

Ron didn’t really want to watch the challenge. He wanted nothing to do with it. But, he could see how anxious Hermione looked. She wanted him to come for her sake as much as Harry’s, he was sure of it.

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll come and watch it with you.”

She had become so used to it that she could barely remember what quiet felt like. It turned out that quiet felt a lot like purposeless.

Earlier that day, the Weasleys had said goodbye to six children at Kings Cross Station. It was a goodbye that she was familiar with — she had been making it ever since Bill was eleven, after all — but this was the first time she had returned home without any of her children with her. Now, even little Ginny was at school, and she was left alone in this empty house that felt far bigger than her home.

In a vague, desperate bid to distract herself, she picked up her wool and began to knit, the repetitive clicking of the needles bringing her some much-needed respite from the oppressive hush of the room around her. She was so fixated on the task that she didn’t notice one hand of the nine-handed clock on the wall moving slowly to rest on the word “home”, and jumped at the sound of the door closing shut behind her husband.

“So, I went all over London,” Arthur told her as he made his way across the living room. “Couldn’t find the car anywhere. I can only think that…”

His voice tailed off and he frowned, looking around the room as if he were trying to find something.

“Did you rearrange the furniture?”

Not even looking up from her knitting, Molly shook her head. Her husband’s eyebrows furrowed deeper.

“Then what’s changed?” he asked. “Something seems different here.”

Molly knew exactly what was different, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. The loops on her needle seemed to blur, and she looked up at Arthur with eyes filling with tears. Arthur sighed. He had realised. He could hear it too, the near-silence that threatened to deafen them both.

“I’m not sure what to do with myself,” Molly told him in a voice that trembled with near-laughter. “There’s nothing that I need to do.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? You can do whatever you like for once.”

Arthur was trying to reassure her, but his words did little to comfort Molly.

“I’m not even sure what I like to do anymore,” she confessed. “All I am good at is being a mother.”

“Well, that is simply not true,” said Arthur, taking off his glasses and cleaning them as he spoke. “I know for a fact that you are a spectacular dancer.”

“I haven’t danced in years, Arthur.”

Arthur smiled and pointed his wand at the wireless, which began to play a song by Celestina Warbuck.

“Then I think it’s high time we rectified this.” Arthur picked Molly’s knitting up from her lap and took both her hands in his own. “Will you dance with me, Mollywobbles?”

“I’m getting wobblier by the day,” she muttered as she stood up to join him.

“Oh, hush.”

Molly fell quiet, and danced slowly to the music with Arthur. As the tune reached its end, they continued to side-step without it.

“It’s not so bad, just being the two of us,” she heard Arthur murmur.

“I suppose it isn’t.”

“And there are plenty of other ways for us to fill our time now that we have the house to ourselves.”

There was an almost mischeivous glint in Arthur’s blue eyes that made Molly smile, her cheeks blushing like the schoolgirl she had been when they had first met. Arthur’s head bowed towards her, and she rose up slightly on her toes so that her lips could meet his.

But before they could, there was a loud crack from outside the window. A moment later, the door opened to reveal Molly and Arthur’s oldest son. They quickly moved away from one another.

“Bill, dear!” Molly exclaimed, self-consciously patting down her hair. “What are you doing here?”

“Came home to surprise you, didn’t I? Thought you two might be at your wits’ ends without the others at home to look after.” Bill hugged his parents in turn, before kicking off his boots and flumping himself down onto the sofa. “Have you two heard about the flying car they’ve been seeing going north? It was all over the Evening Prophet.”

Molly shot a dangerous look at her husband, whose face turned a brighter shade of red than his thinning hair. Apparently oblivious to his father’s discomfort, Bill swung his legs up and rested them on the sofa arm.

“So, Mum, what’s for dinner?”

It was with a small sigh that Molly made her way into the kitchen, pausing only to use her wand to tidy away her son’s shoes.

Until he had.

It was a stupid joke made by his sister over a slice of leftover birthday cake the following morning. It hadn’t even been that funny, but for some reason, George had found himself giggling like a schoolboy. It had been so long since he had laughed that he had almost forgotten how, but the moment he did it, he couldn’t stop. It felt easy, instinctive, like riding a broomstick after being earthbound. It felt good. Laughter was good. Fred had always known that.

“I dunno, Freddie. Seems like a pretty risky move right now. I mean, who wants to buy jokes when You-Know-Who’s on the front page of the Prophet every day?”

“But that’s the brilliance of it! Right now, everyone just wants to not be so afraid. They will buy jokes, because that’s what they need.”

The memory of his brother’s voice echoed in George’s mind as he looked around the shop. It was filled with people, as many as three summers ago, the first time they opened. Fred had been right back then. Evidently, he was still right, even now.

A boy at the front of the queue for the till approached George. He looked maybe old enough to be at Hogwarts, but too young to have been there during the battle.

“I’d like to buy this one, please,” he said, holding out a box in his pudgy hand. George’s lips twitched slightly.

“An excellent choice. You know, I’ve actually been considering buying one of these for myself,” he told the boy, who stared blankly at him as if he were unable to tell whether or not George was joking. George exhaled. “Tough crowd. Okay, that’ll be seven Sickles for the Extendable Ear.”

As George put the boy’s Sickles into the till, he heard the next person in the queue chuckle softly.

“I guess dark humour isn’t for everyone,” she said, in a voice that was familiar to George’s remaining ear. He looked up.

“Angelina?”

It was Angelina Johnson, unmistakably so. She looked older than he remembered — everyone looked older these days — but her smile was unchanged. It widened as they made eye contact, and she placed a single self-writing quill on the counter in front of him.

“Hello, stranger.”

“Hi,” replied George. For lack of anything better to say, he added, “Long time, no see.”

He regretted the words as soon as he’d said them aloud. The last time he had seen Angelina was at Fred’s funeral. She had offered him her condolences. He hadn’t wanted her condolences. He had only wanted his brother back. He had shrugged off her kindness and spent the rest of the day ignoring her.

They’d had no contact since, even though they had spent almost every single day of their teenage years together. George supposed that it was normal for good friends to drift apart like that when they left school and got jobs and fought in wars and grieved for those they had loved and lost.

“I just mean that it’s good to see you,” he corrected himself. “How are things?”

Angelina was still smiling. Her eyes creased slightly at the corners. “Not too bad. How are you doing?”

That was a question George still hadn’t figured out how to answer.

“Yeah, I’m… Yeah.”

As if she understood what George was trying to say, Angelina nodded and made a low humming noise.

“This place looks great,” she said with a wave of her hand. At the exact same time, George said:

“You’re looking great.” He wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but the colour of Angelina’s cheeks seemed to deepen and darken, ever so slightly. He cleared his throat. “You’re looking well, I mean. Are you playing Quidditch again?”

For the first time, Angelina’s smile slipped from her face. She shook her head.

“Can’t. War wounds, you know?”

Of course George knew. How could he not?

“Well, let me know if there’s any products we can supply to help you,” he said. “I’ve got my Extendable Ears, it only seems fair that you get something to use as well.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I still haven’t forgotten the time you gave Katie that Blood Blister Pod during practice.”

George laughed out loud. “That wasn’t me, that was Fred.” He stopped laughing abruptly. “Anyway, that’ll be five Sickles and three Knuts.”

Wordlessly, Angelina handed over her coins, and took back her quill. George sighed, wishing that he hadn’t cut short their conversation.

“It really is good to see you again,” he told her, hoping that she wouldn’t take his brusqueness too personally.

“You too,” she said gently, before giving him the same stern look he recognised from her year of Quidditch captaincy at school. “Let’s not leave it quite so long next time, yeah?”

She turned as if to leave, but didn’t. Instead, she paused and looked around at the swarm of customers that surrounded them.

“I’m so glad you decided to reopen this place,” she murmured. George wasn’t even certain that she was talking to him, but he decided to answer her anyway.

“It’s what Fred would have wanted.”

“Maybe.” Angelina shrugged and looked back at him over her shoulder. Her eyes looked sad, but her smile was genuine. “I was thinking about everyone else.”

George looked out at the crowd. Witches and wizards, young and old, rich and poor, they had all gathered here. No two faces were the same, and yet, each one was laughing. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight, nor Angelina’s words as she spoke once more: