heyyy🕺

He makes a decent living, and the future looks pretty bright for IT guys. It's not a terrible life, honestly, and he worked hard to get here. As soon as he could rent his own place, he's been living alone. He doesn't really have friends because he doesn't spend money on going out, and he learned fairly early on that it's hard to keep friends when you work so much. But he knows computers. He knows how to fix anything, and now that it's the dawn of the tech era, for the first time in his life, he finally holds a bit of power (the keeper of passwords, sees everyone's browsing history, etc.). Again, he's worked hard to get here.

He has a bit of a secret, though. There's something wrong about him. He's always tended to notice things that other people don't like funky shops or pubs that no one has heard of. He's pretty sure he has magical powers, but that sounds stupid and no he doesn't, he must've just imagined his water glass refilling itself or the full conversation he had with a garden snake.

Now, there's even odder stuff happening around him. Is he being followed? He keeps noticing the same redheaded guy at the grocery store shopping the same aisles as him, and Harry is particularly suspicious when that same guy moves into a flat in Harry's building. But the guy is all right--his name is Ron, and Ron works for the government or something. Okay, and maybe Ron's actually cool and sure, it's all a bit odd, but it's sort of nice to go down to the pub with someone his age. And okay, maybe Ron is his friend now?

But the strange things keep piling up: he can't help feeling that he's being watched all the time. Even at work, there's a new guy named Kingsley who seems to notice every time Harry's in the room. Feeling unsettled, Harry confesses to Ron that he thinks he's losing his mind and maybe he ought to check himself into a hospital for mental health or something.

Ron, unable to hold it back any longer, tells Harry the truth. About magic, about Voldemort, about everything. Ron tells him the reason why Harry's being followed is because a dark wizard broke out of prison, probably to kill Harry.

Anyway, Harry is forced to weigh his feelings about it all. He's worked so hard to get where he is, and apparently, there aren't computers in the magical world. But it seems he's got a massive vault in a bank underground? And he's famous? And also, there's a murderer who's after him? Does he even want to assimilate into a world that left him to fend for himself?

Ginny let out a great, surprised bark of laughter that left him with the vestiges of smugness. She pushed herself up to her elbows and leveled him with an evaluative, appraising sort of look. Then, “You’re witty, you know.”

“Yeah well, The Witty One wouldn’t sell as many papers,” Harry shot back. “Have to keep a low profile.”

“No,” Ginny said through a laugh, pushing herself up to a seated position and turning to face him more directly, crossing her legs beneath her and rolling up to sit on her ankles. “I’m being serious. You are.”

Not quite sure what she was getting at, Harry squinted at her. “I manage.”

“You’re always so… dry, and quick with it,” Ginny mused, her gaze quite even but the slight flush of pink on her cheeks betraying a hidden sincerity. “So people don’t always… they miss it.”

Harry felt his heartbeat acutely at the bottom of his sleeve, all the sudden. “Er… do they?”

“Oh just ask Romilda Vane, or any other girl in the loo. They’re always going on and on about how brooding and serious you are,” Ginny teased, reaching out and poking at his arm. “But you’re not. Not really. You’re… you always make me laugh.”

Harry stared at her. He didn’t think he could’ve strung any sentence together at the minute, never mind a witty one. No, his insides screamed. That’s you. That’s all you. You’re the one who makes me laugh, makes me light enough to joke like this.

“You’ve got good banter, Potter,” Ginny continued, her cheeks a rosy pink. “That’s all I’m saying.”

It was strange how powerfully this simple little compliment impacted him. She might as well have nailed him with a Bludger. He attempted to speak, though it was a challenge around the breath that was caught in his throat. “Thanks. I think.”

“You think?”

“Well,” Harry countered, heart still panging like mad, “It was a bit backhanded, wasn’t it? You did sort of imply that no one else thinks I’m funny.”

Ginny let out that gleeful cackle of hers that he adored, the one that lit up her whole face from the inside. “That is not what I meant. But, even if I had,” she said, that glint in her eye sparking in his chest, “Is that really so terrible? If you’re only funny for me?”

Her tone was light and teasing, so obviously a joke. But nonetheless, the words washed over him, the letters printing on his skin and the meaning seeping into his bones. So what if I am? he thought madly. What if I only get to be this way with you?

The image of his father, messing about with his hair, joking around with his mates under the very beech tree he was now leaning up against, flashed through his mind. He’d watched that memory and come to the conclusion that he and his father couldn’t have been any more different. But now he sat here, Ginny’s words steeping in his bloodstream, and wondered whether it was personality or circumstance that carved the chasm between him and his father. Like a ghostly spectre, he peered through some invisible curtain of which he’d only just become aware, separating the version of Harry that existed now and the one that might’ve been without all the tragedy. 

Maybe witty would’ve been the first thing people said to describe him, in that other version of reality. 

For this single moment, he felt the two planes intersect, like he and who he might’ve been were one and the same: witty, under the warm honey-brown gaze of the girl sprawled on the blanket before him.

He stared at Ginny, his eyes tracing over every inch of her face like she might be a subject of his upcoming exams. The constellation of freckles that adorned her face, a little more concentrated around her nose and cheeks – those places that caught the sunlight. Her nose, small and turned up a bit at the end. Her lips, always pursed together in some impression or attempting to conceal the smirk that lived on them.  Her eyes, so warm and expressive; he felt he could read the joy and mischief in them as automatically as though it were spelled out on her face. 

Eyes that cut straight to the truth in things: in him, in everyone. He recalled a chocolate egg and words of action in the library, a lucky you to slice through his selfish spiral, harsh words flung at Ron that cut to the core of his jealousy. She possessed some powerful, innate ability to see people, he thought.

And he was lucky enough to be understood by her. 

“No,” he said, and he knew he sounded far too serious for their exchange, but he couldn’t fix it. “No, I don’t mind if I’m only funny for you.”

Ginny’s eyes were soft, and he thought madly that she somehow understood, though she couldn’t possibly. “Well, good,” she agreed. “Who else are you trying to impress, anyway?”

No one. Ever. “Only Romilda Vane.”

Ginny laughed, and then leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. It was perfect: this moment, her. 

She pulled back, the sunlight streaming down through the leaves of the beech tree and catching the planes of her cheeks, planting the seeds of more freckles for him to count later.  The glowing feeling swirled in his chest, forming until it gathered and coalesced on the tip of his tongue. 

I love you.

It was true. He did. He loved her, he loved her banter and her loyalty and how brave she was, and how she saw the version of himself he wished he could be. He knew it to be true as soon as the feeling formed into words. But just as quickly, something like fear invaded his chest. For, he was not the version of Harry that got to be witty first and nothing else. He was not the version of Harry that she had conjured from a different, better world. 

He was this version, and his love was sharp; cursed, dangerous. He couldn’t hand it over to her and watch as it sliced her open. 

Ginny’s eyes searched his. He begged her to uncannily read in them the truth he couldn’t bear to say, like she always did.

“Don’t let it go to your head though,” she whispered. “I’ve got to maintain my reputation as the funny one in this relationship.”

“Don’t go telling everyone how hilarious I am, then,” he countered. “I’ve got to maintain my reputation as serious and brooding, haven’t I?”

Ginny grinned, and so did he, their eyes still lingering, far softer than they should be for such a joking exchange.  

She’d managed to see a version of him that didn’t exist, so surely she could read the love for her that was hammering at his ribcage like the bars of a prison, desperate for release. He needed her to see it, to know without words. 

If he put it to words then he’d be forced to reckon with their impact. But if she just figured it out on her own, he couldn’t be held responsible for it, could he? He could go on loving her, could go on making her laugh while pretending he was the version of Harry that was free to. 

“You’re quite perceptive,” he said, to help her along. “People don’t realize because you’re so funny, but you are.”

He shrugged and held out his hand.

“Open your mind,” Ron said ominously from his spot on the couch. “See with your mind’s eye what lies in the palm of your hand.”

Ginny threw a piece of parchment at him but she was smiling. She held Harry’s hand and studied it. “What a mess, Harry.”

“Shocking,” he said with a snort.

“Your sun line is all broken up but it is parallel to your fate line, so that’s reassuring,” she told him. “Ah. Your heart line goes up to your pointer finger and is curved. Indicates you don’t fall in love easy but you’re generally content with your love life.” Her finger traced over the line as she brought it so close to her face she couldn’t possibly see any lines. “Aah…” she said in an impeccable imitation of Trelawney. “I see a great love in your life.”

Harry chuckled. “Yes?”

“She is from a large family, has red hair and she is smarter than you,” she continued.

Harry glanced over at Ron. “Do you know such a person?”

Ron snorted in amusement.

Ginny squeezed his hand hard and he winced. “Careful now,” she continued, her voice morphing into Trelawney’s once again. “You are going to marry her and you are going to wonder every day of your life how you got so lucky but…”

Harry shook his head with a smile.

“BE AWARE!”

He nearly jumped. “Merlin! What?”

“You are going to die very soon unless… you dance naked by the lake during the next full moon.” She dropped his hand unceremoniously while Ron burst out laughing.

“That sounds more like the divination, I know,” Harry said with a snort. “Dancing naked?”

Ginny turned back to her book. “It’s in your palm, Harry. Even if it wasn’t true, why would you take the chance?” She wrote something down on her parchment but then her gaze landed on him again, smiling.

“We will see about that.” He leaned back in closer. “Married, huh?”

Suddenly a blush crept up her cheeks and up to her ears. She pursed her lips. “That’s what your palm says at least, Harry.”

“Can I see your book?” he asked. “Something tells me it’s not that specific.”

The question had been put to her again not two hours later. 

‘Ready?’ Her father asked, stooping to grab one end of her trunk awaiting beside the back door. 

‘As I’ll ever be,’ Ginny quipped as the other end was quickly taken up by Harry. She allowed her mother one bone crushing final embrace before following them out into the early autumn air. 

‘Ready?’ 

This time, the question was muttered softly into her ear. The trunk had been safely tucked on the train and it was just Ginny and Harry, shrouded in the privacy afforded by the billowing smoke from the engine. 

This time, Ginny wavered.

Her lips parted and she wasn’t sure if a ‘no’ or a wail of despair might escape them. 

‘I’ll write to you tomorrow,’ Harry promised before she could say either.

His solemn expression was enough to coax a reassuring smile onto Ginny's face. ‘Very keen,’ she teased. Anyone would think you're obsessed with me or something.’

‘According to Ron, yes.’ There was no hint of embarrassment in his smirk. ‘I prefer to call it a healthy level of interest.’ 

The last lingering hints of Ginny's trepidation escaped with her laughter as she took a look into those green eyes that had stared down death and were now alight with amusement. 

‘I'm ready,’ she said. 

But she wasn’t ready at all.

She didn’t even realise how not ready she was until the train had pulled back out of Hogsmeade station and she was being stared down by a blank white eye, the sight of which was accompanied by a sharp twist of realisation deep in Ginny’s gut. 

‘Thestrals.’ Luna’s voice drifted to her on the soft evening breeze. 

Absently, Ginny nodded. The skeletal being in front of her battled for her attention against the memory of the dozens of deaths she’s witnessed that allow her to see it at all. 

‘You’ll get used to them.’ 

But Ginny didn’t want to get used to them. 

She didn’t want to get used to moving through the grounds where she’d seen Harry’s body carried towards her and Neville’s head set ablaze. 

She didn’t want to get used to the entrance hall that she’d had to wade through pools of blood and scattered rubies to get through the last time she’d been here. 

She would simply never be able to get used to the great hall that had once housed Fred’s lifeless body. 

The mere thought turned her stomach. Professor McGonagall's speech was little more than a distant buzz in her ears, and, though the traditional mountains of food appeared upon the Gryffindor table, Ginny's plate remained pristine in front of her.

She left the hall as soon as doing so wouldn't cause a scene.

Ghosts walked with her as she traversed the cold hallways up to Gryffindor Tower. They lingered on every corner; accompanied by long-silenced screams that echoed with each of Ginny's footsteps. 

There was no relief in reaching the common room. The winding staircase to her dormitory felt almost as steep as it had that fateful morning after the longest night of Ginny's life, the night she was beginning to worry she was going to spend the rest of the year reliving. 

Exhausted, Ginny collapsed onto her awaiting bed without bothering to undress. Her arms wrapped around her pillow, clinging to it like a lifebuoy against the wave of despair threatening to overwhelm her. 

She didn't know long she stayed like that, mere minutes or hours may have passed while Ginny's head remained burrowed within the pillow's soft surface. 

Eventually, a distant tapping penetrated the blackness surrounding her, pulling her back from the abyss. 

Slowly, she lifted her head from the pillow and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the soft light of the moon shining through the dormitory windows. 

She blinked again, worried she was hallucinating the bright white shape silhouetted against the window nearest to her bed. Fortunately, the whoosh of wings as Ginny flipped the latch and permitted the owl entrance was definitely real. 

Unbidden, her fingers shook as she untied the note tied to the owl's leg and smoothed out the short piece of parchment: 

Ginny, 

I know I said I'd write tomorrow (seriously, I'm not obsessed with you no matter what Ron says), but I just remembered about the thestrals and I figured they might come as a bit of a shock. Well, they came as a shock to me anyway… 

Her eyes continued down the hastily scrawled note, a small smile crept onto her lips with each word of reassurance. A little spark of hope flared in her chest as she reached the bottom and read Harry's words over again. 

She read the missive – one she couldn't have dared to hope to have received a year ago – three more times before looking up to find the little barn owl blinking up at her. 

His face was familiar, but still new to Ginny. For a moment, Hedwig flashed through her mind, accompanied by another sharp stab of grief but Ginny breathed through it just like she had every single day since the battle.

‘I'll reply in the morning,’ she told the expectant creature. ‘You've had a long flight – you need to rest, and so do I.’ 

Knowing it was true, Ginny turned back to her bed, determined to face tomorrow well-rested and refortified. 

“How’s Selwyn’s case coming?” Ginny asks, in a sporting attempt to combat the pall that seems to permeate the pub. 

He tells her – shit – and they spend a few minutes abusing the crap system that had allowed Selwyn to become so influential in the first place. She updates him on Quidditch and classes and the new ridiculous meetings Slughorn has organized to encourage them to talk about their feelings or some other rubbish that Ginny clearly finds distasteful. 

“--nobody says a word, unless it’s bloody Zacharias Smith trying to act as though he was integral to the war effort, the twat.”

“I supposed they’ve got to do something, haven’t they?”

Ginny raises an eyebrow. “Oh, and I suppose you’d be spilling your guts to Slughorn?”

“No need,” Harry says, lifting his drink again. “I already have a standing appointment with Ron on Tuesdays.”

She doesn’t laugh like he expects her to. She offers a tight smile, a beat too late. “What’re Ron and Hermione up to, then? I can’t believe they haven’t joined us.”

In truth, Harry does not want to imagine what his two friends might be doing in some hidden corner of Hogsmeade, a courtesy that he sincerely hopes Ron extends to him and Ginny as well. “Dunno. Enjoying themselves, I’m sure.”

“I’d’ve thought you’d want to, you know. Be together. The three of you haven’t been all together in months, have you?”

Harry furrows his eyebrows, perplexed by her question. “Well, I see Ron nearly every day…”

“Yes, but not Hermione.”

“Well, no.” 

He’s not quite sure what she’s getting at, and fights the sinking sensation and the thought perhaps she hasn’t been looking forward to this time alone quite as much as he had, that she’d rather have hung round with everyone together. 

“I just… I know the three of you have a… a bond, or whatever,” Ginny says, gesturing vaguely as though to illustrate it, and Harry finds that she won’t quite meet his eye. “They can join us, if you like. That’s all I’m saying.”

Harry opens his mouth to respond but realizes he hasn’t a clue what to say to that. “What? I mean yeah, I suppose…”

Ginny has started to peel the label off of her bottle of butterbeer. “Hermione misses you both. Loads. I can tell.”

“I’m sure she misses Ron a bit more.” 

She looks frustrated by his attempt at a joke, and Harry’s concern heightens. She presses again. “You know what I mean.”

“I… really don’t, actually,” he says. 

Ginny looks up from her tattered label and has something like resolve in her eyes. “If you wanted to see them, so you can, I dunno, talk or whatever, I get it–”

“What the hell would I need to talk to Ron for?” he laughs, though it sounds sharp even to his own ears. 

“I don’t know. Whatever you talk about at your standing appointment on Tuesdays–”

“Hang on,” Harry says, stung. “You know I was joking.”

“Do I?”

Harry stares at her, a leaden, sick sort of feeling in his stomach. Her mouth is pressed together in a defiant line, and her normally warm eyes are wary, defensive. The thought occurs to him far too late. 

“You’re angry with me.”

He can see the way she tries to wipe it from her expression, but the anger clings stubbornly to the furrow in her brow, the aversion of her eyes. “No. It’s– look, we haven’t seen each other in months, let’s–”

Harry wants to be sick. This isn’t how today was meant to go. God, he’d spent every day thinking of her, missing her, trying to pretend to be the version of himself that she brought out - lighter and funnier and more carefree. But he’s not any of that shit, not without her. He’s never really considered the prospect of losing her before, but the thought hits him bodily now. 

What’s the point of any of this if he doesn’t have her? 

“Gin,” he pleads. “What’s going on? Please just tell me, so I can fix it.”

Ginny flinches irritably, and his stomach sinks further. “Tell you? That’s rich.”

“Wh–”

“How about you tell me for a change?” Ginny snaps, setting down her butterbeer rather forcefully. “Anything about what happened with you last year, how you’re coping with it, I dunno, anything.”

He’s never been on the receiving end of her ire before, and it cuts deeper than he cares to admit. He lowers his drink to the table and says, “Alright.”

But the words don’t come. He stares at her, eyes burning in a way that stings, and he realizes all at once how it all must seem to her: that she was shut out, that he reserved his private thoughts exclusively for Ron and Hermione, his more trusted confidants. But he hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t wanted that - or at least, not for the reasons she must think. 

Frustration bubbles at his inability to communicate what he thought had been utterly obvious. But perhaps it hasn’t been fair of him. They understand each other so well – she so often can read him better than he can read himself – that he’s taken it for granted that she knows what she means to him without spelling it out. 

He can try to spell it out. He can try. 

So, he does. “Look, there were some things I couldn’t tell you before because it was dangerous, and–”

“Harry, I know that–”

“Please,” he begs, reaching out and gripping her hand. “Let me say it.”

She looks for a moment like she might argue – that little stubborn crease appears between her eyebrows – but she relents. 

He takes a breath, realizing as he says it how unfair he’s been to her. “But the truth is, even if it wasn’t dangerous, even if Dumbledore had said I could… I didn’t want to tell you before.”

He regrets the way the hurt sweeps across her face so immediately, so clearly, and he rushes to explain. “My life hasn’t been really… well… you know. The Dursleys. And then… Voldemort, and everything that came with it…”

He finds he cannot look at her directly, as though she’s the sun, and stares after an excitable crowd of third years passing by their table instead. “You were the best thing that had ever happened to me,” he says baldly, truthfully. “It felt like… like I got this taste of what my life might’ve been without Voldemort. Like I could be normal. Happy. With you.”

He looks up and she’s still staring at him intently, though her eyes seem a bit softer. “I didn’t want to tell you about any of it, because when I was with you I got to pretend there wasn’t anything to tell. And that’s bollocks.”

Ginny blinks.

“I hate it if… if I made you feel like I didn’t trust you. I did. I do. You just… made me so happy. Make me so happy. I didn’t want to… to spoil it. But you… you’ve got to know that I don’t give a fuck if we see Ron and Hermione today, because all I’ve been thinking about for the last two months is getting to see you.”

She lets out a breathy laugh, her eyes blazing in the way he loves so much. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She grips his hand and stares down at the table. Harry can’t quite read her expression, but he desperately wants to know whether he’s botched it all with this admission. Whether he’s hurt her.

“You make me so happy,” Ginny says, finally looking up and squeezing his hand. “But I want to be with you, all of you.” 

“I want to be with–”

“I won’t be a holiday from your real life anymore, alright?” she says firmly, her eyes flashing. “I want to know all of it. Even the bad stuff.”

His heart stutters, and warms. “I don’t want you to be a holiday.”

“Well, good,” Ginny sniffs. “Because I’m ginger, I burn to a crisp in the sun.”

He chuckles and pulls her toward him around the booth, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. She wraps an arm around his middle, and it’s tempting, so tempting to breathe in the comforting scent of her; to crack a joke and lift her chin so that he might steal a kiss from her soft lips like he’s been aching to do for months. But he doesn’t.

“What do you want to know?”

When he finally gathered the courage to go in, his brother's freckled face was the first thing he saw, tension that changed to bewilderment. He wondered if the baby would inherit the Weasley freckles, or if the Delacour perfection would cancel them out.

"Bill?" Ron questioned, hand on his wand. Being an Auror hadn't made him any less of a quick-draw or wary.

That wasn't a surprise. Bill didn't see his little brother and his best mate outside of the weekly dinners at the Burrow, the occasional party and the rare excursion to Shell Cottage for 'beach day' or to visit Dobby's grave.

"Is Harry home?" He asked, not commenting. They'd left security questions behind a while back.

"Yeah. Just got back, so he'll be arguing with Kreacher in the back." He jabbed a thumb vaguely in the direction. "See you around." He stepped out and disapparated.

Bill found Harry exactly there, with a still healing cut on his cheek. Kreacher disappeared in a huff as he turned to Bill. "Hey. What brings you here?"

"Wanted to talk to my kid brothers," he said, perching on a chair. That brought a flicker of a smile to Harry's face. "Ask for advice from one of them."

Now his eyebrows furrowed. "From me? What about?"

He took a deep breath, unable to believe the words even as he said them. "Fleur's pregnant."

Harry beamed, glowing almost as much as Fleur. "Wow! That's - congratulations!"

He grinned in return, nodding his thanks, before taking a breath and continuing: "And since you're the only one in the family who's a parent. . ."

His probably soon-to-be brother-in-law only looked confused for a moment, before realization dawned and reflexively: "I'm not Teddy's parent—"

"Maybe not, but you do have experience in the role," Bill pointed out. Then he sighed. "How did you cope? You're eighteen."

And he, almost a decade older, was quaking in his boots at the thought when he had half a year to prepare.

"I guess. . ." Harry said slowly. "It's about loving them. No matter what. That's the important part. The rest of it, the actual practicalities, you'll learn along the way. Especially when you have people with you, to support and teach. Like you have your parents. And Fleur, of course."

The way his gaze softened and flicked to a photo of Ginny on her broom, raising her fist in triumph and winking at the camera, it was fairly obvious who he was thinking of.

Bill hadn't known of their relationship until after the war. He hadn't realized the reason Ginny had been especially upset before his wedding, the reason she'd been targeted and dismissed by Death Eaters especially as the Chosen One's ex.

But it was impossible to miss after. They didn't overtly show it, didn't kiss or grope each other or anything in front of them, but the way they gravitated to one another was obvious. How when in vicinity they were always touching, light, comfortable. Pinkies joined, arm around the waist, leaning on each other, comforting presses, soft pecks to the forehead and cheek. How they looked at each other, soft and playful and communicating non-verbally through small tics.

How tactile Harry was with her, in ways he had never been with anyone. Not even Ron and Hermione, who had previously been the only ones who could touch him without prompting a flinch or discomfort.

Sometimes seeing all that felt more voyeuristic than if they'd caught sight of them actively having sex.

Harry had always been family, of course. Ever since Ron had sat in his compartment, probably.

But his relationship with Bill's little sister brought that more in focus than anything else.

He didn't think he could've approached anyone else Ginny might have dated for advice on something like this.

"And you?" He raised an eyebrow.

Harry blushed faintly, cleared his throat. "If I'm still around, absolutely."

"Don't see how you can get away from us now, really," he laughed.

"Good thing I don't want to, then." Harry grinned. He glanced at Uncle Fabian's watch. "If you stick around for a bit, you can see Teddy. Get some experience too."

Bill nodded. "And till then, you can tell me what Ginny's up to."

Harry raised a brow. "She writes to your mum. Don't tell me she doesn't discuss every detail with you lot."

"She does, but Ginny definitely tells you more. So. Out with it, Potter."