(no subject)
title: Que sera, sera
author: biggrstaffbunch
pairing: Harry/Ginny
warning(s): Post-DH
summary: What will be, will be. Ginny turns seventeen, and she--along with Harry--learns that distance does not only make the heart grow fonder, but more true as well.
a/n: This was written almost a year ago for the takingitinturns challenge. I never finished it, then, much to my chagrin...but it's finished now. This is dedicated COMPLETELY to r_becca, who I really let down during that 'fest, and who I hope will accept this gift. Special thanks to etzyofi, who gave this a look-through and provided the Pablo Neruda epighraph suggestion: A Song of Despair. Enjoy :)
|The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.|
Ginny comes of age on a mild day in the second week of August, a few months after the war.
She wakes up in the morning like it is any other morning, the sunlight slatting into her room, melting in slim bars over the haphazard angles of her elbows and knees. When she finally pushes out of bed, eyes gritty and mouth sour, the springs of her mattress creak under her fingertips.
On a whim as she swings her legs to the floor, Ginny pushes against her bed again. Testing the resistance. Like things should feel different, now that she's seventeen.
Laughter is soft in her throat a moment later when she pads down the hallway to the bath, when she sinks into the water until her limbs are loose and heavy. There are puddles at her feet when she finally gets out, towel sodden around her torso, and she stares into the bathroom mirror, at the wavering reflection of her round face, the pink cheeks and liquid eyes, steam making her outline blurry and insubstantial.
One swipe of her hand and she is bone-white and sharp in the mirror's glass surface. It hums a low whistle of encouragement, sleepy and slow with age. There is a hairline crack at the edge of the mirror and Ginny fixates on it for soundless moments, brushing her hair as she imagines the crack widening, splitting her image wide open.
When she finally opens the door, the air rushes in, cold against her skin. It makes her long for bed.
Breakfast, instead. The kitchen is hot and muggy, window open and breeze non-existent, and as always, the meal is a fairly chaotic affair. Ginny spreads jam on her toast and pours a glass of pumpkin juice and as George teases her with good-natured pride, as Percy fusses, she closes her eyes and counts the rivulets of condensation that seep into the cracks of her palm.
Her mum is at the sink, cutting vegetables for the dinner party later at night, the drooping banner with 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY GINNY' just barely visible beyond her, strung across the trees in the back yard. There are lines around her old eyes, but she is drowning in hope, and Ginny sighs, knowing what is expected.
She produces her wand with a flourish, does a few perfunctory spells, smiling all the while. A jinx on George, a charm to straighten Percy's curls, a flower Accio'd in from the garden--whimsical, nonsensical pieces of trickery. In the back of her mind, Ginny remembers darker, more dangerous magic, red and green and white light, smoke and fire and blood, the silvery wisp of a Patronus and the looming mask of a Death Eater. Something shivers through her arm, like sense memory, and her fingers grip her wand with more force than is necessary.
She can't hide her relief when, one by one, her brothers and dad drop absent-minded kisses on the top of her head and prepare to Apparate to work.
"Things don't stop just because it's summer, Molly," her dad reminds her mum when the token protest slips out. "We'll all be home for Ginny's party, but for now, there's still so much left to be done at the Ministry. I ought to help where I can, don't you think, dear?"
Her mum agrees, because really, how can she not? Ginny waves goodbye as Percy leaves with a pop! and George tugs her braid once before following in Percy's wake. Her dad stays behind for a hesitant second, and when she looks at him expectantly, he manifests a small box from behind his back.
"For you," he says, a moment of pensive silence later. Ginny opens her mouth (to say what, she doesn't know) but her dad just presses the box into her hand, presses a kiss to her mum's cheek, and then he, too, pops away.
The kitchen is quiet, save for the chirp of birds outside, the steady whirr of knives cutting vegetables in the background. Her mum looks on with naked curiosity in her eyes, as Ginny slowly turns the box over in her hand.
There is a a small leather case, and when Ginny opens it, a beautiful wrist-watch nestled inside. It is delicate and silver with a thin band of starfish charms and a face in the shape of a conch. The minute hand is carved like seaweed and the hour hand is shaped like a mermaid's tail. It is a lovely gift; traditional but unique, coldly elegant.
Because you stare into space like a widow of the water, the card reads in her dad's slanting script. By all means, love with all your heart and live with dreams in your eyes, but my dear, do not forget that you are a long way yet from looking for lost men at sea. We love you, Ginny, and we miss you.
The message is almost shockingly perfect, perfectly succint. The poetic simplicity of it stuns her; the truth of it devastates her. She slips the watch on in a sudden silence that is almost deafening, definitely oppressive. Her mum's eyes linger on the curve of Ginny's spine, and the bracelet of the watch trembles on Ginny's wrist.
We miss you. The words echo like clanging bells, filling the hollow of her chest with a terrible sadness.
"I'm going to go outside," she announces, "just for a bit. Is that--"
Her mum cuts her off with a cheery 'of course, sweetheart!' and then Ginny is slipping her trainers on, fairly speeding for the front door, jogging to the gate and closing it carefully behind her before she can even take a proper breath.
The bracelet is heavy against her skin. She weighs it, setting down the dusty pathway leading into the fields beyond the Burrow. It is the thick of summer, and the air is redolent of grass and heat and apples. The orchard down the lane throws its scent shimmering into the deep blue sky, and a fine haze crowns the mellow gold of the sun. The damp warmth of the breezeless afternoon settles into Ginny's skin, makes her hair sticky and thick at her neck. She shades her eyes and looks overhead, gaze picking out the thin, dark clouds looming behind the barely-fluttering treetops; she sighs, shivery with the promise of rain.
There is suddenly a dizzying sense of teetering at the edge of a bowl, her body swaying like a reed.
"I'm seventeen," Ginny says aloud, and fingers the neckline of her cotton dress, cornflower blue and heartbreakingly young in a way she has not felt in too long. The skirt skims her knees, and a strap falls loosely down her shoulder. She tugs it up and says again, "I'm seventeen."
It's not so different than sixteen, to be honest. Doing spells just a short while ago felt no different than it ever did in the hallways of Hogwarts; perhaps it is because the last year has been such a jumble of covert, illegal magic that any wand-waving now pales in comparison.
"I," Ginny says, one more time and her voice is flat, "am seventeen."
Nothing has changed, she thinks. Or perhaps that's wrong, perhaps it's actually everything. Everything has changed.
Ginny is still the youngest, the only girl, but there are only six children instead of seven, and it's like relearning her numbers, tripping over the spot where Fred ought to be. Her parents don't sleep anymore; the floorboards of their ramshackle home are splinters and scuffs, a halting melody of creaks echoing in the night. How can they sleep, though? How can anyone, when there's a bedroom that will always be empty now, the body that used to dwell there resting under soil instead, its bones feeding the earth with nothing but the tears of those who miss him and the years he should have lived.
Though she and her (remaining) brothers are scattered across the continent like puzzle pieces, they are all part of one heart and Ginny is sure her own grief is mirrored acutely in them, that every day is a struggle to forget how it has been barely three months since Fred died and every milestone is just another milestone he is missing.
"But it's not just that, is it?" she whispers to the sun above, her throat tight. Something like shame colors her cheeks, her collarbones. She repeats her apology, squinting. "Today. Feeling like this. It's not just--mourning."
There is a certain restlessness that saturates her every breath these days, a feeling separate than loss. Ginny thinks it might be longing.
The truth remains that her dad's message was not incorrect: Ginny does spend rather a lot of evenings staring out at the hills lining the property, searching the spidery black branches forking into the sky, tracing the purple horizon with her gaze, mapping the stars in the framework of her hands. There is a permanent palmprint smudging the window of her bedroom, in fact, the shape of her fingers a reminder of perpetually reaching out, a symbol of the frustration she can't put into words.
Not grief, this squirming in her blood, but want. Looking for lost men at sea, indeed.
Unlike her dad, though, Ginny is no secret poet. She rarely puts a name to the unhappiness itching inside of her. All she can articulate on most days is the fog of her breath against the glass, the streak of twilight in the distance as she wonders and waits, unwilling and unable to let her elusive goal trip its way across her tongue.
The sun dims suddenly, a cloud lumbering slowly over its brightness. There is a dark shape in the sky, curved like a bird or a boy on a broom, and despite herself, Ginny asks: "Harry?"
Like always, the idea of Harry--however sudden or expected it ever is--fills Ginny's chest instantly with a bold heat, bursting slowly through her limbs, effusing her from the inside out with a dark sort of desire. The starkly physical reaction to his name makes Ginny's skin flush, and she jams the heels of her palm into the hollows of her cheeks, gives a small laugh at the rush of warmth coalescing under her skin.
Her mind goes unbidden to those spring days spent by the lake in her fifth year, her body tucked against his, his fingers twining through her hair as she closed her eyes, catalogued the little gifts he gave her without knowing it: the lower register of his voice, the changed green of his eyes, the blinding expanse of his smile, all the secrets he fed her with every soft kiss, every almost-moan.
These are things only she knows of him, the treasures that Ginny keeps locked up in the tender reaches of her stomach. That Harry, her Harry, is so different than the hero she used to follow with such enthusiasm. So much more than simply an unrequited crush or her older brother's best friend.
He is the Harry who got barely a year with her before he said goodbye, but he is also the Harry who let her into the places of himself that no one else has ever seen, the Harry who makes her pulse flutter wildly in her throat and her hands ache with terrible wanting. He is the Harry who had to go fight a war and who came back only to go off again, the Harry who Ginny has missed with a stupid desperation that even now makes her eyes strain towards the distance, searching for a certain silhouette.
Waiting for him to come home.
Contrary to her birthday note, she is not holding a long-burning candle, casting a lighthouse scope towards the salt and silt of the sea. She lived a life before Harry ever really looked at her, and she lived a life after Harry left her. No matter what, she is not a wilting violet, a flower straining for the sunlight of some boy's enduring attention.
But she is a young woman who has loved with all the ferocity of a soldier convinced each new morning might be his last. She is a young woman who has written letter upon unsent letter to the holder of her heart, confessing and revealing and sharing pieces of herself that she can never get back.
(In some ways, she understands better than most people what a Horcrux is, and why it is so frightening: bits of a soul that are given willingly and live on eternally. Sometimes, she thinks she's been making Horcruxes for ages, in every gaze and word she has bestowed upon Harry. every moment she has given to thinking of him, wanting him.)
Above all things, at the core and the end of it, she is a young woman who simply wishes she could celebrate her birthday with someone other than a mourning mother, and a worried father, and something more than a home cut to ribbons with the war wounds that are still so fresh.
The one normal part of her, Ginny would wager, is the way she wishes for Harry on days like this. The desire to be a normal girl, looking to the sky for her relatively normal boyfriend.
Ex-boyfriend.
There is a crack of thunder in the distance, and the sun dims again. Ginny can feel the rain prickle at her hair, her back. The shape overhead flies closer, and she can see more clearly that there is a cluster of similar shapes behind it. They swoop down, a daring arc like a sword. One of the shapes seems to falter in the air, flying with less surety than the other two, and Ginny knows suddenly that this is Hermione. And if it's Hermione, then the others are Ron and--
And Harry.
The rumble of thunder lingers, a low grind like the engine of the family's old car, and something hot shudders deep in Ginny's belly. She grits her teeth against the tremble, locks her knees tight.
Harry flies closer, and Ginny waits.
| Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.|
By his estimation, it is the first time in four weeks that Harry has been to the Burrow.
Away in Australia with Ron and Hermione, occupied with the task of helping his friend to rebuild her parents' fragile memories, Harry hasn't had the chance to realize till now just how much he missed this place. But staring down at the towering house with all its messy rooms and dusty shelves, secret nooks and shadowed corners, he is reminded of the fact that his feet know each floorboard that squeaks, that he has walked the same pathways as every child who has grown up in the Burrow's vast arms. He has a history in those walls, a past that can be seen in the pictures that the Weasley's put on the mantle, a present that exists in the extra bed that's always made up on the floor of Ron's bedroom, and a future--
Well, the future is right below him, in the hills and the pond and the garden, in the girl standing in the dusty front yard, her hand shading her face.
Here at last, Harry knows without question that he is home.
This thought warms him through his limbs, the idea that he finally has something real to call his own, a place to which he can return. His skin prickles, and he ducks his head, peering over the rims of his spectacles at the way the world tilts and slides, blurs into greens and blues and greys and golds. And right there in the middle, a long column of pale ivory and blazing red.
"Ginny," he calls, and her name slips out of his mouth involuntarily, leaping from his lips like a Chocolate Frog. "Ginny." This time, his voice softer. Steadier.
She looks up from under the shield of her hand, and though there are shadows shrouding her eyes, Harry can clearly see her mouth move around his name in response. His heart swells, gladdens.
Home.
He hovers low for a moment, his hair slightly windblown, his seat balanced and sure. Flying is the easiest thing he has ever done, easier than what will come next, and maybe that is why he clutches his broom like a weapon now, his legs folded around the ageing wood, his fingers curved tightly around the dips and valleys of the handle. The bristles rustle gently, the only sound at all, as he dismounts his new Firebolt 5000.
"Company issued," is the first thing Harry says, in reference to the broom, and it's probably the stupidest thing he has said in recent memory. He winces. Ginny's eyes flick from the broom to his face, the dark brown of her irises as unpenetratable as a forest, the good humor Harry remembers so well only a faint tracery around her mouth instead of a living thing like it usually is.
He falters; perhaps coming here was not such a good idea, after all. Should he go back, or...?
"Surprise! Surprise, Ginny!"
Hermione solves this dilemma for Harry, knocking him out of the way in her exuberance. She hugs Ginny, all tanned limbs and bushy hair, and he catches a flash of amusement in those wide brown eyes before Ginny's slender hands are patting Hermione's back awkwardly.
Standing here, the distance between him and Ginny is almost palpable. She looks the same, but is she? Can she ever be, again? Does he have the right to even ask her to not change, to be the girl who first kissed him with all the ferocity of the sun blazing on a summer's day?
He wrings his hands, and tries not to watch her too greedily. She ducks her cheek into the cloud of Hermione's hair, and meets his gaze for an intense, immovable moment before the other girl is stepping away and exclaiming how much Ginny's been missed.
"Missed you too, Hermione," Ginny says, and her voice is the same, at least. Strong, even, dry. Amused, even though there's something anxious in the subtle shifting of her hands, the rapid quickening of her breath.
"Oi," Ron demands, coming forward and slinging his arm companionably across Harry's shoulders. "What about me?" he asks. "Not going to greet your favorite brother?"
Ginny arches an eyebrow, and her face is so radically transformed that Harry's heart leaps in recognition of the sarcastic tilt of her lips, the mischevious glow of her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she says politely, "But George is at work right now. I'll greet you, though--" she adds thoughtfully, and then leaps at Ron, throwing her arms around his neck and practically wrestling him to the ground in order to ruffle his hair mercilessly.
For one long second, Harry feels the burn of where her arm brushed his. And then Ron is bellowing from the ground, and all he can see is the long expanse of Ginny's legs as she yanks at her brother's fringe.
"Ginny--hey--wait--stop--"
"Hullo, older brother!" Ginny beams, her fingers digging into the thick layers of copper hair. "So lovely to see you again! We've all missed you ever so much--"
Hermione giggles helplessly at the sight of Ginny sprawled out in the grass, her braid flying wildly behind her, with Ron towering over her (even while on his knees), cowed by her clever fingers and single-minded determination to rip every hair from his head.
Unaware that he is even doing it, Harry steps forward. Rests his hand on the slightly sweaty, smooth plane of Ginny's back. If he concentrates, he thinks he can feel her heart beat beneath her dress, even through the thin column of her spine.
"And me?" he says, in a voice that feels like it's not his own. "No hello for me?"
Under normal circumstances, Harry wouldn't have felt like it was his place to interrupt. And even now, there is blood rushing to the tips of his ears, making him hot and uncomfortable. But he knows that Ginny is not okay. That her playfulness is calculated, that there is wildness in her eyes that she is trying to hide. And he knows that given half the chance, she will continue hiding that wildness, that grief.
His hand falls away, turns over so it is palm-up. An invitation. To take his hand, or to share some of the burden that is weighing her pretty face down, he's not sure.
He only knows that he wants her to take it.
Ginny stills, her fingers clenched in a claw aimed at Ron's curious face. She turns to look at Harry over her shoulder, and a wave of some unnamed emotion flits over her eyes before she looks away from his gaze, down at his hand.
"Hi, Harry," she says, tone almost practiced in its ease, save for the hitch around his name. "We've missed you three."
Behind her, Ron clambers to his feet. Hermione's giggles fade as Ron's hand finds hers, and they both watch intently as Ginny mirrors the action, reaching up and lacing her fingers through Harry's own.
He can see defiance in the set of her mouth, as if to prove that touching him will not break her.
"I missed you, too," he says, and there is a subtle emphasis on the I and the you that she doesn't miss, if the flush that stains her cheeks is any indication.
He smiles lopsidedly and pulls Ginny up by the hand, bracing her elbow to steady her. He can feel the heat of her skin as she steps close, and he smells the flowers, the apples, the rain. He wants to kiss her, wants to run his fingers through her hair, wants to make her laugh. Anything so that she stops looking at him with a gaze weighed down by a grief that seems second nature.
"I might have even done a bit of petty stalking," he confides, leaning close and chancing a slide of his hand from her elbow to her waist. Her breath catches and she looks up at him, lips quirked.
"Petty stalking?" she murmers, and always, the rest of the world is lost for Harry. There is just Ginny, her pale face and big, dark eyes. Her freckled hands, and the secrets that sleep behind her small smile. The fall of her dress, the smell of her soap, the shape of her body against his own.
"Didn't have the Marauder's map," he explains hoarsely. "So I owled Percy the entire time I was in Australia. He was the least likely of your brothers to slag me off, to be honest." He pauses. "I got a lot of postscripts about the improper maintenance of Ministry facilities, but I also got news about you, so..."
He pulls her closer, and tries to gauge how angry or disappointed she is at the gross invasion of privacy.
Instead, she looks absurdly flattered. "You endured that? For me?" Ginny asks, eyebrow raised, eyelashes comically fluttering. Her hand idly plays with the belt-loops of his jeans, and Harry has to tell himself to concentrate despite the unconscious way she is tugging gently at the waistband.
"Yeah," he confirms. "For you." Definitely you, he wants desperately to say. You're my way home.
But he doesn't say it, because she already looks skittish and scared under all her bravado, and really, he would come across as a bit of a creep, wouldn't he? Still, the admission is there in the valleys and turns of his heart, beating as true as it has since those dark days when he was on the hunt for the Horcruxes.
There will always be a reason for blokes like him to go--some adventure, some mission, some last duty to fulfill.
But Ginny, she's the reason that he will always come back.
Rain begins to fall in thick, fat spatters, blurry bursts of water melting across the glass of his spectacles, pelting his hair, his shoulders, his arms, and still, all he can see is her. Smears of white and crimson, like a candle melting in a storm.
He reaches down to cup her cheek, the smooth skin cool to his touch, rain running in thin lines through his fingers. His thumb sweeps under the bruise-dark circles of her eyes, and he frowns. Leans forward, even as her lashes drift shut and her chin tilts up, and suddenly, there is something heating and sharp in the pit of his stomach, urging him on.
Her breath stirs against his lips, and Harry remembers the common-room, and the faded cheers of a victory, and the sun rising over the Great Lake. His breath grows heavy, and he leans closer, eyes falling closed--
"Not that watching you two is disgusting or anything," Ron's voice breaks rudely through the moment, rain stinging Harry's eyes as he levels a glare at his best mate, "But we're getting soaked. Hermione and I, we'll just go and see Mum, alright? Leave you both to, er, catch up." He gives a rogueish wink, and Hermione rolls her eyes.
"Sorry," she mouths, and then stage-whispers, "Remember to tell her that she looks beautiful! Not at all malnourished!" With that sound advice and a twitch of her hair, Hermione grabs Ron's arm and frogmarches him up to the house.
"Nutters," Harry mutters under his breath, frowning slightly.
"The lot of them," Ginny agrees, and they share a grin.
The rain comes in a relentless stream now, buckets of plump droplets plip-plopping down from the sky. Ginny's hair is soaked crimson, and her dress is plastered to her skin, clinging in dark blue patches to every curve and dip. She shakes slightly, her trainers squelching in the muddy grass as she shifts. She seems like she is waiting for something, staring up at him with rivers slipping down her beautiful face, that upturned nose, the bow of her lips, the line of her neck.
Harry's heart beats faster as he leans in, hand cupping her cheek, the base of his palm resting comfortably against the jumping pulse of her throat. He is going to kiss her for the first time in more than a year. He is going to kiss her, and it is going to be the last piece of the puzzle, the key that turns the lock, the thing that sweeps away all the lingering darkness that still clings to the happy parts of his world.
He closes his eyes.
Ginny steps away. The loss of her heat is acute, abrupt, startling.
He opens his eyes. Ginny, muttering under her breath so incoherently that he can't hear her over the drumming of the rain, is backing away from him.
"Ginny, what--"
For the moment has quite suddenly broken, Ginny walking backwards and Harry staring after her like a gaping fish. Their gazes tangle for a long, indeterminable second, and then turning tail, her braid a mocking salute behind her--
Ginny unceremoniously flees the scene.
|Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!|
The past is impossible to avoid in the best of times. But when the worst of times comes and then passes, then the past is a refrain that never ends, a chorus that echoes indefinitely. Every corner is saturated with memory, every new turn is laid with bricks forged by yesterday's learned lessons.
Ginny knows the power that the past has to shape the present, to prophecy the future. She knows because she is a product of a madman's diary, a young hero's sword, the burning shame of a singing valentine.
And now, so many years (and only a few months) after a past she would rather forget, here she is again, confronted with everything she thought she'd left behind.
All because Harry wanted to kiss her again.
"Thought I'd find you here."
Ginny stiffens, then slumps over the chain of weeds she has been weaving, the scraggly green strands slipping from her fingers and drifting away in the sticky, after-rain breeze.
Tucked amongst the stalks of tall grass that grow on the hill a slight distance away from where her party is still going full swing, she looks up at the intruder of her space, her face carefully neutral. The horizon is a cheery deep blue with nary a cloud in sight, and if it wasn't for the wetness that still clings to every available surface, it might be possible to imagine this morning's storm never occured. The sun beams merrily in it's low-slung place in the sky, burning a pinkish-gold that heralds the early onset of evening. A slight scent of damp earth, roasting vegetables, and sheer heat clings to the summer air. Ginny tilts her head back against the tree she has been leaning on, her hair free of its odious braid, waves sweeping generously across her shoulders as she yawns surreptitiously.
"Tired?" Harry asks, and Ginny's neutral mask slips into annoyance.
"Quite, actually," she says shortly. "Turns out it's rather monotonous work, Harry. Smiling and thanking people for their presents and their presence and their stupid bloody sympathy--"
There is a soft tearing sound, and Ginny looks down at the grass littering her hands. She gives a sheepish grunt. "Sorry," she says, even though she's not. She stands slowly, knees creaking. "I just needed to get away. From everything. My thoughts. Mum. All the people down there thinking of Fred."
Harry steps foward, his hand barely brushing her shoulder before falling. "I'm not thinking of Fred right now," he says, and somehow there's a mix of empathy, tenderness, and suggestiveness in his voice.
"No," Ginny sighs. "I know you're not." She ducks and wonders whether there is any possibility of not doing this right now. Feeling the searing intensity of Harry's gaze on the crown of her head, she sighs and gives up. There's still that wonderful, heavy feeling of attraction and anticipation in her stomach when she thinks of him, or looks at him, but standing on this hill and feeling so curiously off-balance, she is more aware than ever that the dynamic between them has shifted. Her old understanding of who they are as a couple--or even as individuals--is completely different now, and it scares her.
Frightens her beyond belief, actually. Makes her itch to run again, to run as fast and far as her legs will take her, because if she stays here, if she stays rooted in this spot, everything as she knows it will change.
Is she ready for her world to go topsy-turvy? No; that's why she's spent this entire evening going into the kitchen to refill the pumpkin pasty bowls and meat pies, or dancing with old friends, or disappearing to this old corner of Ottery St. Catchpole, overlooking the village.
"If I didn't know better," Harry says, "I'd say you're avoiding me more than avoiding anyone else down there." His words are careful. "But that's me, always with the swelled head."
Her silence speaks volumes enough, and all at once, the air seems to go out of Harry. He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, turning away from Ginny only to sigh once more. "Great," he mutters. "Just brilliant. Way to stuff it up, Potter--"
She has to smile at that. “Look, it's not that I don’t care for you--”
“Just not enough, yeah. I understand.” Harry looks mutinously into the distance, his hands clenching and unclenching in his pockets. Ginny thinks idly that he has never looked more like Ron, sulking with his arms folded and a frown on his face. And, of course, completely missing the point.
Her indulgent grin vanishes. You understand, my arse, she thinks, and begins to speak.
“And by the way," Harry says loudly, still looking away, "You don’t have to keep running away from me." He gives a dark scowl. "It’s your party, after all. I wanted to talk to you, but...you don’t feel the same way, fine. ‘S not like I expected you to, anyway.”
“What,” Ginny says acidly, eyes narrowed, “is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you’ve got Dean Thomas, haven’t you? And Neville, and--”
“And Luna, is that right? Because I danced with her, too, Harry. Don’t leave her out.” Ginny’s voice is incredulous, her cheeks blazing. “What is wrong with you?” she demands, poking Harry in the chest. A leaf falls from the tree above, and she plucks it out of her hair, single-minded and indignant. “First, you follow me around all day before the party, giving me these blasted looks of yours, like I kicked your hippogriff. And then you step on poor Neville’s foot after he’s waltzed with me. When you’re not stalking me or physically assaulting my friends, you’re sitting in the corner like a great big lump, glowering at anyone you can!”
Harry's scowl deepens, and he thrusts his face right up to Ginny’s, his spectacles sliding down his nose, eyebrows dark over his eyes. “And what’s wrong with that?” he asks. “What do you care what I do? You’re the one who’s spent the entire party treating me like I’ve got a bad type of spattergroit--”
“There is no other type of spattergroit--” she snaps, arms flailing.
“I just want to know, Ginny, and then I’ll leave you alone. Why can't you even look at me? Is it because I tried to kiss you again? D'you want to chuck me? f you wanted to chuck me, that's fine--consider me chucked. But I thought, could've sworn that you still felt the same way I do. So just tell me, please. Please. What's the problem?"
The righteousness with which the beginning of Harry's tirade was infused has faded by the time he gets to the end, and he slumps, eyes impossible wounded.
They are at an impasse, and Ginny is exhausted. The truth wants to come bursting out of her, and for once, the slow, melancholy movement of her limbs is replaced by a strange, listeless energy.
"The problem is that I love you, Harry," she blurts out, and there is a twisting in her stomach that feels like panic, like anguish, like water rushing from her lungs and spilling over the grass in a stream of cold, clear truth. "That’s the problem. That I wanted you to kiss me, and it terrified me. That I am head over heels mad for you. More than just friends. When I thought you'd died--"
Her words stop, and her eyes close. There in the grainy edge of her memories, she conjures the image of Harry, pathetically small in Hagrid's arms, and the terrible pain that had ripped through her like a blade.
"--well, that’s the point, isn’t it? I can't live, feeling like that. I'm seventeen! I don't want you to be my moon and my stars, I don't want to stand at my window and search the skies for your stupid broom. I don't want to miss you so much that I dream of the color green." Her cheeks turn red, but she pushes on. Bold and brassy and completely honest. She feels like herself for the first time in ages.
"I don't want that, Harry,” she says, “It's too much."
Harry looks dumbfounded, almost stricken by the force of her confession and his confusion and their combined agitation. His eyes are dark and round behind his spectacles, his mouth slightly slack. He scratches his neck, head tilted grimly.
"What do you want?" he asks finally, and then reaches out his hand.
If he touches her, she'll be lost. Ginny folds her arms and steps back. "I dunno," she answers. "I really don’t. I’d love it if you were just some idiot boy who I happen to like snogging," she adds smartly, the but you aren’t, you’re so much more going unsaid in the summer air. She brushes her fingers over the ridges of her elbows. Her skin feels sensitive, like someone's scraped the top layer off and is passing their hands over the fine, electric-tipped nerve-endings.
Harry's stare is beatific. Even now, the simple planes of his face make her heart hurt, and Ginny drags a gust of air into her lungs, around the ache.
"Well," he says slowly, "I am some idiot boy who you happen to like snogging." He stops, suddenly anxious. "You like snogging me, right?"
Ginny rolls her eyes, but the memory slides through her again, this time lit by a flickering warmth, and heat pools in her belly as she recalls his lips, his mouth slanting over hers, the hungry, restless path of his hands roaming her body.
"You like snogging me," Harry affirms, looking ridiculously chuffed.
"Prat," Ginny says without heat, "I do like snogging you. But I'm more than just how much I like snogging you, aren't I?"
Harry shakes his head, looking frustrated. "'Course you are," he says. "No one's thick enough to try arguing with that, Ginny. You've never been anything except...well, you."
Ginny tilts her head, smiling sadly. Fondly. "I haven't always known I was me," she reminds him gently. "For a very long time, who I was, it seemed to be about who I wanted to be...for you. But, last year? Oh, Harry. Look." She wrings her hands, searching for the words. "I missed you. I thought about you. But I learned how to breathe without you. And I don't want to go back to choking on that--that obsession. I don't want to get lost in that girl. I’m not that girl. Not anymore."
Harry sighs, shoves his hand through his hair. "Don't you think I know that?" he asks, and his voice is softer now. Urgent. "Don't you think I know exactly who you are? Don't you think that's exactly why--look, Ginny. If you were anything other than the way you are now, I wouldn't be so--"
He breaks off suddenly, blushing fiercely, his hair standing on end. His fists clench open and closed, in tandem with his mouth, which seems incapable of saying any more words.
Ginny feels a curious spark ignite in her heart, something light and incendiary. "So...what?" she asks, folding her arms more tightly around herself. "You wouldn't be so what?"
Harry laughs to himself, a slightly hysterical sound, then looks at his feet. After a long, silent moment, he looks back up at her. There is a curious light crowning his features, like the sun itself is shining from behind his skin in small degrees. "Blimey, Ginny," he breathes, and steps closer. "Don't you already know?"
And before she can think, before she can tell him that she knows, that she has always known, he is pulling her flush against him and kissing her.
There is a moan as he pushes her back into the tree trunk that looms tall over the both of them, and Ginny wonders if that desperate, keening sound is coming from her chest or his. Then his tongue slides along hers, and she stops wondering, stops thinking at all. His mouth moves hot and restless, searchingly, lips dry and breath warm. He is feeding her kisses, her inhalations ending in his exhalations, gasps building in her chest, sweat gathering at the nape of his neck. She can taste his heartbeat, can hear the words his lips are framing against the curve of her smile.
“If you were anything other than the way you are now, I wouldn't be so bloody in love with you,” he says when they part for air, and it's the most utterly perfect thing he could ever have said at all. She leans in again, and marvels at the way she can taste history on his lips.
If this is coming full circle, Ginny thinks that it must have started the day that Harry came to rescue her in the caverns of a cold chamber, his green eyes kinder than Tom Riddle's, his pale skin less pristine, more alive. Small and tired and bewildred and triumphant, Harry coaxed her into wakefulness, and though she was a child, there was a moment when she was struck with a woman's intuition: he was still a little boy and little boys were always careless with the hearts of little girls. But one day he would be a man, a great man. A careful man.
As the years waned on and eleven turned to twelve turned to thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and beyond, her infatuation faded into the darkness of those crumbling underground tunnels and into something else. A tiny flicker of feelings more substantial than simply a crush flared to life in the cage of her ribs.
Cultivated, kept burning by the faith and loyalty so characteristic of both a Gryffindor and a Weasley, that tiny flame is now a roaring fire, crackling at her skin, searing into her soul, making the press of Harry's hand against her lower back almost unbearable, even through the slight material of her dress.
They separate again, and he smiles ruefully, dazedly. "I don't usually take lessons from Ron, kissing girls to win an argument seems a bit cowardly--"
"Ew, Harry. I didn't want to know the way my brother woos his women--"
“--but I’m not good at words," he continues doggedly. "If you haven’t noticed. And I...I needed you to see. To feel, how I feel. About you.” He bites his lip and sweeps a tendril of hair away from her eyes. “You’re not the only one afraid of getting lost, Ginny. But I’m not so afraid of what might happen that I don’t even want to try. So you just have to tell me, and the rest will sort itself later, are we okay?”
Ginny breathes in deeply and looks up at Harry past her lashes, standing so dear and familiar there, smiling down at her with a challenging, slightly gobsmacked glint in his eyes, his skin slightly pink from the sun, his hair falling in messy sheaves of black.
She thinks about the strength it takes to make such a speech, the strength it takes to acknowledge such emotions and lay a heart on the line. She thinks about fear, and about facing fear, and she thinks about all those months without him. Yes, she made it through. But it was hard, and the war is over. Things should not have to be that hard any longer.
She might get lost, true. But at least she will have someone to help find her.
"Yes, Harry," she answers, and leans into him, her nose against his throat. "We’re okay."
And, she supposes, they will be.
|From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.|
author: biggrstaffbunch
pairing: Harry/Ginny
warning(s): Post-DH
summary: What will be, will be. Ginny turns seventeen, and she--along with Harry--learns that distance does not only make the heart grow fonder, but more true as well.
a/n: This was written almost a year ago for the takingitinturns challenge. I never finished it, then, much to my chagrin...but it's finished now. This is dedicated COMPLETELY to r_becca, who I really let down during that 'fest, and who I hope will accept this gift. Special thanks to etzyofi, who gave this a look-through and provided the Pablo Neruda epighraph suggestion: A Song of Despair. Enjoy :)
|The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.|
Ginny comes of age on a mild day in the second week of August, a few months after the war.
She wakes up in the morning like it is any other morning, the sunlight slatting into her room, melting in slim bars over the haphazard angles of her elbows and knees. When she finally pushes out of bed, eyes gritty and mouth sour, the springs of her mattress creak under her fingertips.
On a whim as she swings her legs to the floor, Ginny pushes against her bed again. Testing the resistance. Like things should feel different, now that she's seventeen.
Laughter is soft in her throat a moment later when she pads down the hallway to the bath, when she sinks into the water until her limbs are loose and heavy. There are puddles at her feet when she finally gets out, towel sodden around her torso, and she stares into the bathroom mirror, at the wavering reflection of her round face, the pink cheeks and liquid eyes, steam making her outline blurry and insubstantial.
One swipe of her hand and she is bone-white and sharp in the mirror's glass surface. It hums a low whistle of encouragement, sleepy and slow with age. There is a hairline crack at the edge of the mirror and Ginny fixates on it for soundless moments, brushing her hair as she imagines the crack widening, splitting her image wide open.
When she finally opens the door, the air rushes in, cold against her skin. It makes her long for bed.
Breakfast, instead. The kitchen is hot and muggy, window open and breeze non-existent, and as always, the meal is a fairly chaotic affair. Ginny spreads jam on her toast and pours a glass of pumpkin juice and as George teases her with good-natured pride, as Percy fusses, she closes her eyes and counts the rivulets of condensation that seep into the cracks of her palm.
Her mum is at the sink, cutting vegetables for the dinner party later at night, the drooping banner with 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY GINNY' just barely visible beyond her, strung across the trees in the back yard. There are lines around her old eyes, but she is drowning in hope, and Ginny sighs, knowing what is expected.
She produces her wand with a flourish, does a few perfunctory spells, smiling all the while. A jinx on George, a charm to straighten Percy's curls, a flower Accio'd in from the garden--whimsical, nonsensical pieces of trickery. In the back of her mind, Ginny remembers darker, more dangerous magic, red and green and white light, smoke and fire and blood, the silvery wisp of a Patronus and the looming mask of a Death Eater. Something shivers through her arm, like sense memory, and her fingers grip her wand with more force than is necessary.
She can't hide her relief when, one by one, her brothers and dad drop absent-minded kisses on the top of her head and prepare to Apparate to work.
"Things don't stop just because it's summer, Molly," her dad reminds her mum when the token protest slips out. "We'll all be home for Ginny's party, but for now, there's still so much left to be done at the Ministry. I ought to help where I can, don't you think, dear?"
Her mum agrees, because really, how can she not? Ginny waves goodbye as Percy leaves with a pop! and George tugs her braid once before following in Percy's wake. Her dad stays behind for a hesitant second, and when she looks at him expectantly, he manifests a small box from behind his back.
"For you," he says, a moment of pensive silence later. Ginny opens her mouth (to say what, she doesn't know) but her dad just presses the box into her hand, presses a kiss to her mum's cheek, and then he, too, pops away.
The kitchen is quiet, save for the chirp of birds outside, the steady whirr of knives cutting vegetables in the background. Her mum looks on with naked curiosity in her eyes, as Ginny slowly turns the box over in her hand.
There is a a small leather case, and when Ginny opens it, a beautiful wrist-watch nestled inside. It is delicate and silver with a thin band of starfish charms and a face in the shape of a conch. The minute hand is carved like seaweed and the hour hand is shaped like a mermaid's tail. It is a lovely gift; traditional but unique, coldly elegant.
Because you stare into space like a widow of the water, the card reads in her dad's slanting script. By all means, love with all your heart and live with dreams in your eyes, but my dear, do not forget that you are a long way yet from looking for lost men at sea. We love you, Ginny, and we miss you.
The message is almost shockingly perfect, perfectly succint. The poetic simplicity of it stuns her; the truth of it devastates her. She slips the watch on in a sudden silence that is almost deafening, definitely oppressive. Her mum's eyes linger on the curve of Ginny's spine, and the bracelet of the watch trembles on Ginny's wrist.
We miss you. The words echo like clanging bells, filling the hollow of her chest with a terrible sadness.
"I'm going to go outside," she announces, "just for a bit. Is that--"
Her mum cuts her off with a cheery 'of course, sweetheart!' and then Ginny is slipping her trainers on, fairly speeding for the front door, jogging to the gate and closing it carefully behind her before she can even take a proper breath.
The bracelet is heavy against her skin. She weighs it, setting down the dusty pathway leading into the fields beyond the Burrow. It is the thick of summer, and the air is redolent of grass and heat and apples. The orchard down the lane throws its scent shimmering into the deep blue sky, and a fine haze crowns the mellow gold of the sun. The damp warmth of the breezeless afternoon settles into Ginny's skin, makes her hair sticky and thick at her neck. She shades her eyes and looks overhead, gaze picking out the thin, dark clouds looming behind the barely-fluttering treetops; she sighs, shivery with the promise of rain.
There is suddenly a dizzying sense of teetering at the edge of a bowl, her body swaying like a reed.
"I'm seventeen," Ginny says aloud, and fingers the neckline of her cotton dress, cornflower blue and heartbreakingly young in a way she has not felt in too long. The skirt skims her knees, and a strap falls loosely down her shoulder. She tugs it up and says again, "I'm seventeen."
It's not so different than sixteen, to be honest. Doing spells just a short while ago felt no different than it ever did in the hallways of Hogwarts; perhaps it is because the last year has been such a jumble of covert, illegal magic that any wand-waving now pales in comparison.
"I," Ginny says, one more time and her voice is flat, "am seventeen."
Nothing has changed, she thinks. Or perhaps that's wrong, perhaps it's actually everything. Everything has changed.
Ginny is still the youngest, the only girl, but there are only six children instead of seven, and it's like relearning her numbers, tripping over the spot where Fred ought to be. Her parents don't sleep anymore; the floorboards of their ramshackle home are splinters and scuffs, a halting melody of creaks echoing in the night. How can they sleep, though? How can anyone, when there's a bedroom that will always be empty now, the body that used to dwell there resting under soil instead, its bones feeding the earth with nothing but the tears of those who miss him and the years he should have lived.
Though she and her (remaining) brothers are scattered across the continent like puzzle pieces, they are all part of one heart and Ginny is sure her own grief is mirrored acutely in them, that every day is a struggle to forget how it has been barely three months since Fred died and every milestone is just another milestone he is missing.
"But it's not just that, is it?" she whispers to the sun above, her throat tight. Something like shame colors her cheeks, her collarbones. She repeats her apology, squinting. "Today. Feeling like this. It's not just--mourning."
There is a certain restlessness that saturates her every breath these days, a feeling separate than loss. Ginny thinks it might be longing.
The truth remains that her dad's message was not incorrect: Ginny does spend rather a lot of evenings staring out at the hills lining the property, searching the spidery black branches forking into the sky, tracing the purple horizon with her gaze, mapping the stars in the framework of her hands. There is a permanent palmprint smudging the window of her bedroom, in fact, the shape of her fingers a reminder of perpetually reaching out, a symbol of the frustration she can't put into words.
Not grief, this squirming in her blood, but want. Looking for lost men at sea, indeed.
Unlike her dad, though, Ginny is no secret poet. She rarely puts a name to the unhappiness itching inside of her. All she can articulate on most days is the fog of her breath against the glass, the streak of twilight in the distance as she wonders and waits, unwilling and unable to let her elusive goal trip its way across her tongue.
The sun dims suddenly, a cloud lumbering slowly over its brightness. There is a dark shape in the sky, curved like a bird or a boy on a broom, and despite herself, Ginny asks: "Harry?"
Like always, the idea of Harry--however sudden or expected it ever is--fills Ginny's chest instantly with a bold heat, bursting slowly through her limbs, effusing her from the inside out with a dark sort of desire. The starkly physical reaction to his name makes Ginny's skin flush, and she jams the heels of her palm into the hollows of her cheeks, gives a small laugh at the rush of warmth coalescing under her skin.
Her mind goes unbidden to those spring days spent by the lake in her fifth year, her body tucked against his, his fingers twining through her hair as she closed her eyes, catalogued the little gifts he gave her without knowing it: the lower register of his voice, the changed green of his eyes, the blinding expanse of his smile, all the secrets he fed her with every soft kiss, every almost-moan.
These are things only she knows of him, the treasures that Ginny keeps locked up in the tender reaches of her stomach. That Harry, her Harry, is so different than the hero she used to follow with such enthusiasm. So much more than simply an unrequited crush or her older brother's best friend.
He is the Harry who got barely a year with her before he said goodbye, but he is also the Harry who let her into the places of himself that no one else has ever seen, the Harry who makes her pulse flutter wildly in her throat and her hands ache with terrible wanting. He is the Harry who had to go fight a war and who came back only to go off again, the Harry who Ginny has missed with a stupid desperation that even now makes her eyes strain towards the distance, searching for a certain silhouette.
Waiting for him to come home.
Contrary to her birthday note, she is not holding a long-burning candle, casting a lighthouse scope towards the salt and silt of the sea. She lived a life before Harry ever really looked at her, and she lived a life after Harry left her. No matter what, she is not a wilting violet, a flower straining for the sunlight of some boy's enduring attention.
But she is a young woman who has loved with all the ferocity of a soldier convinced each new morning might be his last. She is a young woman who has written letter upon unsent letter to the holder of her heart, confessing and revealing and sharing pieces of herself that she can never get back.
(In some ways, she understands better than most people what a Horcrux is, and why it is so frightening: bits of a soul that are given willingly and live on eternally. Sometimes, she thinks she's been making Horcruxes for ages, in every gaze and word she has bestowed upon Harry. every moment she has given to thinking of him, wanting him.)
Above all things, at the core and the end of it, she is a young woman who simply wishes she could celebrate her birthday with someone other than a mourning mother, and a worried father, and something more than a home cut to ribbons with the war wounds that are still so fresh.
The one normal part of her, Ginny would wager, is the way she wishes for Harry on days like this. The desire to be a normal girl, looking to the sky for her relatively normal boyfriend.
Ex-boyfriend.
There is a crack of thunder in the distance, and the sun dims again. Ginny can feel the rain prickle at her hair, her back. The shape overhead flies closer, and she can see more clearly that there is a cluster of similar shapes behind it. They swoop down, a daring arc like a sword. One of the shapes seems to falter in the air, flying with less surety than the other two, and Ginny knows suddenly that this is Hermione. And if it's Hermione, then the others are Ron and--
And Harry.
The rumble of thunder lingers, a low grind like the engine of the family's old car, and something hot shudders deep in Ginny's belly. She grits her teeth against the tremble, locks her knees tight.
Harry flies closer, and Ginny waits.
| Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.|
By his estimation, it is the first time in four weeks that Harry has been to the Burrow.
Away in Australia with Ron and Hermione, occupied with the task of helping his friend to rebuild her parents' fragile memories, Harry hasn't had the chance to realize till now just how much he missed this place. But staring down at the towering house with all its messy rooms and dusty shelves, secret nooks and shadowed corners, he is reminded of the fact that his feet know each floorboard that squeaks, that he has walked the same pathways as every child who has grown up in the Burrow's vast arms. He has a history in those walls, a past that can be seen in the pictures that the Weasley's put on the mantle, a present that exists in the extra bed that's always made up on the floor of Ron's bedroom, and a future--
Well, the future is right below him, in the hills and the pond and the garden, in the girl standing in the dusty front yard, her hand shading her face.
Here at last, Harry knows without question that he is home.
This thought warms him through his limbs, the idea that he finally has something real to call his own, a place to which he can return. His skin prickles, and he ducks his head, peering over the rims of his spectacles at the way the world tilts and slides, blurs into greens and blues and greys and golds. And right there in the middle, a long column of pale ivory and blazing red.
"Ginny," he calls, and her name slips out of his mouth involuntarily, leaping from his lips like a Chocolate Frog. "Ginny." This time, his voice softer. Steadier.
She looks up from under the shield of her hand, and though there are shadows shrouding her eyes, Harry can clearly see her mouth move around his name in response. His heart swells, gladdens.
Home.
He hovers low for a moment, his hair slightly windblown, his seat balanced and sure. Flying is the easiest thing he has ever done, easier than what will come next, and maybe that is why he clutches his broom like a weapon now, his legs folded around the ageing wood, his fingers curved tightly around the dips and valleys of the handle. The bristles rustle gently, the only sound at all, as he dismounts his new Firebolt 5000.
"Company issued," is the first thing Harry says, in reference to the broom, and it's probably the stupidest thing he has said in recent memory. He winces. Ginny's eyes flick from the broom to his face, the dark brown of her irises as unpenetratable as a forest, the good humor Harry remembers so well only a faint tracery around her mouth instead of a living thing like it usually is.
He falters; perhaps coming here was not such a good idea, after all. Should he go back, or...?
"Surprise! Surprise, Ginny!"
Hermione solves this dilemma for Harry, knocking him out of the way in her exuberance. She hugs Ginny, all tanned limbs and bushy hair, and he catches a flash of amusement in those wide brown eyes before Ginny's slender hands are patting Hermione's back awkwardly.
Standing here, the distance between him and Ginny is almost palpable. She looks the same, but is she? Can she ever be, again? Does he have the right to even ask her to not change, to be the girl who first kissed him with all the ferocity of the sun blazing on a summer's day?
He wrings his hands, and tries not to watch her too greedily. She ducks her cheek into the cloud of Hermione's hair, and meets his gaze for an intense, immovable moment before the other girl is stepping away and exclaiming how much Ginny's been missed.
"Missed you too, Hermione," Ginny says, and her voice is the same, at least. Strong, even, dry. Amused, even though there's something anxious in the subtle shifting of her hands, the rapid quickening of her breath.
"Oi," Ron demands, coming forward and slinging his arm companionably across Harry's shoulders. "What about me?" he asks. "Not going to greet your favorite brother?"
Ginny arches an eyebrow, and her face is so radically transformed that Harry's heart leaps in recognition of the sarcastic tilt of her lips, the mischevious glow of her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she says politely, "But George is at work right now. I'll greet you, though--" she adds thoughtfully, and then leaps at Ron, throwing her arms around his neck and practically wrestling him to the ground in order to ruffle his hair mercilessly.
For one long second, Harry feels the burn of where her arm brushed his. And then Ron is bellowing from the ground, and all he can see is the long expanse of Ginny's legs as she yanks at her brother's fringe.
"Ginny--hey--wait--stop--"
"Hullo, older brother!" Ginny beams, her fingers digging into the thick layers of copper hair. "So lovely to see you again! We've all missed you ever so much--"
Hermione giggles helplessly at the sight of Ginny sprawled out in the grass, her braid flying wildly behind her, with Ron towering over her (even while on his knees), cowed by her clever fingers and single-minded determination to rip every hair from his head.
Unaware that he is even doing it, Harry steps forward. Rests his hand on the slightly sweaty, smooth plane of Ginny's back. If he concentrates, he thinks he can feel her heart beat beneath her dress, even through the thin column of her spine.
"And me?" he says, in a voice that feels like it's not his own. "No hello for me?"
Under normal circumstances, Harry wouldn't have felt like it was his place to interrupt. And even now, there is blood rushing to the tips of his ears, making him hot and uncomfortable. But he knows that Ginny is not okay. That her playfulness is calculated, that there is wildness in her eyes that she is trying to hide. And he knows that given half the chance, she will continue hiding that wildness, that grief.
His hand falls away, turns over so it is palm-up. An invitation. To take his hand, or to share some of the burden that is weighing her pretty face down, he's not sure.
He only knows that he wants her to take it.
Ginny stills, her fingers clenched in a claw aimed at Ron's curious face. She turns to look at Harry over her shoulder, and a wave of some unnamed emotion flits over her eyes before she looks away from his gaze, down at his hand.
"Hi, Harry," she says, tone almost practiced in its ease, save for the hitch around his name. "We've missed you three."
Behind her, Ron clambers to his feet. Hermione's giggles fade as Ron's hand finds hers, and they both watch intently as Ginny mirrors the action, reaching up and lacing her fingers through Harry's own.
He can see defiance in the set of her mouth, as if to prove that touching him will not break her.
"I missed you, too," he says, and there is a subtle emphasis on the I and the you that she doesn't miss, if the flush that stains her cheeks is any indication.
He smiles lopsidedly and pulls Ginny up by the hand, bracing her elbow to steady her. He can feel the heat of her skin as she steps close, and he smells the flowers, the apples, the rain. He wants to kiss her, wants to run his fingers through her hair, wants to make her laugh. Anything so that she stops looking at him with a gaze weighed down by a grief that seems second nature.
"I might have even done a bit of petty stalking," he confides, leaning close and chancing a slide of his hand from her elbow to her waist. Her breath catches and she looks up at him, lips quirked.
"Petty stalking?" she murmers, and always, the rest of the world is lost for Harry. There is just Ginny, her pale face and big, dark eyes. Her freckled hands, and the secrets that sleep behind her small smile. The fall of her dress, the smell of her soap, the shape of her body against his own.
"Didn't have the Marauder's map," he explains hoarsely. "So I owled Percy the entire time I was in Australia. He was the least likely of your brothers to slag me off, to be honest." He pauses. "I got a lot of postscripts about the improper maintenance of Ministry facilities, but I also got news about you, so..."
He pulls her closer, and tries to gauge how angry or disappointed she is at the gross invasion of privacy.
Instead, she looks absurdly flattered. "You endured that? For me?" Ginny asks, eyebrow raised, eyelashes comically fluttering. Her hand idly plays with the belt-loops of his jeans, and Harry has to tell himself to concentrate despite the unconscious way she is tugging gently at the waistband.
"Yeah," he confirms. "For you." Definitely you, he wants desperately to say. You're my way home.
But he doesn't say it, because she already looks skittish and scared under all her bravado, and really, he would come across as a bit of a creep, wouldn't he? Still, the admission is there in the valleys and turns of his heart, beating as true as it has since those dark days when he was on the hunt for the Horcruxes.
There will always be a reason for blokes like him to go--some adventure, some mission, some last duty to fulfill.
But Ginny, she's the reason that he will always come back.
Rain begins to fall in thick, fat spatters, blurry bursts of water melting across the glass of his spectacles, pelting his hair, his shoulders, his arms, and still, all he can see is her. Smears of white and crimson, like a candle melting in a storm.
He reaches down to cup her cheek, the smooth skin cool to his touch, rain running in thin lines through his fingers. His thumb sweeps under the bruise-dark circles of her eyes, and he frowns. Leans forward, even as her lashes drift shut and her chin tilts up, and suddenly, there is something heating and sharp in the pit of his stomach, urging him on.
Her breath stirs against his lips, and Harry remembers the common-room, and the faded cheers of a victory, and the sun rising over the Great Lake. His breath grows heavy, and he leans closer, eyes falling closed--
"Not that watching you two is disgusting or anything," Ron's voice breaks rudely through the moment, rain stinging Harry's eyes as he levels a glare at his best mate, "But we're getting soaked. Hermione and I, we'll just go and see Mum, alright? Leave you both to, er, catch up." He gives a rogueish wink, and Hermione rolls her eyes.
"Sorry," she mouths, and then stage-whispers, "Remember to tell her that she looks beautiful! Not at all malnourished!" With that sound advice and a twitch of her hair, Hermione grabs Ron's arm and frogmarches him up to the house.
"Nutters," Harry mutters under his breath, frowning slightly.
"The lot of them," Ginny agrees, and they share a grin.
The rain comes in a relentless stream now, buckets of plump droplets plip-plopping down from the sky. Ginny's hair is soaked crimson, and her dress is plastered to her skin, clinging in dark blue patches to every curve and dip. She shakes slightly, her trainers squelching in the muddy grass as she shifts. She seems like she is waiting for something, staring up at him with rivers slipping down her beautiful face, that upturned nose, the bow of her lips, the line of her neck.
Harry's heart beats faster as he leans in, hand cupping her cheek, the base of his palm resting comfortably against the jumping pulse of her throat. He is going to kiss her for the first time in more than a year. He is going to kiss her, and it is going to be the last piece of the puzzle, the key that turns the lock, the thing that sweeps away all the lingering darkness that still clings to the happy parts of his world.
He closes his eyes.
Ginny steps away. The loss of her heat is acute, abrupt, startling.
He opens his eyes. Ginny, muttering under her breath so incoherently that he can't hear her over the drumming of the rain, is backing away from him.
"Ginny, what--"
For the moment has quite suddenly broken, Ginny walking backwards and Harry staring after her like a gaping fish. Their gazes tangle for a long, indeterminable second, and then turning tail, her braid a mocking salute behind her--
Ginny unceremoniously flees the scene.
|Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!|
The past is impossible to avoid in the best of times. But when the worst of times comes and then passes, then the past is a refrain that never ends, a chorus that echoes indefinitely. Every corner is saturated with memory, every new turn is laid with bricks forged by yesterday's learned lessons.
Ginny knows the power that the past has to shape the present, to prophecy the future. She knows because she is a product of a madman's diary, a young hero's sword, the burning shame of a singing valentine.
And now, so many years (and only a few months) after a past she would rather forget, here she is again, confronted with everything she thought she'd left behind.
All because Harry wanted to kiss her again.
"Thought I'd find you here."
Ginny stiffens, then slumps over the chain of weeds she has been weaving, the scraggly green strands slipping from her fingers and drifting away in the sticky, after-rain breeze.
Tucked amongst the stalks of tall grass that grow on the hill a slight distance away from where her party is still going full swing, she looks up at the intruder of her space, her face carefully neutral. The horizon is a cheery deep blue with nary a cloud in sight, and if it wasn't for the wetness that still clings to every available surface, it might be possible to imagine this morning's storm never occured. The sun beams merrily in it's low-slung place in the sky, burning a pinkish-gold that heralds the early onset of evening. A slight scent of damp earth, roasting vegetables, and sheer heat clings to the summer air. Ginny tilts her head back against the tree she has been leaning on, her hair free of its odious braid, waves sweeping generously across her shoulders as she yawns surreptitiously.
"Tired?" Harry asks, and Ginny's neutral mask slips into annoyance.
"Quite, actually," she says shortly. "Turns out it's rather monotonous work, Harry. Smiling and thanking people for their presents and their presence and their stupid bloody sympathy--"
There is a soft tearing sound, and Ginny looks down at the grass littering her hands. She gives a sheepish grunt. "Sorry," she says, even though she's not. She stands slowly, knees creaking. "I just needed to get away. From everything. My thoughts. Mum. All the people down there thinking of Fred."
Harry steps foward, his hand barely brushing her shoulder before falling. "I'm not thinking of Fred right now," he says, and somehow there's a mix of empathy, tenderness, and suggestiveness in his voice.
"No," Ginny sighs. "I know you're not." She ducks and wonders whether there is any possibility of not doing this right now. Feeling the searing intensity of Harry's gaze on the crown of her head, she sighs and gives up. There's still that wonderful, heavy feeling of attraction and anticipation in her stomach when she thinks of him, or looks at him, but standing on this hill and feeling so curiously off-balance, she is more aware than ever that the dynamic between them has shifted. Her old understanding of who they are as a couple--or even as individuals--is completely different now, and it scares her.
Frightens her beyond belief, actually. Makes her itch to run again, to run as fast and far as her legs will take her, because if she stays here, if she stays rooted in this spot, everything as she knows it will change.
Is she ready for her world to go topsy-turvy? No; that's why she's spent this entire evening going into the kitchen to refill the pumpkin pasty bowls and meat pies, or dancing with old friends, or disappearing to this old corner of Ottery St. Catchpole, overlooking the village.
"If I didn't know better," Harry says, "I'd say you're avoiding me more than avoiding anyone else down there." His words are careful. "But that's me, always with the swelled head."
Her silence speaks volumes enough, and all at once, the air seems to go out of Harry. He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, turning away from Ginny only to sigh once more. "Great," he mutters. "Just brilliant. Way to stuff it up, Potter--"
She has to smile at that. “Look, it's not that I don’t care for you--”
“Just not enough, yeah. I understand.” Harry looks mutinously into the distance, his hands clenching and unclenching in his pockets. Ginny thinks idly that he has never looked more like Ron, sulking with his arms folded and a frown on his face. And, of course, completely missing the point.
Her indulgent grin vanishes. You understand, my arse, she thinks, and begins to speak.
“And by the way," Harry says loudly, still looking away, "You don’t have to keep running away from me." He gives a dark scowl. "It’s your party, after all. I wanted to talk to you, but...you don’t feel the same way, fine. ‘S not like I expected you to, anyway.”
“What,” Ginny says acidly, eyes narrowed, “is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you’ve got Dean Thomas, haven’t you? And Neville, and--”
“And Luna, is that right? Because I danced with her, too, Harry. Don’t leave her out.” Ginny’s voice is incredulous, her cheeks blazing. “What is wrong with you?” she demands, poking Harry in the chest. A leaf falls from the tree above, and she plucks it out of her hair, single-minded and indignant. “First, you follow me around all day before the party, giving me these blasted looks of yours, like I kicked your hippogriff. And then you step on poor Neville’s foot after he’s waltzed with me. When you’re not stalking me or physically assaulting my friends, you’re sitting in the corner like a great big lump, glowering at anyone you can!”
Harry's scowl deepens, and he thrusts his face right up to Ginny’s, his spectacles sliding down his nose, eyebrows dark over his eyes. “And what’s wrong with that?” he asks. “What do you care what I do? You’re the one who’s spent the entire party treating me like I’ve got a bad type of spattergroit--”
“There is no other type of spattergroit--” she snaps, arms flailing.
“I just want to know, Ginny, and then I’ll leave you alone. Why can't you even look at me? Is it because I tried to kiss you again? D'you want to chuck me? f you wanted to chuck me, that's fine--consider me chucked. But I thought, could've sworn that you still felt the same way I do. So just tell me, please. Please. What's the problem?"
The righteousness with which the beginning of Harry's tirade was infused has faded by the time he gets to the end, and he slumps, eyes impossible wounded.
They are at an impasse, and Ginny is exhausted. The truth wants to come bursting out of her, and for once, the slow, melancholy movement of her limbs is replaced by a strange, listeless energy.
"The problem is that I love you, Harry," she blurts out, and there is a twisting in her stomach that feels like panic, like anguish, like water rushing from her lungs and spilling over the grass in a stream of cold, clear truth. "That’s the problem. That I wanted you to kiss me, and it terrified me. That I am head over heels mad for you. More than just friends. When I thought you'd died--"
Her words stop, and her eyes close. There in the grainy edge of her memories, she conjures the image of Harry, pathetically small in Hagrid's arms, and the terrible pain that had ripped through her like a blade.
"--well, that’s the point, isn’t it? I can't live, feeling like that. I'm seventeen! I don't want you to be my moon and my stars, I don't want to stand at my window and search the skies for your stupid broom. I don't want to miss you so much that I dream of the color green." Her cheeks turn red, but she pushes on. Bold and brassy and completely honest. She feels like herself for the first time in ages.
"I don't want that, Harry,” she says, “It's too much."
Harry looks dumbfounded, almost stricken by the force of her confession and his confusion and their combined agitation. His eyes are dark and round behind his spectacles, his mouth slightly slack. He scratches his neck, head tilted grimly.
"What do you want?" he asks finally, and then reaches out his hand.
If he touches her, she'll be lost. Ginny folds her arms and steps back. "I dunno," she answers. "I really don’t. I’d love it if you were just some idiot boy who I happen to like snogging," she adds smartly, the but you aren’t, you’re so much more going unsaid in the summer air. She brushes her fingers over the ridges of her elbows. Her skin feels sensitive, like someone's scraped the top layer off and is passing their hands over the fine, electric-tipped nerve-endings.
Harry's stare is beatific. Even now, the simple planes of his face make her heart hurt, and Ginny drags a gust of air into her lungs, around the ache.
"Well," he says slowly, "I am some idiot boy who you happen to like snogging." He stops, suddenly anxious. "You like snogging me, right?"
Ginny rolls her eyes, but the memory slides through her again, this time lit by a flickering warmth, and heat pools in her belly as she recalls his lips, his mouth slanting over hers, the hungry, restless path of his hands roaming her body.
"You like snogging me," Harry affirms, looking ridiculously chuffed.
"Prat," Ginny says without heat, "I do like snogging you. But I'm more than just how much I like snogging you, aren't I?"
Harry shakes his head, looking frustrated. "'Course you are," he says. "No one's thick enough to try arguing with that, Ginny. You've never been anything except...well, you."
Ginny tilts her head, smiling sadly. Fondly. "I haven't always known I was me," she reminds him gently. "For a very long time, who I was, it seemed to be about who I wanted to be...for you. But, last year? Oh, Harry. Look." She wrings her hands, searching for the words. "I missed you. I thought about you. But I learned how to breathe without you. And I don't want to go back to choking on that--that obsession. I don't want to get lost in that girl. I’m not that girl. Not anymore."
Harry sighs, shoves his hand through his hair. "Don't you think I know that?" he asks, and his voice is softer now. Urgent. "Don't you think I know exactly who you are? Don't you think that's exactly why--look, Ginny. If you were anything other than the way you are now, I wouldn't be so--"
He breaks off suddenly, blushing fiercely, his hair standing on end. His fists clench open and closed, in tandem with his mouth, which seems incapable of saying any more words.
Ginny feels a curious spark ignite in her heart, something light and incendiary. "So...what?" she asks, folding her arms more tightly around herself. "You wouldn't be so what?"
Harry laughs to himself, a slightly hysterical sound, then looks at his feet. After a long, silent moment, he looks back up at her. There is a curious light crowning his features, like the sun itself is shining from behind his skin in small degrees. "Blimey, Ginny," he breathes, and steps closer. "Don't you already know?"
And before she can think, before she can tell him that she knows, that she has always known, he is pulling her flush against him and kissing her.
There is a moan as he pushes her back into the tree trunk that looms tall over the both of them, and Ginny wonders if that desperate, keening sound is coming from her chest or his. Then his tongue slides along hers, and she stops wondering, stops thinking at all. His mouth moves hot and restless, searchingly, lips dry and breath warm. He is feeding her kisses, her inhalations ending in his exhalations, gasps building in her chest, sweat gathering at the nape of his neck. She can taste his heartbeat, can hear the words his lips are framing against the curve of her smile.
“If you were anything other than the way you are now, I wouldn't be so bloody in love with you,” he says when they part for air, and it's the most utterly perfect thing he could ever have said at all. She leans in again, and marvels at the way she can taste history on his lips.
If this is coming full circle, Ginny thinks that it must have started the day that Harry came to rescue her in the caverns of a cold chamber, his green eyes kinder than Tom Riddle's, his pale skin less pristine, more alive. Small and tired and bewildred and triumphant, Harry coaxed her into wakefulness, and though she was a child, there was a moment when she was struck with a woman's intuition: he was still a little boy and little boys were always careless with the hearts of little girls. But one day he would be a man, a great man. A careful man.
As the years waned on and eleven turned to twelve turned to thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and beyond, her infatuation faded into the darkness of those crumbling underground tunnels and into something else. A tiny flicker of feelings more substantial than simply a crush flared to life in the cage of her ribs.
Cultivated, kept burning by the faith and loyalty so characteristic of both a Gryffindor and a Weasley, that tiny flame is now a roaring fire, crackling at her skin, searing into her soul, making the press of Harry's hand against her lower back almost unbearable, even through the slight material of her dress.
They separate again, and he smiles ruefully, dazedly. "I don't usually take lessons from Ron, kissing girls to win an argument seems a bit cowardly--"
"Ew, Harry. I didn't want to know the way my brother woos his women--"
“--but I’m not good at words," he continues doggedly. "If you haven’t noticed. And I...I needed you to see. To feel, how I feel. About you.” He bites his lip and sweeps a tendril of hair away from her eyes. “You’re not the only one afraid of getting lost, Ginny. But I’m not so afraid of what might happen that I don’t even want to try. So you just have to tell me, and the rest will sort itself later, are we okay?”
Ginny breathes in deeply and looks up at Harry past her lashes, standing so dear and familiar there, smiling down at her with a challenging, slightly gobsmacked glint in his eyes, his skin slightly pink from the sun, his hair falling in messy sheaves of black.
She thinks about the strength it takes to make such a speech, the strength it takes to acknowledge such emotions and lay a heart on the line. She thinks about fear, and about facing fear, and she thinks about all those months without him. Yes, she made it through. But it was hard, and the war is over. Things should not have to be that hard any longer.
She might get lost, true. But at least she will have someone to help find her.
"Yes, Harry," she answers, and leans into him, her nose against his throat. "We’re okay."
And, she supposes, they will be.
|From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.|