Ginny Potter and the Boy Who Lived, chapter 3

[rumpelsnorcack]

Title: Ginny Potter and The Boy Who Lived, Chapter Three
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Word Count: 2713
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Angst, General
Summary: Sequel to Ginny Weasley and The Boy Who Lived, detailing her life after the battle and up to the epilogue.
A/N:  With many many thanks and hugs to my lovely new beta whirl_gig , and my older, and equally lovely, beta and writing companion extraordinaire, lorelaisquared

 

Chapter Three: Summer.

 

The headlines the next day were even more uncomfortable than I had imagined.   Words like ‘Lovers’ Spat on Eve of Potter Promotion’ ran above pictures of Harry and me standing toe to toe screaming at each other.  The articles were even worse.

 

Harry Potter may have saved the Wizarding World from its most dangerous attacker yet, but he can’t save his own heart.  Mr Potter was spotted in a furious argument with a young girl who this reporter believes to be Ginny Weasley, his one-time girlfriend from Hogwarts.  The couple have been seen together during various activities, such as the memorials for the fallen at the Battle of Hogwarts and the  rebuilding of the castle itself, and rumour has it that Mr Potter was about to propose to the young red-head when they had this devastating break up in the front yard of her family home.  Both participants left the scene separately, and sources close to Mr Potter suggest that he is heartbroken as he moves back into his own estate in London.  It is unknown what the argument was about, but we here at Witch Weekly hope this doesn’t dampen Mr Potter’s enjoyment of his new job as Junior Assistant in the fabled Auror department at the Ministry of Magic, a position from which he is likely to rise very quickly given his impressive accomplishments against many of the known dark wizards currently at large in our society.

 

‘Oh, for Merlin’s sake!  I hope no-one believes this rubbish!’ I spat out as I sent the magazine hurtling across the room.

 

‘Well, Ginny, you really were very careless about where you had that argument.’

 

‘I know, Mum.  Alright?  I know.  That really isn’t helping.’

 

‘Something else will come along tomorrow, and it will all be forgotten.  Just try not to let your temper get the better of you in front of reporters again.’  There was a wicked gleam in her eye as she said it, and I hugged her.  It was so nice to see Mum relaxed and a little jokey again that I almost didn’t mind the reason for it.  Almost, but not quite.  I was still really annoyed by the various articles that had made such a mountain out of a tiny argument that was now forgotten.

 

‘I’ll try, Mum.  But I can’t make any promises; I did inherit your temper after all.’

 

‘Is he really going to propose?’  There was a wistful look on her face as she asked the question.

 

‘No!  Mum, how could you even think that?  I’m sixteen, and we’ve just come out of a terrible time.  We haven’t even really had time to get to know each other again.’  I cast her a dirty look for the militant chaperonage she’d had us under which she ignored quite cheerfully.  ‘There’s no way we’re ready to talk marriage yet.’

 

‘Yes,’ she said, looking thoughtful.  ‘You have time, I guess.’  She sounded almost disappointed, and I felt a small surge of hope, that she might relax her security on us.  But then she shook her head and moved off to make some tea, and the incident was never referred to again.

 

Harry, Ron, Hermione and I spent most of that summer outside, still chaperoning each other, and occasionally George would come out too and we’d all play Quidditch.  It would be Ron and Hermione against George and me with Harry as seeker.  Whenever he caught the snitch, the game was over and whichever side had the most points was the winner.   I always pushed myself as much as I could with the old Cleansweep that I was riding.  It was important to me to hone my skills in the game because I was determined to become a professional player one day.  Harry shared my enthusiasm for the idea, and I know that if he had still had his Firebolt with him he’d have made me use it.  I was almost thankful that he’d lost it because I wanted no charity from him; I wanted to gain this on my own terms and with my own hard work.

 

Even though grief still intruded at inconvenient moments it was a great time all in all, but I wished for one thing; that Harry and I had more time to spend together, just us, just talking.  I was also becoming really frustrated that we were stuck to barely passionate snogs in the company of others.  I was restless with the need to have more, and I could tell he felt the same way.  Mindful of our watchdogs, however, we did very little along those lines, but in the occasional meet-up we’d have at night after the others were in bed, I experienced enough to know that I liked having his hands on me and that I wanted more.  I’m sure Mum knew about those meetings, but she had mellowed out in the time since the article came out and tolerated it.   We knew, however,  that while I was still an underage witch living in her house that she would never tolerate anything more than that and we respected her feelings.

 

The time at which Harry and I were to be parted again inched closer.  Reminders of the last time we had been parted for a year resurfaced continually, but this time the pangs were sharper because we had been closer for longer.  There was also a whisper in the back of my mind that he had died once.  I didn’t have to imagine what it would be like to lose him; I’d already lived it, and the fear that I could lose him again never really lessened, even though I knew he would basically be in schooling of his own during the year we were apart.  After all, with the losses of Colin and especially Fred,  I lived every day knowing what it was like to be missing someone important from my life.  If that missing person was Harry, I knew the pain would be greater even than that I felt over the loss of my brother.

 

I was reluctant to leave Harry behind even though I knew my education was really important.  Leaving him behind this time felt like leaving part of myself here; I figured those strings that had tied me to him before he’d left last year had just bolted themselves tighter and even though we were still in the same place, I felt the loss of his constant presence like a physical ache already.

 

I was sitting by the pond one day, watching Harry and Ron behaving like the idiot boys they still were at times, wrestling happily on the opposite bank, when Hermione slid down beside me.  I have to give it to her; she was a very perceptive person.  Though, I guess in this case she was going through the same thing I was.  I saw her squinting at Ron as she said, ‘You’re going to miss him, aren’t you?’

 

‘What? I ... no, I mean yes.  But not, you know ... too much.’  My eyes remained on Harry, watching as he roared with laughter because he’d managed to drop Ron to the ground.

 

‘Don’t lie, Ginny.  I’ve seen you together.  You’re both head over heels.’

 

I sighed.  ‘Of course I’ll miss him, Hermione.  But I need to go back to school and he needs to move on.  It’ll be hard after this summer, but I’ve done it before in worse circumstances.  I’ll survive.’

 

I looked at her properly then, taking in her pensive look, and realised she was questioning me because she wanted to talk about it herself.

 

‘So, what about you?  You were with Ron for most of last year.  How are you guys going to go?’

 

‘You forget he walked out on us.  I know exactly what it’s like to be without him.  But,’ she added in a small voice, ‘I didn’t like it.’

 

I squeezed her hand.  ‘We’ll be right.  We have each other and they’ll be able to visit at times.  It won’t be the not-knowingness we had before.’

 

She smiled at me, and agreed.  But I knew neither of us was as complacent as we were pretending to be.

 

 As we moved into August, Mum’s strict control became slacker, and we all found ourselves with a bit more ‘alone time’ which I know Harry and I took full advantage of, and I assumed Ron and Hermione did too.  We were finally able to talk about those things that had been sitting between us all summer.  I made sure to let Harry know exactly why I didn’t appreciate him just ‘taking over’ my life for me.  I explained that when I had been with Dean, his romantic attempts to look after me had made me feel stifled and not my real self.  I told him that one of the things that attracted me to Harry was that he never did that.  So, now that things were safer and easier, I needed him to remember that I was still a capable person and didn’t need coddling.

 

In return, he showed me the cards with my misdemeanours and punishments from last year.  My heart melted a little at the thought that he’d kept them with him all this time, but I winced while reading the list.  It really hadn’t seemed that bad when I was going through it, but seeing it in stark black and white made it all the more real.  There was an awful lot of it, too.  It was no wonder he’d been as upset as he was.  It still didn’t excuse what he did and said when we argued, but I did finally understand it.

 

My seventeenth birthday was a weird time.  It was the first celebration we’d had since the war ended (Harry’s birthday having swung past modestly since it wasn’t a ‘coming of age’), so it was the first time we’d celebrated as a family since Fred had died.  Mum tried her best, but there wasn’t the same sense of unfettered joy we’d had, even at Harry’s birthday last year or at Bill’s wedding.  Then the war was on us, and we found reason to celebrate in the darkness.  Now it was over, and we had joy, but there was that terrible sense of loss we were still learning to live with.

 

We had a big breakfast together and I was given the usual coming of age presents.  My parents gave me a watch very similar to Ron’s, and he and Hermione gave me a new set of Quidditch accessories.  Harry gave me a new broom.  I tried to stop him, but he told me he’d trash it if I didn’t use it.  He was very careful not to get me the top of the line model, since he knew I would never accept that.  In the end I took it, because I was serious about playing Quidditch that year, and even then I had my sights set on a place in one of the major league teams.  It was for my birthday after all, not just Harry shelling out money frivolously.

 

After breakfast I went to help Mum in the kitchen, more to corner her on her own than from any sense that I should be helping.  She was standing by the bench with her head bowed, and I wrapped my arms around her.

 

‘It’s OK, Mum.  It’ll get better some day.’

 

‘I’m being silly,’ she said.  ‘This is your day, but you’re my last baby to grow up, and I just can’t help it.  It’s all hit me at once that we’re losing everyone.’

 

‘You’re not losing us, Mum.  Not really.  Percy hasn’t even moved out again yet, Ron’s hanging around looking useless, and I’m still at school.  We’ll always be here – some of us probably longer than you want.’

 

I turned away and started to clear the dishes into the sink (with my wand of course, now that I could since I was of age) allowing Mum to wipe her eyes.  When she saw what I was doing, she shooed me away.

 

‘No, no.  You need to go enjoy this day.  Take Harry, go for a walk or something.’

 

I gaped at her.  This was the first time she had explicitly sent Harry and me somewhere alone together.  All the other times we’d ended up alone had been unexpected.  Mum, still wiping a tear from her eyes, chuckled as she looked at my face.

 

‘Ginny.  You’re of age now.  Go enjoy time with your boyfriend.  Think of it as another birthday present, but don’t expect it to happen too often.’

 

I didn’t have to be told twice.  I hurried off, confused as to why we were being given time alone because I was ‘of age’ when Ron and Hermione had been kept apart just as much as we had but I wasn’t complaining and neither was Harry as we made our way to the far end of the orchard.  It was one of those gloriously golden late summer days.  The leaves were beginning to turn on the trees and the sunlight seemed to pool under them.

 

Enjoying my newfound ability to use magic whenever I wanted to, I floated a blanket and a picnic basket out of the house and over to us.

 

‘Nice.  Much classier than my first attempts to use magic when I turned seventeen,’ Harry said lazily, lying on his back watching me.  ‘I poked myself in the eye with my glasses.’

 

I collapsed onto him, giggling, and his arms came around me reflexively.    It dawned on us that we were the only people in the vicinity; that we were truly alone and suddenly the air around us was filled with tension.  Both of us remembered his birthday last year, and the present I’d given him.  I stared into Harry’s eyes and the look in them changed slowly from amusement to something deeper.    The air buzzed with electricity as I leaned towards him.

 

Now, I’m not going to lie, or sugarcoat what we did that day, but nor am I going to go into it in detail.  You don’t actually need to know, after all, and there are some things that should really remain private.  I will just say that it was, as is usual in these situations, messy and awkward and silly and sweet and after it was over I knew I wanted to do it again.  I’ve read, in my time, numerous ‘unauthorised’ tales of my life with Harry and almost all of them have us as perfect lovers right off the bat.  I can assure you that we were as nervous and unsure and uncoordinated as any other couple trying it out for the first time.  But what we lacked in finesse we made up for in enthusiasm and humour, and it was fun.  Shall we leave it at that?

 

Sometime in the late afternoon we went back to the house where we were greeted by knowing looks and ribald jokes from various male members of my family.  George was almost his old self again as he teased us.  I didn’t mind.  Firstly, I was pretty sure they didn’t know what had happened, and secondly, I didn’t really care if they did know.   I was of age and could do pretty well what I wanted, and it was facing my huge and boisterous family that the fact really sank in.  None of these people truly had a say in what I did anymore.  Oh, they could make suggestions, of course, and out of respect I’d do most of what Mum and Dad wanted me to, but by wizarding law, I no longer actually had to obey any of them.  It felt liberating. 

 

 I smiled up at Harry, who was wearing a rather dazed expression, squeezed his hand and went to sit down with Hermione who was talking to Dad about the best way to get to Australia and find her parents.  The afternoon slid into evening, and I enjoyed just spending time with my whole family before the summer waned completely and I had to set off to school again.  Altogether, after the rocky start to the day, it had turned out to be one of my best birthdays, and one I would remember forever.

Chapter Two   Chapter Four