A Birthday!
It had been perfect. They were alone in Grimmauld place, after Harry had spent weeks transfiguring it and redecorating for the second time. He had purchased a new, large four poster, with sleek, clean lines and a modern design without canopy hangings. He had done the house in contemporary shades of cream and white, and finally the gloominess of the place was replaced with a warm coziness.
Ginny was flushed, still breathing hard after their ardent love-making. He had done everything right. He had made certain she was relaxed and ready, and had demonstrated at great deal of control, in spite of himself. He couldn’t imagine their first time---her first--- any sweeter.
Feeling sated and self-satisfied, Harry lay on his side, resting on his elbow, gazing down at the woman who loved him, believed in him, and had waited for him in spite of everything. It was more than perfect, watching her chest rise and fall after they had shared so much pleasure. He was home, and he had never felt more contented in his life.
A long strand of her auburn hair had strayed over her shoulder and rested teasingly between her breasts. Harry ran his fingers along the ginger locks and caressed her chest, feeling the small dip where her belly began.
Ginny opened her eyes, still heavy lidded and smiled. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“Not so bad, then?” Harry teased and leaned in for a chaste kiss.
“Perfect,” she sighed. “Absolutely perfect.” The beast in Harry’s chest purred with pride that he had won her praise. Ginny ran the back of her fingers along his cheek and he felt himself stir again at her innocent touch. He enclosed her hand with his own, and kissed her fingers before replacing them on her chest.
“Did you love her?” Ginny asked. There was no hint of anger in her voice, and yet Harry could feel the worry thinly masked by her matter of fact tone. “The woman you were with, during the war…”
******************************************
“Tonks,” Harry breathed, his chest still rising and falling from the recent exertion.
“Hmmmm?” she sighed, nestled under his arm, her cheek resting against the plane of his bare chest. She loved these moments---the soft, sweet, gentle moments right after they made love.
Harry stroked her hair, and she felt as if a cool breeze caressed her skin as he ran his hand up and down along the back of her neck and her spine. She nuzzled him contentedly as he soothed the heat of her body just as expertly as he had caused her to burn not so long before. “I’ve been doing some thinking,” he said, still panting slightly.
“Really?” she answered, trying to sound amused. The sick feeling of dread settled into her stomach, and she felt the muscles of her core reflexively tighten as if preparing to take a jinx.
It was odd how she had allowed herself to fall in love with Harry. She had been on a mission for the Order. She was supposed to protect him, as well as Ron and Hermione, and yet somehow, things hadn’t turned out as she had planned. Truly, it had begun simply as stress relief---two lonely people, pinning away for lovers they couldn’t have in the middle of a war. It happened all the time. Sex was simply a few moments of escape to ease the horrors and fears that were the reality of their day to day existence. And yet, somewhere along the line, her heart had become a casualty---lost not to the “Boy Who Lived” but to Harry Potter, the lovely, frightening young man with piercing green eyes and an irresistible vulnerablility hidden even deeper than her own.
Now, after the war, they had remained lovers, and yet Tonks couldn’t escape the sense that they were only enjoying a stolen season. Her happiness felt like a child’s soap bubble floating in the air---so large and beautiful, a rainbow shimmering in the sunlight, only to float away and finally pop, disappearing forever.
“I want you to move in with me--- to Grimmauld Place,” he said. “I’m tired of sneaking around, just coming over here for drinks and a shag, and then going home alone every night.”
The tightness in her belly relaxed , and she exhaled slowly, a Cheshire smile forming involuntarily on her lips. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.
“Of course I am,” he said the slightest hint of irritation in his voice. “Aren’t you tired of sneaking around ? I mean, we had to during the war, but now…” His words trailed off into the first rays of daybreak peeking in through the windows.
“I dunno,” Tonks said, hoping her nonchalant tone was convincing. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it like that. I suppose I’ve always considered what happens in my personal life, you know, personal; not on display for the world to know about.”
“Well, I want the world to know about us, Tonks,” Harry said stroking her upper arm and placing a chaste kiss on the top of her head.
“Harry,” she probed, chiding herself for the cautiousness in her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, okay, but do you really think that’s such a good idea? I mean, anything you do makes the front page of the ‘Daily Prophet.’” Deepening her voice to sound like a reporter on the wireless, she continued. “In the latest news, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Savior of the Wizarding World, blew his nose today and three witches standing nearby fainted from the excitement.”
“You are impossible! You know that?” he said rolling his eyes, and she smiled at the hint of laughter in his voice.
“Well, it’s not that much of an exaggeration, Harry. Can you imagine what will happen when they find out you’re shagging an older woman? I mean, come on, you know that won’t be pretty.”
“Tonks, you know I don’t give a damn about that.” Her heart danced a little jig in her chest at the firmness of his declaration, and she felt the courage to go on.
“Well, unfortunately, not everyone feels that way.” She sighed, steeling herself to plunge ahead. She wanted to give him every opportunity to change his mind. Wanting this so badly, craving reassurance that she wasn’t going to be just someone he spent time with until “the right one” came along, Tonks needed to know that he was, indeed, offering her a least a little bit of a commitment.
“It’s worked out pretty well, so far hasn’t it? Since I can look like anyone I want, every time we’re out, I just look like a different witch. Harry Potter just seems like he’s playing the field, enjoying the spoils of being a war hero, and no one’s the wiser. If we move in together, I don’t know if we can keep up appearances, Harry.”
“Well, I don’t care about keeping up appearances,” he said firmly. “I want you, and I don’t care what anyone has to say about it.”
Once again, Tonks felt her heart leap in her chest. With great trepidation, and she despised herself for it, she knew she had to give him one final out before she could content herself that he was sure about this…sure about them.
“Harry,” she said, taking a deep breath and pushing herself to forge onward. “What about Ginny? How do you think she’s going to take this?”
The seemingly interminable silence that followed made her shoulders stiffen and she could feel the tension building in the pit of her stomach.
“Well,” he finally answered, pulling his arm away from her and running a hand through his hair. “I don’t think she’ll care, one way or another. You know she’s been seeing Oliver Wood, right?”
“No, I didn’t realize,” Tonks said quietly. She would have to remember to start supporting Puddlemere United in future for this surprising bit of news. It was an easy trade off to switch her allegiance from Montrose to Oliver’s team for his help in eliminating the trouble of Ginny Weasley. Not that Tonks didn’t like Ginny. As a matter of fact, she really liked Ginny a great deal. It was just, hadn’t the entire reason she and Harry had gotten together in the first place been that he wasn’t able to do anything about his feelings for Ginny?
“Anything else keeping you from saying yes?” Harry asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“I suppose not,” she said, trying to hide her giddiness with resignation in her voice. “I guess that settles it then. When do you want me?”
“Well, I want you right now,” he said with a feral grin. “But that’s a different matter completely.”
“Already? Bloody hell, Harry, it’s only been, what, three minutes? Doesn’t it ever take a rest?” she said, sliding her hand down his chest to his abdomen, feeling his hardening cock.
“Not with you around,” he smiled broadly, and stopped her retort with a kiss.
It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon with a cloudless sky, variegated in more shades of blue than the eye could discern. Tonks could never recall Molly Weasley’s cooking ever tasting so good, or Fred and George ever being quite so amusing. As a matter of fact, for the first time in a very long time, Fleur Delacour Weasley didn’t annoy her at all. She had to confess, the way Bill watched Fleur with that stupid expression on his face still made her nauseous, but that was the past, and she wasn’t going to let old memories ruin her happiness today. Of course, she had been hoping to see Oliver Wood at this week’s required Weasley Sunday dinner, but feeling Harry stroking her thigh underneath the large trestle picnic table chased her anxiety away.
Although she felt like a romantic sap, Tonks kept replaying the scene of earlier that morning over and over again in her mind. She could hardly believe it, and yet feeling Harry so close to her on the wooden bench, somehow she allowed herself accept that it was really happening.
Harry had wanted to make a big announcement at dinner today, but she had dissuaded him. Arthur and Molly Weasley may be the most generous people she knew, but Molly in particular, still had very old fashioned ideas about the proprieties of sex and marriage. Harry had finally conceded to let it go with the compromise of discussing it with Arthur privately. She had convinced him that they really didn’t want to be around when Molly found out, and best to let Mr. Weasley handle things on their behalf.
“Tonks, dear” came Molly Weasley’s voice into her reverie. Tonks looked up and Mrs. Weasley had just come through the kitchen door out into the yard. The lopsided door banged behind her, and her arms were laden with a gigantic bowl overflowing with mashed potatoes to replenish the first one already gone, only half way through the meal. “Kingsley Shacklebolt just made a floo call for you. I tried to put him off, but he insisted it wouldn’t wait until you could finish your dinner.”
“Thanks, Molly,” Tonks said. “I’ll just nip inside for a second and take care of things. Back in a mo’.”
Tonks left the table full of chatter and laughter and made her way inside to the fireplace in the lounge. Finding Shaklebolt’s head waiting for her, Tonks settled down on all fours to take care of whatever was so urgent.
After about fifteen minutes of reassuring her boss that she had indeed filed the proper reports to the Minister from her last assignment, Tonks startled at the feel of a hand stroking her bum. Looking over her shoulder, she glared playfully at Harry who had stolen up behind her.
“Everything OK, there, Tonks?” Shacklebolt asked.
“Oh, yeah, fine,” she answered dismissively, “Just that ruddy bird Errol, who’s blind, deaf, and just too damned stubborn to die.”
Tonks wrapped things up quickly with her boss and after she was confident the fire grate was empty , she turned around to Harry, who had been crouching behind her.
“So, what do I have to do to get you on your hands and knees for me,” Harry asked, the timbre of his voice thick and needy.
“I think you know the answer to that question, if memory serves,” she replied, stroking the obvious tent in his khaki trousers. “As I recall---“
“Tonks?” A voice called out as footsteps fell heavy on the creaking hardwood floor of the lounge. “Dad wanted you to ask Kingslely---“
A harsh silence fell as they realized Bill Weasley had entered the room. Tonks dropped her hand at the sudden interruption. Harry and Tonks eyed each other warily as Bill stood, his brows knitted together, looking as if he were trying to understand a complicated puzzle. Bill looked at Tonks, then to Harry, then back to Tonks when his expression relaxed yet failed to soften.
“Did you need something, Bill?” Tonks asked, getting up on two feet and straightening up to her full height.
Harry took her lead and rose as well, an unmistakable shade of scarlet covering his cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders, lowered his head as he ran hisfingers along his brow. Before Bill could answer, Harry was making his way out of the lounge and toward the kitchen.
Neither Bill nor Tonks spoke until the echo of the closing kitchen door faded into the thick air between them.
“Never mind,” Bill said with a sharp edged tone. He shook his head and caught Tonks’s defiant stare. “So how long have you two been sleeping together?”
“Excuse me?” Tonks snapped.
“You heard me,” Bill said, his words sounding more like a demand than a statement. “How long have you and Harry been shagging?”
Tonks crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And what makes you think that is any of your business, who I may or may not be sleeping with?”
“It’s not,” Bill said flatly. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” The look he gave her was that of figuring out his prized bag of galleons was actually leprechaun gold instead.
“What’s the matter, Bill?” Tonks asked, her voice cold and unyielding. “Am I not good enough for the ‘Boy-Who-Saved-The-Wizarding World’? I suppose you would think that now, wouldn’t you? Surely, if I’m not good enough for the great Bill Weasley, Head Boy, curse-breaker extraordinaire, certainly I’m not good enough for Harry Potter?” Tonks’s eyes were spitting fire as her words came tumbling out.
Bill shook his head once more, his long sigh and the crackling in the grate the only sound in the room. “Look, Dora,” he began. “That’s not it at all, and you know it.” The reserve with which he was trying to control his words just fanned Tonks’s anger. “This has nothing to do with what happened between us.”
“Really?” Tonks seethed.
“It’s just I thought you would have better… judgment, that’s all.
“Better judgment?” Tonks harrumphed.
“It’s just obvious Harry’s not thinking clearly right now,” Bill replied staring Tonks down.
“What’s that supposed to mean, not thinking clearly?” she spat her eyes full of rage.
“Come off it, Dora. He’s not much more than a randy teenager. He’s all doe eyes for the first girl he’s fucked. I thought you‘d know better than encourage him, especially since you know it can’t go anywhere.”
“Encourage him? Can’t go anywhere?” she shouted incredulously.
“Oh, Dora, he’s thinking with his prick, not his head and you know it.”
“Yeah, and that’s big of you, coming from Mr. ‘I married a Veela’. You know so much about relationships when all you want to do is fuck a French tart that’s gotten by her whole life on charm and good looks. Yeah, that really impresses me Bill.”
“Leave Fleur out of this,” Bill seethed, his voice rising and full of daggers. “Don’t you even dare start on her. This has everything to do with you and you alone, Dora. I just can’t believe you would be so damned selfish. You know better! Harry…” he broke off and ran his hand through his hair. “Harry is just a kid!”
“You know, it just amazes me,” Tonks said, “How Harry saved all our arses from Voldemort and yet you seem to feel this need to protect him from me. I don’t know whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult, Bill.” She began to pace the room like a caged tiger. “If I am so terrible, do you think I should start considering my own plot for world domination?”
“Fuck you, Dora,” Bill breathed as he shook his head and stared at her.
“Yes, I suppose that is the problem, now isn’t it, Bill?” She stopped abruptly and placed her hands on her hips. “I let you fuck me a long time ago and you still seem to think it’s your business who I fuck now.”
“Unbelievable…simply unbelievable,” Bill said. “You are so in denial, heading for heartbreak and dragging Harry right along with you.” Bill straightened to his full height and stared into her blazing dark eyes. “The fact is, Dora, you’re too old for him. And on top of that, you’re an Auror. Even though the war is over, you are still risking your neck ever day that you get up and go to work. Harry deserves a life, a good life with a home, a wife he can depend on, children. Don’t you see that you are taking all that away from him? Don’t you think after everything he’s done for all of us he deserves better? Haven’t enough people he’s loved died?” Bill’s chest was rising and falling heavily, his words falling hard upon one another in a single breath. “And mark my words,” he continued. “If you go on with this, one of these days he’s going to hate you for it. Not now, and maybe not even in a few years, but trust me Dora, he will.”
“And I suppose you will be all to happy to remind me and say ‘I told you so’?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I will not look forward to that. Because believe it or not, I am trying to help you here.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms back over her chest. “And the next thing you’re going to tell me is that you still care about me and want what’s best for me, right?”
Bill just stared at her in silence, but she recognized that look and she hated him for it. It was the expression in his eyes that had melted her heart at sixteen and caused her to cave in to his seduction.
“Just forget it then,” he said, sadness now replacing anger in his voice, his shoulders slumping. “I really am trying to help. But you’re right. It’s none of my business.”
“Damn right, it’s none of your business,” Tonks snapped. The room filled with silence. “You wanted something, if I recall?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Bill said absently. “Dad needed to get a message to Shacklebolt. I thought I’d catch him while you were floo-ing him, but I guess I’ll just make another call.”
“Right,” Tonks nodded. “Have at it then, and I’ll just get out of your way.”
Tonks went out to the backyard, her head pounding from her row with Bill. The need for a cigarette gnawed at her. She went out toward the tables in the backyard to sit down and let her anger subside a bit, when what she saw caused her to stop and freeze mid stride.
Clearing dishes, chatting with a gentle easiness, Harry and Ginny were oblivious to her presence and everyone else’s for that matter. A dull, heavy weight sank into her gut and her throat felt as if icy fingers were squeezing her chest and cutting off her air. Tonks watched them for a long time, her knees feeling like jelly beneath her.
She couldn’t take her eyes from them, laughing here and there, smiling as their hands brushed when they reached for the same dish or catching a spoon or fork for the other, as it slid from a plate.
It were as if everything she observed was being played out in blurry slow motion. Sounds were distorted, her body felt as if it weighed a ton, and yet, somehow, the images of Harry and Ginny were sharp and crisp and highlighted in every tiniest detail.
She had seen images like this before, but never in real life. Harry and Ginny looked like models in the advertisements for soap powder or cleaning sponges in “Witches Home Journal”, ridiculously happy at simply helping each other do the dishes. And suddenly she felt the overwhelming sense of being incredibly…dirty.
Her brain shifted to the memory that had made her so happy less than an hour before, and then like a Muggle film loop on fast forward she thought about all the times she had been with Harry. Stolen moments, clandestine meetings, dodgy encounters all sped through her mind’s eye. The foul taste of bile rose in throat at the sordidness of it all.
In that tiny moment that seemed to last a lifetime, Tonks knew Bill had been right. She knew that all the things she had told herself, all the hopes she had allowed herself to believe, all the dreams she had permitted to take up residence in her head, were all totally and completely utter lies. And she knew, without anyone saying a word, that regardless of her and regardless of Oliver Wood, and regardless of anthing else, Harry and Ginny were still in love with each other.
“Oh, my!” she heard Molly Weasley’s voice. “Not bad news from Shacklebolt? I do hope everything is all right. You seem pale, dear.”
Tonks turned to see Mrs. Weasley, face full of concern and worry standing right next to her. Tonks swallowed hard and cleared her throat, fighting hard to force back the burning tears welling in her eyes.
“No, not really,” she said her voice cracking despite her best efforts. “It’s just that I’ve been assigned to a mission in umm…Korea.” It was the first place thousands of miles away she could think of at the spur of the moment. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Molly took her hand warmly, her brows furrowed. “Oh, I see,” she said quietly. “How long will you be gone then, dear?”
“Dunno,” the lie coming more easily as she continued. “At least for awhile, it seems.”
“Well, I was just about to go into the kitchen for a spot of tea. Care to join me?” Tonks allowed herself to follow automatically. With a glance over her shoulder at the blissful couple unaware, she braced herself for the hardest thing she would ever do.
**************************************************************
“The woman you were with during the war. Did you love her, Harry?”
Harry ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He said nothing while his brain shuffled through memories and tried to make sense of something he hadn’t quite figured out.
After a long silence, Harry met her eyes and answered.
“There’s no right answer to that question, now is there?” he said.
“The truth will suffice,” Ginny answered stiffly, yet without any hint of accusation in her voice.
Once more Harry sighed. Looking down at her he answered, “I don’t think I really know what the truth is anymore.”
Ginny’s stare forced him to meet her eyes. “I thought I loved her,” he said slowly. The deliberate choice of words was not lost on her. “But in the end, I dunno. I suppose at the time I fancied that she actually cared about me too. So many things I thought and believed back then have turned out to be so wrong. It’s as if nothing turned out to be what it seemed. But Ginny, does it really matter now?”
Ginny dropped her eyes from his gaze. “No, I suppose not,” she answered, trembling a bit as the words escaped her lips.
This was something much more than just a jealous query, and Harry instinctively understood. “You do know I’m never going to leave you again, right?” Harry’s intuition was confirmed as he felt, rather than heard her answer, as Ginny’s body grew slack and fell towards him.
And yet somewhere, in a small secret place, in the recesses of his heart, he wondered about a woman with pink spiky hair and all the things that might have been. When he closed his eyes, he didn’t see the coppery brown eyes of the woman in his arms. Instead, he saw haunting, dark, sparkling eyes that despite their owners words, told him the truth he needed and the secret Ginny would never know.