fic: "A Dependent Variable"
Title: A Dependent Variable
Author: tosca1390
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Word Count: ~2,150 words
Summary: “She also received an offer from the Department of Mysteries. Did you know that?”
Notes: Written for the hg_silverlining Summer Fest. My prompt was: 6. Ginny's work. This is not the fic I intended to write, but it's the one that came out. Many thanks to all who've listened to me babble about this. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not at all.
*
“Harry, I’ve got to tell you something.”
Swallowing a last gulp of ale, Harry looked at Hermione from across the table of their corner booth. “What’s the matter?”
Hermione glanced between him and Ron, who sat next to her with his arm slung around her shoulders. She and Ginny had been back from Hogwarts for nearly two weeks, but this was the first night the four of them had been able to go out on their own in London. The Weasleys and Grangers had been keeping their respective daughters busy, and Harry had been busy with moving forward in the next phase of Auror training. “It’s nothing awful, I promise.”
“Spit it out, Hermione,” he said with a sigh, glancing at Ron, who just shrugged at him.
She scrunched up her face, fingers playing nervously in the condensation along her half-full pint glass. “Ginny’s decided on the Harpies, hasn’t she?”
“They invited her to tryouts later this summer, yeah. Why?” he asked. His eyes flickered towards the bar, where Ginny stood smiling at the barkeep, ordering another round for the four of them.
“She also received an offer from the Department of Mysteries. Did you know that?” Hermione asked.
Harry swallowed hard, eyes falling to the scratched tabletop. The pub was thick with smoke and sweat and the heat of the day, familiar and comforting. “No. No, I didn’t know,” he said after a moment.
“I’m not sure what she said to them,” Hermione said quietly.
A cool shudder ran down his spine, as he thought of the cool blue-lit marble of the Department of Mysteries, the fluttering Veil. “Well, it’s her choice. I don’t have any part of it,” he said.
“But you’d rather she not work there,” she said flatly.
“Ginny loves Quidditch. Of course she’ll choose that,” Ron said quickly.
“But how will Quidditch serve her long-term? I just think it’s ridiculous for her to not give it some thought,” she retorted.
“Then you tell her that, Hermione,” Harry said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. He looked at his best friends, comfortable and at ease across the table, and then glanced back in Ginny’s direction.
Hermione frowned, tucking her thick hair behind her ears. “I have, but I don’t reckon she appreciated it very much. You know Ginny.”
Harry pushed his empty pint glass to the side and scooted in closer to the wall. “Yeah, I know her. And I know better than to try and tell her what to do with her life,” he said quickly as he watched Ginny weave in and out of the crowd towards them. She had four pints successfully balanced in a line across her stomach from hand to hand, biting her lip in concentration. A smile curled his mouth unwittingly.
“I’m not trying to tell her what to do, I just-well, Harry, I reckoned you might have said something to her about it,” Hermione hissed.
“Said something to whom about what?” Ginny asked as she set the slippery pints at the edge of the table.
“Nothing,” Ron and Harry said together as they grabbed a pint each.
Hermione frowned as Ginny slid into the booth next to Harry. “Yes. Nothing,” she said, shooting a glance at Harry.
Ginny scoffed and looped one hand around her glass full of dark ale. “Have you told them about your dozens of job offers in the hopes that they’ll decide for you?” she teased. Her other hand fell to Harry’s thigh under the table, a light warm weight.
“I’m pursuing all my options,” Hermione said primly.
Ron snorted. “I bet you are.”
“Decided to move past the joke shop yet, Ronniekins?” Ginny asked too sweetly.
Harry smiled and covered her hand with his as Ron sputtered into his ale. He kept quiet for the remainder of the night, feeling the Quidditch calluses on Ginny’s fingers and breathing her in.
Later, with Ginny sleeping soundly next to him, Harry dreamt of cold floors and curses, hot jets of light zipping down long corridors. Ginny was there, all in black and lost to him. He woke in the still dark of early morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep for the rest of the night.
*
“Want to have dinner tomorrow night?” Harry asked one morning in early July. He and Ginny sat at a small coffee shop near the Ministry. He was working nights this week, and so they met for breakfast whenever possible, before she went off looking for flats and he collapsed in bed for a restless sleep. But tomorrow was his first night off in two weeks, and he wanted to spend it with her.
Ginny sipped her tea, hair glistening red-gold in the summer sunlight. “I would love to, but tryouts start day after tomorrow. I need to be at my best.”
“And I don’t leave you at your best?” he teased.
She grinned, breaking her scone into bite-sized pieces. A double-decker bus chugged past them, reminding him irresistibly of the Knight Bus. “You do, but you also exhaust me, Potter,” she retorted, leaning her shoulder against the window.
“For all the times I’ve heard that,” he said with a mocking sigh. Lightly she kicked him in the ankle, but smiled. He swallowed his tea quickly, hot and smooth down his throat. “You’re settled on Quidditch, then?” he asked after a moment.
Tilting her head, she set her mouth in a half-smile. “As opposed to?”
“I’m sure you’ve gotten other offers. From the Ministry, and… others,” he finished, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. He felt stretched too thin and sensitive in the morning light, dulled by a night in the field. “I want you to explore all your options.”
“The only other offer that interested me was the Department of Mysteries,” she said, popping a piece of scone in her mouth.
A small pit of worry settled in his middle. “Oh?” he said after a moment.
“Yes. I met with the Head of the department last week, too.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, all his nerves suddenly alight.
She shrugged easily, chewing and swallowing before she spoke again. “It would be interesting work, sure. I don’t know if it’s what I want to do,” she said.
Harry finished his tea and looked out the window, onto the busy street. “It’s up to you,” he said after a moment, an odd sort of distress tingling through him.
Her hand covered his on the table, her skin warm. “You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?”
Glancing at her, he shook his head quickly. “No, no, no. I didn’t say that.”
She laced her fingers into his, rolling her eyes. “You have a terrible face for lying, Harry. I find it reassuring,” she said, gently mocking. She inched forward and leaned into kiss him lightly. “As long as tryouts go well, I’ll be a Quidditch player. Don’t worry about the Department of Mysteries.”
*
Harry sat at his kitchen table, parchment splayed out before him and a half-eaten bowl of stew cooling at his elbow. The sky outside his flat was darkening to deep purple-blue, night falling across London. He rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and leaned back in his chair. Ginny said she’d be around after tryouts for dinner, but it was an hour past when he’d expected her to come by, and he hadn’t wanted dinner to cool.
It was the third day of tryouts for the Harpies, and he hadn’t seen Ginny in just as long. She needed to focus, she had said, and he completely understood. But Hermione’s words hung at the back of his mind, haunting him for weeks now. His tongue itched with the urge to ask Ginny of her plans, but he didn’t want to push. They were still navigating the early stage of this, with the bumps and creaks in the road. Besides, he didn’t have that much of an opinion on it in the first place.
Except, when he reflected on it, he found he did.
From the kitchen, he heard keys at the front door, and the creak of hinges. This flat was older and part of a greenspace area in Muggle London, quiet and perfect for him right now. Grimmauld Place sat waiting for him and a family to fill it, but he had to repair and renovate the house first, and he liked the smaller space of his flat that was all his own.
“Gin?” he called from the kitchen, pushing parchment into a pile.
Footsteps hurried down the corridor and Ginny skidded into the kitchen, face red and gleaming, and loose strands of hair falling from her ponytail and sticking to her bare neck. “I’m sorry I’m late, it was madness. I’ve got a starter spot as Chaser!” she exclaimed, smile wide and full.
“That’s brilliant,” he said with a grin, standing up and moving towards her.
She allowed him a brief kiss before she pushed him away. “I’m disgusting. Let me go shower, and then we’ll celebrate,” she said, eyes dark with promise. She hurried down the corridor towards his bathroom, lugging her bag along with her.
Harry cleaned up, the sounds of Ginny in the flat reaching him in the kitchen and comforting him. He pictured her in black robes and shrouded in mystery, her life defined by the secrets she kept for her work and the secrets she could never share with him. Thought it might be wrong, he couldn’t help it; the thought of her on a broom playing Quidditch was much more comforting than the thought of her as an Unspeakable.
Swallowing hard, he set his dishes in the sink and put his parchment away before he wandered down the corridor. Steam crept under the seam of the bathroom door. He could hear her humming good-naturedly, the smack of water against porcelain. Harry leaned against the wall next to the door, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
He heard her shut off the shower, rustle around in the bathroom for a moment. The, as she opened the door and stepped out he caught her arm at the elbow. Steam billowed out into the hall. Her hair lay thick and wet along her bare shoulders, skirting the black towel wrapped around her body.
“Hey,” she exclaimed, a smile curling her mouth. It sent a jolt right to his stomach. “Couldn’t wait, could you? It’s fantastic, isn’t it?”
“It is, yeah. But-“
Ginny glanced him over, brows raised. Her skin was pink and warm from the shower. “But what?” she asked amusedly.
He pulled her towards him as he leaned his weight against the wall. “You didn’t do this for me, did you?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, slightly impatient. Her hand clutched at her chest, hugging the towel to her.
“The Harpies,” he said, mouth dry with anxiety. “Because if you wanted to train as an Unspeakable, I would support you.”
She smiled, pushing her damp hair off her shoulders. “I know you would.”
He wet his lips, the back of his neck flushing. “I don’t want you turning it down for me.”
Leaning against his body, she framed his free hand to his jaw, fingers brushing the stubble there. “I didn’t turn it down for you. I want to play Quidditch. That it makes you happier than the Department of Mysteries would is a nice plus, but not the decision maker.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, fingers shifting nervously at her hips, feeling the nubby fabric of the towel.
Walking towards him, she pushed him back against her door. Her hands were hot through the thin cotton of his shirt. “I wanted this. And don’t you think otherwise even for a moment,” she said softly before pressing her mouth to his, warm and sweet.
His hands found purchase at her back, fingers sliding under the towel to the bare skin of her stomach. He kissed her urgently, tongue sliding across her bottom lip. She tasted spicy, her skin warm with summer heat.
“Besides,” she whispered against his mouth, “I’d never let you decide anything like this for me.”
“Didn’t reckon so,” he mumbled, kissing along the line of her jaw. “I just-“
“You worry. I know. You’re such a mum sometimes,” she teased, hitching a thigh over his hip.
The towel fell open between them, and he smoothed his hands over freckled skin. “Shut your mouth, Harpy.”
“Make me,” she breathed, dropping the towel to the hardwood floor as she stepped back from him. Naked and dappled with drops of water, she moved slowly towards the bedroom. He followed without another thought, hands already at the buttons of his shirt.
The next morning, Ginny burned toast for breakfast. He put in an order for season tickets for the Harpies.
*
Author: tosca1390
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Word Count: ~2,150 words
Summary: “She also received an offer from the Department of Mysteries. Did you know that?”
Notes: Written for the hg_silverlining Summer Fest. My prompt was: 6. Ginny's work. This is not the fic I intended to write, but it's the one that came out. Many thanks to all who've listened to me babble about this. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not at all.
*
“Harry, I’ve got to tell you something.”
Swallowing a last gulp of ale, Harry looked at Hermione from across the table of their corner booth. “What’s the matter?”
Hermione glanced between him and Ron, who sat next to her with his arm slung around her shoulders. She and Ginny had been back from Hogwarts for nearly two weeks, but this was the first night the four of them had been able to go out on their own in London. The Weasleys and Grangers had been keeping their respective daughters busy, and Harry had been busy with moving forward in the next phase of Auror training. “It’s nothing awful, I promise.”
“Spit it out, Hermione,” he said with a sigh, glancing at Ron, who just shrugged at him.
She scrunched up her face, fingers playing nervously in the condensation along her half-full pint glass. “Ginny’s decided on the Harpies, hasn’t she?”
“They invited her to tryouts later this summer, yeah. Why?” he asked. His eyes flickered towards the bar, where Ginny stood smiling at the barkeep, ordering another round for the four of them.
“She also received an offer from the Department of Mysteries. Did you know that?” Hermione asked.
Harry swallowed hard, eyes falling to the scratched tabletop. The pub was thick with smoke and sweat and the heat of the day, familiar and comforting. “No. No, I didn’t know,” he said after a moment.
“I’m not sure what she said to them,” Hermione said quietly.
A cool shudder ran down his spine, as he thought of the cool blue-lit marble of the Department of Mysteries, the fluttering Veil. “Well, it’s her choice. I don’t have any part of it,” he said.
“But you’d rather she not work there,” she said flatly.
“Ginny loves Quidditch. Of course she’ll choose that,” Ron said quickly.
“But how will Quidditch serve her long-term? I just think it’s ridiculous for her to not give it some thought,” she retorted.
“Then you tell her that, Hermione,” Harry said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. He looked at his best friends, comfortable and at ease across the table, and then glanced back in Ginny’s direction.
Hermione frowned, tucking her thick hair behind her ears. “I have, but I don’t reckon she appreciated it very much. You know Ginny.”
Harry pushed his empty pint glass to the side and scooted in closer to the wall. “Yeah, I know her. And I know better than to try and tell her what to do with her life,” he said quickly as he watched Ginny weave in and out of the crowd towards them. She had four pints successfully balanced in a line across her stomach from hand to hand, biting her lip in concentration. A smile curled his mouth unwittingly.
“I’m not trying to tell her what to do, I just-well, Harry, I reckoned you might have said something to her about it,” Hermione hissed.
“Said something to whom about what?” Ginny asked as she set the slippery pints at the edge of the table.
“Nothing,” Ron and Harry said together as they grabbed a pint each.
Hermione frowned as Ginny slid into the booth next to Harry. “Yes. Nothing,” she said, shooting a glance at Harry.
Ginny scoffed and looped one hand around her glass full of dark ale. “Have you told them about your dozens of job offers in the hopes that they’ll decide for you?” she teased. Her other hand fell to Harry’s thigh under the table, a light warm weight.
“I’m pursuing all my options,” Hermione said primly.
Ron snorted. “I bet you are.”
“Decided to move past the joke shop yet, Ronniekins?” Ginny asked too sweetly.
Harry smiled and covered her hand with his as Ron sputtered into his ale. He kept quiet for the remainder of the night, feeling the Quidditch calluses on Ginny’s fingers and breathing her in.
Later, with Ginny sleeping soundly next to him, Harry dreamt of cold floors and curses, hot jets of light zipping down long corridors. Ginny was there, all in black and lost to him. He woke in the still dark of early morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep for the rest of the night.
*
“Want to have dinner tomorrow night?” Harry asked one morning in early July. He and Ginny sat at a small coffee shop near the Ministry. He was working nights this week, and so they met for breakfast whenever possible, before she went off looking for flats and he collapsed in bed for a restless sleep. But tomorrow was his first night off in two weeks, and he wanted to spend it with her.
Ginny sipped her tea, hair glistening red-gold in the summer sunlight. “I would love to, but tryouts start day after tomorrow. I need to be at my best.”
“And I don’t leave you at your best?” he teased.
She grinned, breaking her scone into bite-sized pieces. A double-decker bus chugged past them, reminding him irresistibly of the Knight Bus. “You do, but you also exhaust me, Potter,” she retorted, leaning her shoulder against the window.
“For all the times I’ve heard that,” he said with a mocking sigh. Lightly she kicked him in the ankle, but smiled. He swallowed his tea quickly, hot and smooth down his throat. “You’re settled on Quidditch, then?” he asked after a moment.
Tilting her head, she set her mouth in a half-smile. “As opposed to?”
“I’m sure you’ve gotten other offers. From the Ministry, and… others,” he finished, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. He felt stretched too thin and sensitive in the morning light, dulled by a night in the field. “I want you to explore all your options.”
“The only other offer that interested me was the Department of Mysteries,” she said, popping a piece of scone in her mouth.
A small pit of worry settled in his middle. “Oh?” he said after a moment.
“Yes. I met with the Head of the department last week, too.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, all his nerves suddenly alight.
She shrugged easily, chewing and swallowing before she spoke again. “It would be interesting work, sure. I don’t know if it’s what I want to do,” she said.
Harry finished his tea and looked out the window, onto the busy street. “It’s up to you,” he said after a moment, an odd sort of distress tingling through him.
Her hand covered his on the table, her skin warm. “You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?”
Glancing at her, he shook his head quickly. “No, no, no. I didn’t say that.”
She laced her fingers into his, rolling her eyes. “You have a terrible face for lying, Harry. I find it reassuring,” she said, gently mocking. She inched forward and leaned into kiss him lightly. “As long as tryouts go well, I’ll be a Quidditch player. Don’t worry about the Department of Mysteries.”
*
Harry sat at his kitchen table, parchment splayed out before him and a half-eaten bowl of stew cooling at his elbow. The sky outside his flat was darkening to deep purple-blue, night falling across London. He rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and leaned back in his chair. Ginny said she’d be around after tryouts for dinner, but it was an hour past when he’d expected her to come by, and he hadn’t wanted dinner to cool.
It was the third day of tryouts for the Harpies, and he hadn’t seen Ginny in just as long. She needed to focus, she had said, and he completely understood. But Hermione’s words hung at the back of his mind, haunting him for weeks now. His tongue itched with the urge to ask Ginny of her plans, but he didn’t want to push. They were still navigating the early stage of this, with the bumps and creaks in the road. Besides, he didn’t have that much of an opinion on it in the first place.
Except, when he reflected on it, he found he did.
From the kitchen, he heard keys at the front door, and the creak of hinges. This flat was older and part of a greenspace area in Muggle London, quiet and perfect for him right now. Grimmauld Place sat waiting for him and a family to fill it, but he had to repair and renovate the house first, and he liked the smaller space of his flat that was all his own.
“Gin?” he called from the kitchen, pushing parchment into a pile.
Footsteps hurried down the corridor and Ginny skidded into the kitchen, face red and gleaming, and loose strands of hair falling from her ponytail and sticking to her bare neck. “I’m sorry I’m late, it was madness. I’ve got a starter spot as Chaser!” she exclaimed, smile wide and full.
“That’s brilliant,” he said with a grin, standing up and moving towards her.
She allowed him a brief kiss before she pushed him away. “I’m disgusting. Let me go shower, and then we’ll celebrate,” she said, eyes dark with promise. She hurried down the corridor towards his bathroom, lugging her bag along with her.
Harry cleaned up, the sounds of Ginny in the flat reaching him in the kitchen and comforting him. He pictured her in black robes and shrouded in mystery, her life defined by the secrets she kept for her work and the secrets she could never share with him. Thought it might be wrong, he couldn’t help it; the thought of her on a broom playing Quidditch was much more comforting than the thought of her as an Unspeakable.
Swallowing hard, he set his dishes in the sink and put his parchment away before he wandered down the corridor. Steam crept under the seam of the bathroom door. He could hear her humming good-naturedly, the smack of water against porcelain. Harry leaned against the wall next to the door, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
He heard her shut off the shower, rustle around in the bathroom for a moment. The, as she opened the door and stepped out he caught her arm at the elbow. Steam billowed out into the hall. Her hair lay thick and wet along her bare shoulders, skirting the black towel wrapped around her body.
“Hey,” she exclaimed, a smile curling her mouth. It sent a jolt right to his stomach. “Couldn’t wait, could you? It’s fantastic, isn’t it?”
“It is, yeah. But-“
Ginny glanced him over, brows raised. Her skin was pink and warm from the shower. “But what?” she asked amusedly.
He pulled her towards him as he leaned his weight against the wall. “You didn’t do this for me, did you?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, slightly impatient. Her hand clutched at her chest, hugging the towel to her.
“The Harpies,” he said, mouth dry with anxiety. “Because if you wanted to train as an Unspeakable, I would support you.”
She smiled, pushing her damp hair off her shoulders. “I know you would.”
He wet his lips, the back of his neck flushing. “I don’t want you turning it down for me.”
Leaning against his body, she framed his free hand to his jaw, fingers brushing the stubble there. “I didn’t turn it down for you. I want to play Quidditch. That it makes you happier than the Department of Mysteries would is a nice plus, but not the decision maker.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, fingers shifting nervously at her hips, feeling the nubby fabric of the towel.
Walking towards him, she pushed him back against her door. Her hands were hot through the thin cotton of his shirt. “I wanted this. And don’t you think otherwise even for a moment,” she said softly before pressing her mouth to his, warm and sweet.
His hands found purchase at her back, fingers sliding under the towel to the bare skin of her stomach. He kissed her urgently, tongue sliding across her bottom lip. She tasted spicy, her skin warm with summer heat.
“Besides,” she whispered against his mouth, “I’d never let you decide anything like this for me.”
“Didn’t reckon so,” he mumbled, kissing along the line of her jaw. “I just-“
“You worry. I know. You’re such a mum sometimes,” she teased, hitching a thigh over his hip.
The towel fell open between them, and he smoothed his hands over freckled skin. “Shut your mouth, Harpy.”
“Make me,” she breathed, dropping the towel to the hardwood floor as she stepped back from him. Naked and dappled with drops of water, she moved slowly towards the bedroom. He followed without another thought, hands already at the buttons of his shirt.
The next morning, Ginny burned toast for breakfast. He put in an order for season tickets for the Harpies.
*