One Neutered Regret
Author: Pirate Ginny
Title: One Neutered Regret
Challenge: Hogwarts, Quibbler Office
Summary: Hermione discovers a strange recipe within the Quibbler.
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Genre: Fluff, humor, storms, secret codes
Word Count: 2941
Notes: ETA, Thanks to hyacinthgirl for the beta, and thanks to the novel The Sherwood Ring which helped me hobble some sort of secret code together. Woof.
3 UNICORN TREATS
1 arm of elm
1 ear AND toe FROm cherub
1 neutered regret
oil OF whimsy
Stir INGRedients With gopher toe UNDER FULL MOON BEFORE BAKING.
(recipe provided by Chame Berpot as discovered within her great-great-great grandmother’s edition of Hogwarts a History)
Harry looked up from Hermione’s copy of the Quibbler to find his friend calmly drying clothes they’d washed in the tent’s sink. The blasting heat from her wand made her curls dance and crackle with static.
“I don’t understand. Why is this important?” he asked. “It looks like nonsense...and why the strange capitalization? Is it meant to look archaic that way? And if you were interested in the recipe and plan on luring any unicorns for the next Horcrux, we already voted against that idea. Where exactly do you find ‘one neutered regret’ anyhow?”
“Neutered?” Ron stopped washing dishes, snatched the Quibbler from Harry’s grasp, read the first few lines and flung the now-damp paper toward the table. The Quibbler proceeded to slide and scatter upon the floor. “Well, obviously, the recipe is important because it’s from Hogwarts a History, Harry.” He rubbed his nose and returned to the dishes muttering, “neutered.” Harry grinned.
Hermione laid the last of their school shirts over a chair and stooped to retrieve the loose sheets of paper. She dried Ron’s damp finger marks with her wand. “Honestly,” she muttered, but Harry knew that she wasn’t annoyed. “This recipe is nowhere within Hogwarts a History, I promise you; the recipe author made it up. Read the author’s name out loud, Ron.” She thrust the oddly-capitalized recipe beneath his nose. Their magical tent was small enough that she did not have to move more than her arm.
“Chame Berpot?” It took a moment for the sound of the name to penetrate, but then he was laughing with Harry.
Hermione calmly took the paper from him and settled it onto the middle of their cluttered table. A flick of her wand sent the loose papers filled with Horcrux notes into her work bag. She withdrew a fresh scroll while the others watched. Ron finished the dishes and came to stand beside her.
“It’s a code,” she said, sitting.
“Bloody Hell, everything’s a mystery,” Ron muttered, but sank into the chair beside her. Harry watched them bow, heads close as they examined the page; it was a common view of his friends, lately. Their static status of friendship drove even Harry crazy with tension, but they seldom fought now.
“This is why you’ve been getting the Quibbler, isn’t it?” Harry asked. Hermione’s faint blush was his answer; her reaction prompted Harry to continue, “You knew that something would be encoded, didn’t you?”
Hermione made an impatient noise, as though Harry’s questions made it difficult for her to concentrate, which Harry supposed they did. Ron looked up, caught his glance, and nodded. She knew.
“Who sent the message, Hermione?”
Her face was fully red, now. She pursed her lips as she regarded Harry over the tip of her spellotaped quill. “We won’t know until we decipher the message. Sit down.”
Ron laughed and smiled at her with a fondness that embarrassed Harry. “You’re a horrible liar,” he said.
Ginny isn’t, Harry couldn’t help thinking, and at this thought, he knew who had sent the message. Though she thought Harry did not know, Hermione had sent a message to Ginny a week before. Rather than watch Hermione squirm and attempt to lie, he sat in his seat and pulled a scrap of paper toward him.
“Did you happen to set up an algorithm with her?” he asked.
“Shh. It isn’t that sort of code.”
Hermione arranged the words carefully, separating the capital letters and the numbers from the main text.
“These are rubbish directions,” Ron commented. “Hey, if you rearrange the capital letters, you get something about bringing moon land upon waking.”
Harry grinned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Neither does the recipe. Snape would flunk Ms. Chamber Potty”
“I’ve got it!” Hermione said, but then the cheerfulness seeped from her voice. “It was too easy.”
“Don’t strain your arm patting your own back.” Ron rubbed her neck with apparent concern. She shrugged him away.
“Maybe someone else will figure it out.”
Harry rolled his eyes and refrained from commenting on Hermione’s overestimation of everyone else. Most people would read “neutered regret” and forget the rest. “What’s the code?”
“The numeral three shows up twice: first in the title, and then when you add up the numbered ingredients. Take out the capital letters and the numbers, count off every third...”
“You’re right,” Ron said, slapping his forehead. “Everyone will figure that out!”
“And you get,” Harry prompted, unable to decode the message while it sat upside down to him. Ron answered.
“Meet me. Burrow. Midnight.”
“Damn, that’s in ten minutes,” Harry said, rising. He knew that the others could see how nervous he was, and if Ron hadn’t guessed that Ginny was Chame Berpot, Harry knew that he guessed it now. None of that mattered, now. He’d been openly moping about Ginny for weeks, long enough for Ron to stop teasing. Harry grabbed one of the clean shirts from the back of a chair and headed for the room that he shared with Ron.
“Harry, wait!” Hermione said. “You can’t go: what if someone else decoded that?”
“Haven’t you met the Merlins You-Know-Who has working for him?” Ron asked. Harry shut the door behind him knowing that Ron would soothe Hermione’s anxiety.
He stood with his back to the door and worked a hand against his stomach. The last time he saw Ginny had been two months ago, when he visited her at one of the Hogwarts refugee camps; the students of Hogwarts had dispersed into camps shortly after the last attack on the school. Harry had prepared Ginny a meal. Headmistress McGonagall was the only other person who knew that he had visited her, for which Harry was grateful; his trip embarrassed him now. He visited Ginny to ask her to join them in their quest, the quest she still knew nothing about, and Ginny had refused. When he asked her why, she claimed to have a new boyfriend. She was very cheerful and Ginny-like about it.
But she was lying. Even now, Harry knew that his belief did not come from the arrogant presumption of a jilted ex-boyfriend, but from knowledge of her character. It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it. She was too cheerful, too calm, just as she had been last June, when she accepted his decision to separate.
Harry stripped his old shirt off and donned a new one.
It hadn’t been too much longer before they heard the first rumors about Ginny and Neville. Some days he was convinced that this was a lie as well, that all of it was a lie, but lately he was less certain. Ginny had certainly had many boyfriends. What if their days together hadn’t meant as much to her as it had to him?
Harry shook this thought away. It didn’t matter. She wants to see me tonight...or does she?
Harry stuck his head out the door. “Was that message meant for me?”
“Yes,” Hermione said looking pathetic within the half-circle of Ron’s lanky arm. Despite the sullen look on her face, Harry knew that she would let him leave without argument.
“Need anything from home?” Harry asked, buttoning his shirt.
Ron shrugged. “Nah. Not unless Mum baked something.”
“She won’t be there,” Hermione said. “She and your dad are living somewhere else for now. You’d better hurry,” she added. “Apparate to Mr. Lovegood’s down the lane - I don’t think you can pass the wards outside the Burrow.”
Harry threw his old jumper on and yanked out his wand. He did not pause to say goodbye.
***
Ginny paced within Mr. Lovegood’s office.
“Father should be here soon,” Luna said. “As soon as he finishes feeding our pet Organxul. He’s usually there this time of night.”
Ginny opened her mouth to ask what an Organxul was, and then closed it.
“That’s our cow’s name,” Luna said conversationally. “She has a little tuft of hair right here,” she gestured, “like a crown, so I thought she needed a regal sounding name. She likes midnight snacks,” Luna added when Ginny glanced at the clock. “Especially marmalade on toast. But sometimes she eats chocolate frogs.”
“It’s all very...regal sounding.” Ginny was tempted to wait in the hallway, where she could see Mr. Lovegood all the sooner, but stared at the exotic clutter instead. When the war began in earnest, Mr. Lovegood had moved his offices back to his home, though his press still ran in London. He said that he felt better protected in Ottery St. Catchpole than he did in the city. Now stacks of old papers and scrolls were wedged among exhibits featuring jackalope skeletons and harps made of Thestral hair. A portrait of a smiling, bulgy-eyed woman waved at Ginny and urged her to investigate the genuine Heliopath tusk that flickered with flame upon the mantle.
And then Mr. Lovegood was there. He was a large man with a deep voice and warm smile. “Always a pleasure, Miss Weasley,” he said, extending his hand to Ginny. “And thank you again for submitting that recipe. We’ve had numerous owls about it already: everyone wants to know where to obtain a neutered regret.” She felt his laugh reverberate through the soles of her shoes.
“A eunuch ghost, of course,” Luna said from her corner of the room. She was braiding the tassel on an embroidered pillow that depicted the shifting scenes of a thunderstorm. “But I think the recipe needs a little lavender. Unicorns love lavender.”
“Absolutely,” agreed her father with enthusiasm.
Ginny moved away from the glowing Heliopath tusk (she suspected it was no more than a bewitched walrus tusk). “Did you send that special copy to Hermione?”
“I did. Wasn’t too difficult; told you that I’ve done such things before. I send a special copy every day to a woman who shares a flat with a Muggle. The front page is Muggle nonsense so that he’s none the wiser.”
Ginny smiled in her relief; her greatest fear was that someone else might intercept the code. Now, hopefully Hermione got the message, and Harry shows up. This was a stupid idea. Bloody Hell, I’m an idiot for agreeing to this. Things were safer as they were.
“You should hurry,” Luna said, still looking at her pillow. “Storm is coming and it’s almost midnight.”
“Hurry?” Mr. Lovegood asked, instantly concerned; the thick corners of his mouth pulled downward. “Where are you off to so late at night - I thought you were staying here before heading back to the refugee camp.”
“I’ll return,” she said. “Have to see my parents, though.”
“They told me they weren’t coming back for another several weeks,” Mr. Lovegood said, frowning.
“Oh, they’re home,” Luna lied airily. “Papa, I thought you were going to show me pictures from your latest trip.”
Ginny gave her friend a grateful smile.
“See you,” she said and hurried out of the room.
***
It was raining already when Ginny stepped outside. She pulled her robe hood low over her face and clutched the bottom of her robe closed as she splashed down the lane. The rain was cold on her face, and the water that spilled into her hand-me-down wellingtons was like ice. After her fingers were numb with could, lightning illuminated the familiar, lopsided attic of the Burrow. The family rooster squawked in outrage.
There was something surreal about seeing the Burrow so dark and uninhabited looking. By the time Ginny reached the kitchen door, she was thoroughly soaked and jumping at shadows. She shook the water from her hood and turned the knob. The door wouldn’t budge.
“Alohamora,” Ginny said, but that didn’t work either. She sneezed. “Damn.” She tried a few other spells before trying the front door. It was also locked. She tried the windows: no luck. Ginny was about to visit the broom shed so that she could check the upper windows, when she saw a dark shadow running through the rain. Fear pulsed through her for the barest moment before she saw the glint of Harry’s glasses in a brilliant lightening flash. The thunder boomed in answer almost immediately.
Ginny sneezed again, and a downpour began in earnest. She could barely see anything through the water dripping down her face.
She waved to Harry, hoping that the gesture looked casual, and then crossed the yard to the broom shed. Locked. She spent a few moments cursing the rain.
“Hey,” he said, startling her. In the clamor of rain on tin roofs and the angry squawk of the rooster, Ginny hadn’t heard him approach.
“We’re locked out,” she said, then repeated herself, louder. “Sorry.”
“Can’t blame your parents for being careful.” They were nearly shouting to be heard.
“I suppose not.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her back toward the lane. His hand was even colder than hers, but she could feel the thin wiriness of it, and the strength of his friendship. Ginny looked up at him; his glasses were fogged and covered in raindrops. “C’mon,” he said. “We can’t stay out here.”
“Lovegoods,” she said, and they jogged back down the lane, hand in hand to help each other in the slippery mud, breathing together as though everything in the world was normal again.
They snuck into the house through the back door. Ginny heard the rumble of Mr. Lovegood’s deep voice from down the hallway, in the lounge. Harry cast the muffliato spell.
“He can’t see me.”
“I know. This way.”
They crept down the hallway, quiet as they could be, until Ginny led Harry into Mr. Lovegood’s emergency office.
“Hello, dears,” said Mrs. Lovegood. “Do make yourselves at home.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Ginny said. She pointed her wand around the room, waking the fire and calling pillows to the floor before it. Another wave of the wand and their clothes were dry.
They shrugged out of their robes and shoes until they were barefoot, standing together in their school shirts. Ginny settled onto the stormy pillow and looked up to find Harry watching her with a sick expression. Whatever mood of easy friendship had been between them, it was gone now, shed with their socks. She felt nervous as well.
“You’re sure no one...”
“Sit down.”
Harry did so, still looking nervous. Ginny exhaled. “Look, this entire meeting was Hermione’s idea. She says...well, never mind what she says. Look, I feel bad about what I did a few months back, but I thought it had to be done.”
“You mean lying to me?”
Ginny winced. She had never quite thought of it in those terms, but Harry was right. She had lied.
“Yeah. That’s right. Anyhow, Neville’s really dating Parvati, and she’s a little annoyed with me for this whole charade anyhow. And then, when Hermione said you were...” she decided not to say, ‘moping.’ “Well, I decided that I should come clean.”
“Why, Ginny? I mean, most of the time I knew you lied, but why?”
Ginny turned so that she could see his face better. He knew? Such insight seemed more intimate than sitting together on the floor with firelight dancing in warm hues across their bare feet.
“Harry, when you decided to stop seeing me, I knew that you did it for a reason. I didn’t know then that you had some quest to fulfill - ” She raised a hand. “No, tell me nothing about what you’re doing; I don’t want to risk what you’ve worked to conceal. And that’s just it, Harry. When you made a meal for me, when you asked me to join you and nearly told me what you’re doing out there with my brother and best friend, I had to stop you. I will always be here; you need me alive, you said. So I’ve done everything I could to stay alive. For you.”
Bloody Hell, I sound like a woman on a wireless show.
She giggled - couldn’t help it. Harry laughed with her and she was suddenly against his chest, held so tightly that the breath left her lungs. All doubts of Harry’s affections fled with her breath.
“Neville?” he asked, his head against her shoulder. She felt his warm nose against her neck and the pull of his glasses in her hair. She had to clutch at him to control the shudder that went through her.
“Hey, I knew that he’d do as I asked; he’d do anything to help you, same as me. Parvati’s a bit sore, though. He rescued her when Hogwarts was attacked and she’s been sweet on him since.”
Harry laughed. “Good work, Neville. She’ll straighten out his dancing, I think.”
Ginny winced in memory. They pulled back to look at one another. The months had aged Harry as she knew they had aged her, and their springtime relationship had aged as well. The comfortableness between them scattered gooseflesh across her arms and legs. This feels like Forever.
She adopted a serious look. “So, who should I pretend to date next: Seamus? That would make everyone in your dorm except my brother.” She made a face.
Harry tackled her and told Ginny exactly what he thought about that idea: no more lies, just stolen kisses and borrowed warmth, and living by halves until the rest of life could begin. His kisses were a code. Soon, soon, soon, they told her.
Title: One Neutered Regret
Challenge: Hogwarts, Quibbler Office
Summary: Hermione discovers a strange recipe within the Quibbler.
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Genre: Fluff, humor, storms, secret codes
Word Count: 2941
Notes: ETA, Thanks to hyacinthgirl for the beta, and thanks to the novel The Sherwood Ring which helped me hobble some sort of secret code together. Woof.
3 UNICORN TREATS
1 arm of elm
1 ear AND toe FROm cherub
1 neutered regret
oil OF whimsy
Stir INGRedients With gopher toe UNDER FULL MOON BEFORE BAKING.
(recipe provided by Chame Berpot as discovered within her great-great-great grandmother’s edition of Hogwarts a History)
Harry looked up from Hermione’s copy of the Quibbler to find his friend calmly drying clothes they’d washed in the tent’s sink. The blasting heat from her wand made her curls dance and crackle with static.
“I don’t understand. Why is this important?” he asked. “It looks like nonsense...and why the strange capitalization? Is it meant to look archaic that way? And if you were interested in the recipe and plan on luring any unicorns for the next Horcrux, we already voted against that idea. Where exactly do you find ‘one neutered regret’ anyhow?”
“Neutered?” Ron stopped washing dishes, snatched the Quibbler from Harry’s grasp, read the first few lines and flung the now-damp paper toward the table. The Quibbler proceeded to slide and scatter upon the floor. “Well, obviously, the recipe is important because it’s from Hogwarts a History, Harry.” He rubbed his nose and returned to the dishes muttering, “neutered.” Harry grinned.
Hermione laid the last of their school shirts over a chair and stooped to retrieve the loose sheets of paper. She dried Ron’s damp finger marks with her wand. “Honestly,” she muttered, but Harry knew that she wasn’t annoyed. “This recipe is nowhere within Hogwarts a History, I promise you; the recipe author made it up. Read the author’s name out loud, Ron.” She thrust the oddly-capitalized recipe beneath his nose. Their magical tent was small enough that she did not have to move more than her arm.
“Chame Berpot?” It took a moment for the sound of the name to penetrate, but then he was laughing with Harry.
Hermione calmly took the paper from him and settled it onto the middle of their cluttered table. A flick of her wand sent the loose papers filled with Horcrux notes into her work bag. She withdrew a fresh scroll while the others watched. Ron finished the dishes and came to stand beside her.
“It’s a code,” she said, sitting.
“Bloody Hell, everything’s a mystery,” Ron muttered, but sank into the chair beside her. Harry watched them bow, heads close as they examined the page; it was a common view of his friends, lately. Their static status of friendship drove even Harry crazy with tension, but they seldom fought now.
“This is why you’ve been getting the Quibbler, isn’t it?” Harry asked. Hermione’s faint blush was his answer; her reaction prompted Harry to continue, “You knew that something would be encoded, didn’t you?”
Hermione made an impatient noise, as though Harry’s questions made it difficult for her to concentrate, which Harry supposed they did. Ron looked up, caught his glance, and nodded. She knew.
“Who sent the message, Hermione?”
Her face was fully red, now. She pursed her lips as she regarded Harry over the tip of her spellotaped quill. “We won’t know until we decipher the message. Sit down.”
Ron laughed and smiled at her with a fondness that embarrassed Harry. “You’re a horrible liar,” he said.
Ginny isn’t, Harry couldn’t help thinking, and at this thought, he knew who had sent the message. Though she thought Harry did not know, Hermione had sent a message to Ginny a week before. Rather than watch Hermione squirm and attempt to lie, he sat in his seat and pulled a scrap of paper toward him.
“Did you happen to set up an algorithm with her?” he asked.
“Shh. It isn’t that sort of code.”
Hermione arranged the words carefully, separating the capital letters and the numbers from the main text.
“These are rubbish directions,” Ron commented. “Hey, if you rearrange the capital letters, you get something about bringing moon land upon waking.”
Harry grinned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Neither does the recipe. Snape would flunk Ms. Chamber Potty”
“I’ve got it!” Hermione said, but then the cheerfulness seeped from her voice. “It was too easy.”
“Don’t strain your arm patting your own back.” Ron rubbed her neck with apparent concern. She shrugged him away.
“Maybe someone else will figure it out.”
Harry rolled his eyes and refrained from commenting on Hermione’s overestimation of everyone else. Most people would read “neutered regret” and forget the rest. “What’s the code?”
“The numeral three shows up twice: first in the title, and then when you add up the numbered ingredients. Take out the capital letters and the numbers, count off every third...”
“You’re right,” Ron said, slapping his forehead. “Everyone will figure that out!”
“And you get,” Harry prompted, unable to decode the message while it sat upside down to him. Ron answered.
“Meet me. Burrow. Midnight.”
“Damn, that’s in ten minutes,” Harry said, rising. He knew that the others could see how nervous he was, and if Ron hadn’t guessed that Ginny was Chame Berpot, Harry knew that he guessed it now. None of that mattered, now. He’d been openly moping about Ginny for weeks, long enough for Ron to stop teasing. Harry grabbed one of the clean shirts from the back of a chair and headed for the room that he shared with Ron.
“Harry, wait!” Hermione said. “You can’t go: what if someone else decoded that?”
“Haven’t you met the Merlins You-Know-Who has working for him?” Ron asked. Harry shut the door behind him knowing that Ron would soothe Hermione’s anxiety.
He stood with his back to the door and worked a hand against his stomach. The last time he saw Ginny had been two months ago, when he visited her at one of the Hogwarts refugee camps; the students of Hogwarts had dispersed into camps shortly after the last attack on the school. Harry had prepared Ginny a meal. Headmistress McGonagall was the only other person who knew that he had visited her, for which Harry was grateful; his trip embarrassed him now. He visited Ginny to ask her to join them in their quest, the quest she still knew nothing about, and Ginny had refused. When he asked her why, she claimed to have a new boyfriend. She was very cheerful and Ginny-like about it.
But she was lying. Even now, Harry knew that his belief did not come from the arrogant presumption of a jilted ex-boyfriend, but from knowledge of her character. It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it. She was too cheerful, too calm, just as she had been last June, when she accepted his decision to separate.
Harry stripped his old shirt off and donned a new one.
It hadn’t been too much longer before they heard the first rumors about Ginny and Neville. Some days he was convinced that this was a lie as well, that all of it was a lie, but lately he was less certain. Ginny had certainly had many boyfriends. What if their days together hadn’t meant as much to her as it had to him?
Harry shook this thought away. It didn’t matter. She wants to see me tonight...or does she?
Harry stuck his head out the door. “Was that message meant for me?”
“Yes,” Hermione said looking pathetic within the half-circle of Ron’s lanky arm. Despite the sullen look on her face, Harry knew that she would let him leave without argument.
“Need anything from home?” Harry asked, buttoning his shirt.
Ron shrugged. “Nah. Not unless Mum baked something.”
“She won’t be there,” Hermione said. “She and your dad are living somewhere else for now. You’d better hurry,” she added. “Apparate to Mr. Lovegood’s down the lane - I don’t think you can pass the wards outside the Burrow.”
Harry threw his old jumper on and yanked out his wand. He did not pause to say goodbye.
***
Ginny paced within Mr. Lovegood’s office.
“Father should be here soon,” Luna said. “As soon as he finishes feeding our pet Organxul. He’s usually there this time of night.”
Ginny opened her mouth to ask what an Organxul was, and then closed it.
“That’s our cow’s name,” Luna said conversationally. “She has a little tuft of hair right here,” she gestured, “like a crown, so I thought she needed a regal sounding name. She likes midnight snacks,” Luna added when Ginny glanced at the clock. “Especially marmalade on toast. But sometimes she eats chocolate frogs.”
“It’s all very...regal sounding.” Ginny was tempted to wait in the hallway, where she could see Mr. Lovegood all the sooner, but stared at the exotic clutter instead. When the war began in earnest, Mr. Lovegood had moved his offices back to his home, though his press still ran in London. He said that he felt better protected in Ottery St. Catchpole than he did in the city. Now stacks of old papers and scrolls were wedged among exhibits featuring jackalope skeletons and harps made of Thestral hair. A portrait of a smiling, bulgy-eyed woman waved at Ginny and urged her to investigate the genuine Heliopath tusk that flickered with flame upon the mantle.
And then Mr. Lovegood was there. He was a large man with a deep voice and warm smile. “Always a pleasure, Miss Weasley,” he said, extending his hand to Ginny. “And thank you again for submitting that recipe. We’ve had numerous owls about it already: everyone wants to know where to obtain a neutered regret.” She felt his laugh reverberate through the soles of her shoes.
“A eunuch ghost, of course,” Luna said from her corner of the room. She was braiding the tassel on an embroidered pillow that depicted the shifting scenes of a thunderstorm. “But I think the recipe needs a little lavender. Unicorns love lavender.”
“Absolutely,” agreed her father with enthusiasm.
Ginny moved away from the glowing Heliopath tusk (she suspected it was no more than a bewitched walrus tusk). “Did you send that special copy to Hermione?”
“I did. Wasn’t too difficult; told you that I’ve done such things before. I send a special copy every day to a woman who shares a flat with a Muggle. The front page is Muggle nonsense so that he’s none the wiser.”
Ginny smiled in her relief; her greatest fear was that someone else might intercept the code. Now, hopefully Hermione got the message, and Harry shows up. This was a stupid idea. Bloody Hell, I’m an idiot for agreeing to this. Things were safer as they were.
“You should hurry,” Luna said, still looking at her pillow. “Storm is coming and it’s almost midnight.”
“Hurry?” Mr. Lovegood asked, instantly concerned; the thick corners of his mouth pulled downward. “Where are you off to so late at night - I thought you were staying here before heading back to the refugee camp.”
“I’ll return,” she said. “Have to see my parents, though.”
“They told me they weren’t coming back for another several weeks,” Mr. Lovegood said, frowning.
“Oh, they’re home,” Luna lied airily. “Papa, I thought you were going to show me pictures from your latest trip.”
Ginny gave her friend a grateful smile.
“See you,” she said and hurried out of the room.
***
It was raining already when Ginny stepped outside. She pulled her robe hood low over her face and clutched the bottom of her robe closed as she splashed down the lane. The rain was cold on her face, and the water that spilled into her hand-me-down wellingtons was like ice. After her fingers were numb with could, lightning illuminated the familiar, lopsided attic of the Burrow. The family rooster squawked in outrage.
There was something surreal about seeing the Burrow so dark and uninhabited looking. By the time Ginny reached the kitchen door, she was thoroughly soaked and jumping at shadows. She shook the water from her hood and turned the knob. The door wouldn’t budge.
“Alohamora,” Ginny said, but that didn’t work either. She sneezed. “Damn.” She tried a few other spells before trying the front door. It was also locked. She tried the windows: no luck. Ginny was about to visit the broom shed so that she could check the upper windows, when she saw a dark shadow running through the rain. Fear pulsed through her for the barest moment before she saw the glint of Harry’s glasses in a brilliant lightening flash. The thunder boomed in answer almost immediately.
Ginny sneezed again, and a downpour began in earnest. She could barely see anything through the water dripping down her face.
She waved to Harry, hoping that the gesture looked casual, and then crossed the yard to the broom shed. Locked. She spent a few moments cursing the rain.
“Hey,” he said, startling her. In the clamor of rain on tin roofs and the angry squawk of the rooster, Ginny hadn’t heard him approach.
“We’re locked out,” she said, then repeated herself, louder. “Sorry.”
“Can’t blame your parents for being careful.” They were nearly shouting to be heard.
“I suppose not.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her back toward the lane. His hand was even colder than hers, but she could feel the thin wiriness of it, and the strength of his friendship. Ginny looked up at him; his glasses were fogged and covered in raindrops. “C’mon,” he said. “We can’t stay out here.”
“Lovegoods,” she said, and they jogged back down the lane, hand in hand to help each other in the slippery mud, breathing together as though everything in the world was normal again.
They snuck into the house through the back door. Ginny heard the rumble of Mr. Lovegood’s deep voice from down the hallway, in the lounge. Harry cast the muffliato spell.
“He can’t see me.”
“I know. This way.”
They crept down the hallway, quiet as they could be, until Ginny led Harry into Mr. Lovegood’s emergency office.
“Hello, dears,” said Mrs. Lovegood. “Do make yourselves at home.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Ginny said. She pointed her wand around the room, waking the fire and calling pillows to the floor before it. Another wave of the wand and their clothes were dry.
They shrugged out of their robes and shoes until they were barefoot, standing together in their school shirts. Ginny settled onto the stormy pillow and looked up to find Harry watching her with a sick expression. Whatever mood of easy friendship had been between them, it was gone now, shed with their socks. She felt nervous as well.
“You’re sure no one...”
“Sit down.”
Harry did so, still looking nervous. Ginny exhaled. “Look, this entire meeting was Hermione’s idea. She says...well, never mind what she says. Look, I feel bad about what I did a few months back, but I thought it had to be done.”
“You mean lying to me?”
Ginny winced. She had never quite thought of it in those terms, but Harry was right. She had lied.
“Yeah. That’s right. Anyhow, Neville’s really dating Parvati, and she’s a little annoyed with me for this whole charade anyhow. And then, when Hermione said you were...” she decided not to say, ‘moping.’ “Well, I decided that I should come clean.”
“Why, Ginny? I mean, most of the time I knew you lied, but why?”
Ginny turned so that she could see his face better. He knew? Such insight seemed more intimate than sitting together on the floor with firelight dancing in warm hues across their bare feet.
“Harry, when you decided to stop seeing me, I knew that you did it for a reason. I didn’t know then that you had some quest to fulfill - ” She raised a hand. “No, tell me nothing about what you’re doing; I don’t want to risk what you’ve worked to conceal. And that’s just it, Harry. When you made a meal for me, when you asked me to join you and nearly told me what you’re doing out there with my brother and best friend, I had to stop you. I will always be here; you need me alive, you said. So I’ve done everything I could to stay alive. For you.”
Bloody Hell, I sound like a woman on a wireless show.
She giggled - couldn’t help it. Harry laughed with her and she was suddenly against his chest, held so tightly that the breath left her lungs. All doubts of Harry’s affections fled with her breath.
“Neville?” he asked, his head against her shoulder. She felt his warm nose against her neck and the pull of his glasses in her hair. She had to clutch at him to control the shudder that went through her.
“Hey, I knew that he’d do as I asked; he’d do anything to help you, same as me. Parvati’s a bit sore, though. He rescued her when Hogwarts was attacked and she’s been sweet on him since.”
Harry laughed. “Good work, Neville. She’ll straighten out his dancing, I think.”
Ginny winced in memory. They pulled back to look at one another. The months had aged Harry as she knew they had aged her, and their springtime relationship had aged as well. The comfortableness between them scattered gooseflesh across her arms and legs. This feels like Forever.
She adopted a serious look. “So, who should I pretend to date next: Seamus? That would make everyone in your dorm except my brother.” She made a face.
Harry tackled her and told Ginny exactly what he thought about that idea: no more lies, just stolen kisses and borrowed warmth, and living by halves until the rest of life could begin. His kisses were a code. Soon, soon, soon, they told her.