Night's Candles (PG13)
Author: Antosha / antoshevu
Title: Night's Candles
Challenge: Fifth Wave-Heaven and Hell
Summary: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day / Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. (After the Death Eaters stage a failed raid on Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes on the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding, it is time to count the cost and look to the future.)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama
Word Count (optional): ~3700 Words
Notes/Warnings: Some mild language and sexual situations. This fic also happens to be a chapter in my NC-17-rated, multi-PoV, multi-ship fic, Back to the Garden (the R-rated, even-more-OBHWF-friendly version, The Wisest Course, is available on Sink Into Your Eyes and Simply Undeniable).
Night’s Candles
When they reach the landing to the room where Remus has taken to sleeping, Tonks leans against the door jam. “Cor, what a night.”
“We didn’t do too badly,” Remus answers, trying very hard not to become mesmerized by the way the scent of sweat, fear and exhilaration flows from her body. “Relatively low casualties on our side. Just a few major injuries.”
“Two dead.” She sighs deeply. “Poor Jebbins. Merlin, poor Fleur. To lose you dad on the night…”
“Yes. That was tragic.” Shuddering, he crosses his arms. Victims of the Killing Curse send off a scent that is so repulsive-he doesn’t know how any of the rest of them can stand it. “What Lestrange was saying-it really was quite foul.”
“Don’t speak Frog, do I?” she says with a sad smirk. “But I still got that. Can’t believe he was one of the ones got away.”
“Well, only four escaped-again, I think we did well. The rest in custody or-”
“Or dead, like my late lamented aunt.” Tonks does not look at all sorry about Bellatrix Lestrange’s death.
A sudden thought strikes Remus. “Does your mother know?”
“Owled her while we were waiting for the paperwork on the prisoners to clear.” Tonks gives a very Tonks-y smirk. “She wrote back, What a shame.”
They share a sad laugh. “Still,” he says, “it’s better that she heard from you.”
“I guess,” Tonks answers with a shrug. “The DA kids were brilliant, don’t you think?”
Remus purses his lips before answering. “Yes,” he says, “but I still wish they hadn’t been there. It wasn’t safe.”
“Nowhere’s safe, Remus,” she says, dark eyes suddenly very intense. “They’ve been training to help, and help they did. It’s because of them that we captured as many as we did.”
Sighing, he says, “Perhaps. I still can’t help wishing they couldn’t still be just, you know, children.”
“You and Molly both,” Tonks laughs. “Neville, though!”
“Neville.” He nods.
She chews on her lip. “Wonder how he’s doing. His first.”
“He mostly seemed fairly stunned.” That no-longer-quite-so-round face slack as the Aurors questioned everyone afterwards. Searching the crowd constantly for-
“Can’t blame him,” sighs Tonks. “She was a right nasty piece of work, our Bella.”
“True.” The Beautiful Black Bitch, Sirius always called her. Though with him, that might have been a compliment-one never knew. “Well,” Remus says at last, “it has been a long night-”
“Remus,” Tonks murmurs, suddenly pressing up against him so that he realizes that the smell of excitement that he sensed was not only the adrenaline rush from the battle, “if you think you’re going into that bed alone, you’ve got another thing coming.” She pulls him through the door, and within moments all sense of fatigue or sorrow are swept from his bed, forgotten on the floor to worry about in the morning with his third-hand dress robes.
***
“I…” Neville keeps staring at his hands, as if they have somehow grown extra fingers. “I killed her.”
“You saved my life,” Susan says, not for the first time.
He looks up into her eyes-rich, solemn, warm-and for a moment the cold mist that he’s felt wrapped in all night melts away. She touches his face and smiles and suddenly…
Suddenly, they are kissing. In her house. In her room. On her bed. Long after midnight. Lips and tongues, skin and satin, swelling against one another and OOooooo…
Neville has spent the last months trying very hard not to think about being in situations like this with Susan-trying and usually failing. He feels like a fraud, like she’s been tricked into thinking he’s a nice boy, but he’s not thinking very nice thoughts just now, no, not at all.
“Neville?” Her hair has come loose from its plait and sprays across the pale blue pillow-her bed matches his robes. Her skin looks like Gran’s damask roses-so white at the chin, so pink at the lips and cheeks. “Neville. What I said before. It was true then. I like you. I like you so much.”
“Like you too.” It is a struggle to speak-all Neville wants to do is… What? He can’t even think what it is that he wants to do, but whatever it is, he’s sure Susan would be horrified to know that he feels this way.
Susan bites her lip. “You look… Did I say something?”
“No!” Now he finds himself touching her cheek, trying to say something with his fingers that he doesn’t know how to say in words without sounding stupid. “No, I just… This is… I’m just a little over my head, here, you know.”
She nods seriously. “Me too.”
“Really?”
She nods again and her mouth pouts so cutely that he can’t keep himself from kissing her once more. Or twice. It really is that nice. Every time.
A few minutes later he backs up. It’s important to tell her now, so she won’t be hurt. “Susan,” he says, “I… I did kiss Ginny Weasley once. Under the mistletoe. Fourth year.”
“Oh.” She blinks at him. “Well, Justin and I kissed a couple of times at the beginning of last year. Before he and Hannah started going together.” Frowning she adds, “And Zach tried to put his tongue in my mouth once after the Halloween Feast this past year. But I made him stop.”
“Smith?” She nods, and the same fury that filled him when he saw that awful woman standing over Susan begins to burn in his gut again. “That… How did you stop him?”
“Jelly-legs Jinx. It was actually very funny.” She says this so seriously that in spite of his anger, in spite of the feel of her body against his, he begins to giggle; at first her eyes fly wide, and then she too begins to laugh.
They roll across the bed together, laughing manically, her hair flying around them, and soon, of course, they are kissing again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Susan says finally. “Me kissing those other boys. It wasn’t anything like this. Like what I feel now.”
“No. Me either.”
“I like you, Neville.”
“Me too,” he answers. “I mean, I like you. Like-you like you, you know?”
She nods. “I’m… I’m glad.” She bites her lip again as she looks deeply into his eyes. “I trust you, Neville. I… You… don’t want to do anything more than kiss… do you?”
“No!” he gasps. Oh, Merlin, now she’s planted a whole new crop of images in his fertile brain. In spite of himself, his hand creeps up a half an inch from where it has been resting on her ribs, not quite reaching the place where her chest swells outward-not quite, but almost. “I mean, not that I wouldn’t, you know, like to. With you. Because…”
“Good,” she says, nodding again. “I mean, maybe… But I don’t think…”
“Not yet.” Not because he was the first one into the room where Mrs. Lestrange was threatening her. Not because she was grateful… But Merlin, her skin, and the warmth of her, breath like orchids…
“No, definitely. Not yet.” They lie there, nose to nose, belly to belly, and Neville’s body is doing its best to crack that resolve, to turn him into Zacharias Smith. Then she smiles in a way that makes Neville’s head light. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t kiss some more.”
Neither of them speaks again for quite a long while.
***
Teddy is sitting right where he was when Eri left, in the big kitchen chair that their mother used to stay up in when Daddy was out. “It’s two in the morning,” he snaps.
“I had to wait until everyone got back; I couldn’t leave Gabrielle alone.” She kicks off the shoes-they were Mother’s too-and rubs her feet. Dancing is fun, but very hard work. “Especially not after her father died.”
Teddy’s scowl falls. “Her… father.”
“Yes,” Eri says. “There was an attack on Diagon Alley, and of course Luna had to help, and so I stayed with Gabrielle. Harry Potter danced with Gabrielle, it made her very happy, even though she knows that it isn’t meant to be.”
Teddy is scowling again. He always scowls.
“Then everyone got back, and Monsieur Delacour was killed, so I had to stay a while longer. And Madam Lestrange got tossed out a window by Neville Longbottom and died.”
“Oh,” says Teddy; he seems to be having trouble following her. He must be tired. “Good riddance.”
“Yes, Luna thought so too. I never met her. But Luna said that she was rather unpleasant.”
For some reason, this makes Teddy laugh.
Yawning, Eri shakes her hair out of the French braid that he helped her to put it in all those hours ago. “Come along, Teddy. I’m very tired. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Yes,” he answers, more agreeable than usual. “But you’re all right?”
“Yes, Teddy,” Eri answers, kissing him on the cheek, “I’m fine.” She reaches her room. No bath tonight. It’s too late. “Good night, Teddy. I’m glad we joined the DA. I wouldn’t want you to have been one of the Death Eaters tonight.”
Her brother shakes his head grimly as he opens the door across from hers. “No. Good night, Eri.”
***
Luna comes home to find a glass of milk and a note from her father: There’s a story brewing in Diagon Alley-I need do some digging with some of my contacts at the Ministry to see whether Scrimgeour’s vampire claque were involved. Have some milk. I’ll see you in the morning.
She wonders how he will feel when he realizes that she was part of the story. He will most likely interview her. Perhaps she will be able to interview Ginny again. And Harry. Yes.
It occurs to Luna that watching them not looking at each other was actually more sexually exciting than seeing them after they had been disturbed in the Burrow, Ginny with her hair undone, Harry with his shirt open, both of them giving off that distinctive scent that Luna has begun to identify with them lately. Is wanting somehow more exciting than actually having? Perhaps not for the people who are actually doing the wanting and having.
When Ginny ran first into the front room of the store, and the twins and Harry and Falnak pushed in front of Luna, Luna felt quite impatient. No, more than impatient: desperate. If she knew how to Apparate, she would have put herself at Ginny’s side. Between Ginny and danger.
Sipping at the milk, Luna is aware that this was completely illogical on her part. Most unlike her. Observations:
No. She is too tired for deductions tonight.
As she wishes her mother’s photograph good night, she hopes that her father is safe. This too she realizes is illogical: the battle is over, and besides, he either is safe or he isn’t. Wishing won’t change anything.
Poor Gabrielle. Poor Fleur.
***
Bill looks down at Fleur-at his wife-and does not know what to say. She has been weeping since they left Diagon Alley-weeping at the Ministry, weeping when they got back to the Burrow, weeping since he carried her here to the tent was supposed to be their wedding-night sanctuary.
They are wrapped together, here on the floor, still in their tar-smirched robes.
Fleur is weeping.
There is nothing to say.
Their marriage has been consummated in blood.
Mum has always said that any marriage is made not in the for better, but in the for worse. If you can survive the hard times together, the good times will always be there.
Tomorrow will be better.
***
Hermione sits at the foot of the bed and watches Ron snore.
She would not return to Ginny’s room even if Harry were not there.
Ron can sleep, and Hermione is glad of it; she is too terrified to close her eyes.
The battle was hard enough-getting separated from Ron, pushed to opposite sides of Diagon Alley-and then getting hit by that Blinding Hex like a complete idiot. One of the Delacours pulled her over behind the steps of Gringotts and tried to break the curse-it is a counter-curse that Hermione has known since fifth year, but she couldn’t think of anything but the fact that Ron was alone, trading hexes with the trapped Death Eaters, and so there she lay, blind, listening outraged at the awful things that Lestrange called Fleur and her family, listening in horror when Lestrange killed Mr. Delacour. Fleur’s rage. The battle after. Lying there, terrified that Ron would be hurt-or Harry, or Ginny, or Neville, over in the shop.
Then the fighting stopped and Ron’s wonderful voice asked if she was all right, and he lifted the curse, and Hermione felt so foolish and so grateful to see his face, to see that he wasn’t hurt, that she kissed him, right there in the street in front of everyone, and he kissed her back.
When they all finally returned to the house, the couples separated without speaking-Harry and Ginny to the room below to complete what the alarm had evidently interrupted, and Ron and Hermione to this one. Flushed with adrenaline and grateful to be here, grateful that he was here, that they were both all right, she threw herself at him the minute they cast an Imperturbable Charm on the door.
Hermione knew very clearly what was going to happen, what she was finally ready to admit that she wanted to happen. She wanted to give herself to Ron. To take him into her. To possess and be possessed. Then she began to move her hand to the front of his trousers, to feel, to let him know… But he grabbed her wrist and groaned, “Merlin, Hermione. No.”
She pulled her hand back, and suddenly she felt very foolish. Boys weren’t supposed to be the ones to stop things. She was stupid. She was ugly…
He kissed her again and moaned, “Can’t lose you, Hermione.” He pulled her close to him and held her tight-so tight-and they rocked there on his bright orange bed, holding each other close until he at last fell asleep.
Hermione, however, cannot sleep. Escapades like tonight’s often ruin her sleep, unsurprisingly. But as night begins to pass toward morning she is not replaying the tactical mistakes that she made, looking for better choices; she knows what she did wrong well enough. The questions whirling through her brain all have to do with what has happened to her and Ron, and with what will happen. He cares for her, doesn’t he? Does he? Does he want her? Does he not want her?
She wants him. She wants him very, very badly. And not just in a Platonic or romantic way. She wants all of him. She wants to give him all of herself. From that truth she can no longer hide-her need has battered up against her pride now so ferociously and for so long that her façade is shattered.
Pulling her knees to her chest she stares at him, at his long nose and the lips that have been her torment in so many ways over the past few years. “God, I hate you, Ron.”
***
Ginny watches out her window as Saturn grows bright in the eastern sky, and she groans.
Mistaking the sound, Harry nuzzles muzzily up behind her, his nose finding the back of her ear through her tangled skein of hair. “D’I fall ‘sleep’n’you?”
“No, love,” Ginny whispers, willing the earth to stop spinning, willing her clock to stop its infuriating, incessant clip-clop towards dawn.
It has been so easy, these past few weeks, to forget that this day has been coming, to forget that he and Hermione and Ron are leaving. They’ve only just come, and though she knows it’s selfish of her to want them to stay longer-though she knows that the war needs to end, that tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, are living in fear and in real danger, and that none of them can afford to stand idle, least of all Harry-though she knows all of this, it is so tempting to draw the curtains and turn back the clock, to hide the calendar, to pretend that it is yesterday.
Though she’s not sure whether any of them could survive another day like yesterday.
Poor Phlegm.
And it was such a lovely wedding. Ron twirling a flushed Hermione around the floor. Feeling Harry’s gaze undressing her as she walked down the aisle in her gold frou-frou… Hermione kissing Ron in the middle of Diagon Alley after the battle.
In a few hours they will be gone, and it’ll be her turn to play the patient one, the one left behind. Ginny hates that job. She always has-she has never been overly blessed with patience-and the idea of staying at home without them, of going to school without Ron and Hermione, without Harry, seems unbearable. Waiting…
“Ginny?” His arms pull her close from behind, so that their naked bodies spoon together again. “Can I ask you something?”
She stiffens; here it comes. “Sure, Harry. Sure.” She tries not to start yelling or crying as she clutches his hand between her breasts. “I’ll wait for you. I’ll be careful. I’ll go back to school in November, and I’ll tell everyone I have no idea where you are or what you’re up to, and I won’t try to owl you or Floo-call every other day, and once I start taking Apparition lessons, I won’t start trying to Apparate to headquarters, trying to see how you are.” She turned in his grasp so that they were nose to nose. “But listen to me, Harry: there’s something you have to do for me if I’m going to act so not like me, do you hear?”
Harry’s eyes, which always looked bigger when he wasn’t wearing his glasses, looked enormous. “What, love?”
“You’re going to bloody live, okay?” She finds that the emotion racing through her now is not the fear or sorrow that kept her up after their last frenzied lovemaking session-fury burns at her throat like acid. “You’re going to be careful and not do anything stupid-or noble for that matter-and you're going to get rid of the filthy old bugger and you are going to come back to me, do you hear me, Harry?”
“Yes. I hear.” He kisses her on the forehead and then on the lips, and now she starts to cry. Blast. He kisses her again and pulls her tight, so that her face is buried under his chin; she is in a cocoon of Harry. “I… I hear you. And I’ll do my best. I swear. I will. But…”
She sobs, and even his shoulders begin to quake. “But you can’t bloody promise.”
“No.”
Late last night, when he gave her Fred and George’s map-his dad’s map really-she knew what this was going to look like. Truly, she’s always known: Harry’s life isn’t his. He belongs to everyone but himself.
For now.
“Try,” she hisses into his neck.
“I will. That I can promise.” They hold each other fiercely-closer almost than sex, they are wrapped in each other. After some time-clip-clop-she feels him start to chuckle.
“What?” she asks.
“Well,” he says, “that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”
Backing out of her nest at his throat, she peers up at him; he looks amused and a bit embarrassed. “What?” she asks.
“I mean,” he says, “I do. For me, selfish, I do need to know that you’re going to be okay. But Ginny? Um…”
“What in Merlin’s name, Harry…?”
“Well, what I was going to ask…” He starts to blush in a shade of pink that would do a Weasley proud. “Do you think that I’ve got… You know. A lot of hair. On…”
Ginny has absolutely no idea where this is going or why he happened to think of it. “On… on what, Harry?”
“On, um… You know. My backside.”
Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
He is turning darker and darker red. “See, Fred and George… All summer… They keep saying, ‘Oi, Potter, get your hairy arse over here!’ And then they laugh like crazy. And I just thought…”
“Harry.”
“Uh, yeah?”
“It’s a stupid joke about your name. ‘Get your harry arse…’”
The look on his face as comprehension dawns is so priceless that she can’t help but smile. “I think your backside is just perfect, Harry.”
He kisses her again, this time more passionately. “I like yours too,” he murmurs, rolling her onto her back.
She welcomes him into her, and for a brief span time does stop. And when they are done, Ginny does begin to drift off to sleep. Suddenly she thinks of other things that she wanted to tell Harry, about her, and about him. About the diary and Luna’s mother…
But sleep is pulling her and her limbs are as thick and insubstantial as flowing honey. They will leave in the morning. She will be patient. It will be all right.
***
Just fifty miles away, in the bowels of Malfoy Mansion, Lord Voldemort, Dark Lord and immortal, stares down at the cowering remnant of his raiding party in rage. “Fools,” he shouts. “Imbeciles!”
The four quake at his feet.
Voldemort is tired. Though his plans are progressing, few of them are going as planned. The Order and Potter’s brats have been far more annoying than they have had any right to be.
The Dementors-only half of the original number-have fled back to Wiltshire and are unwilling to leave the grounds.
The flow of recruits has been slowing; the young ones are patently incompetent, and since the debacle of Potter’s birthday have been less than unquestioning in their discipline.
The gold continues to flow-there is still plenty left in the Malfoys’ coffers, but Parkinson has been bleating about difficulties in meeting his quota. Without gold…
And Bellatrix is dead. He finds that he feels-not sad, hardly that-but annoyed in a particularly irksome way at her loss. He does not remember feeling anything like this before his resurrection.
Really, there is only one answer just now. “CRUCIO!”
On the floor before him, four figures twitch and scream.
It does not provide much relief. But it is something.
Title: Night's Candles
Challenge: Fifth Wave-Heaven and Hell
Summary: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day / Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. (After the Death Eaters stage a failed raid on Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes on the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding, it is time to count the cost and look to the future.)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama
Word Count (optional): ~3700 Words
Notes/Warnings: Some mild language and sexual situations. This fic also happens to be a chapter in my NC-17-rated, multi-PoV, multi-ship fic, Back to the Garden (the R-rated, even-more-OBHWF-friendly version, The Wisest Course, is available on Sink Into Your Eyes and Simply Undeniable).
Night’s Candles
When they reach the landing to the room where Remus has taken to sleeping, Tonks leans against the door jam. “Cor, what a night.”
“We didn’t do too badly,” Remus answers, trying very hard not to become mesmerized by the way the scent of sweat, fear and exhilaration flows from her body. “Relatively low casualties on our side. Just a few major injuries.”
“Two dead.” She sighs deeply. “Poor Jebbins. Merlin, poor Fleur. To lose you dad on the night…”
“Yes. That was tragic.” Shuddering, he crosses his arms. Victims of the Killing Curse send off a scent that is so repulsive-he doesn’t know how any of the rest of them can stand it. “What Lestrange was saying-it really was quite foul.”
“Don’t speak Frog, do I?” she says with a sad smirk. “But I still got that. Can’t believe he was one of the ones got away.”
“Well, only four escaped-again, I think we did well. The rest in custody or-”
“Or dead, like my late lamented aunt.” Tonks does not look at all sorry about Bellatrix Lestrange’s death.
A sudden thought strikes Remus. “Does your mother know?”
“Owled her while we were waiting for the paperwork on the prisoners to clear.” Tonks gives a very Tonks-y smirk. “She wrote back, What a shame.”
They share a sad laugh. “Still,” he says, “it’s better that she heard from you.”
“I guess,” Tonks answers with a shrug. “The DA kids were brilliant, don’t you think?”
Remus purses his lips before answering. “Yes,” he says, “but I still wish they hadn’t been there. It wasn’t safe.”
“Nowhere’s safe, Remus,” she says, dark eyes suddenly very intense. “They’ve been training to help, and help they did. It’s because of them that we captured as many as we did.”
Sighing, he says, “Perhaps. I still can’t help wishing they couldn’t still be just, you know, children.”
“You and Molly both,” Tonks laughs. “Neville, though!”
“Neville.” He nods.
She chews on her lip. “Wonder how he’s doing. His first.”
“He mostly seemed fairly stunned.” That no-longer-quite-so-round face slack as the Aurors questioned everyone afterwards. Searching the crowd constantly for-
“Can’t blame him,” sighs Tonks. “She was a right nasty piece of work, our Bella.”
“True.” The Beautiful Black Bitch, Sirius always called her. Though with him, that might have been a compliment-one never knew. “Well,” Remus says at last, “it has been a long night-”
“Remus,” Tonks murmurs, suddenly pressing up against him so that he realizes that the smell of excitement that he sensed was not only the adrenaline rush from the battle, “if you think you’re going into that bed alone, you’ve got another thing coming.” She pulls him through the door, and within moments all sense of fatigue or sorrow are swept from his bed, forgotten on the floor to worry about in the morning with his third-hand dress robes.
***
“I…” Neville keeps staring at his hands, as if they have somehow grown extra fingers. “I killed her.”
“You saved my life,” Susan says, not for the first time.
He looks up into her eyes-rich, solemn, warm-and for a moment the cold mist that he’s felt wrapped in all night melts away. She touches his face and smiles and suddenly…
Suddenly, they are kissing. In her house. In her room. On her bed. Long after midnight. Lips and tongues, skin and satin, swelling against one another and OOooooo…
Neville has spent the last months trying very hard not to think about being in situations like this with Susan-trying and usually failing. He feels like a fraud, like she’s been tricked into thinking he’s a nice boy, but he’s not thinking very nice thoughts just now, no, not at all.
“Neville?” Her hair has come loose from its plait and sprays across the pale blue pillow-her bed matches his robes. Her skin looks like Gran’s damask roses-so white at the chin, so pink at the lips and cheeks. “Neville. What I said before. It was true then. I like you. I like you so much.”
“Like you too.” It is a struggle to speak-all Neville wants to do is… What? He can’t even think what it is that he wants to do, but whatever it is, he’s sure Susan would be horrified to know that he feels this way.
Susan bites her lip. “You look… Did I say something?”
“No!” Now he finds himself touching her cheek, trying to say something with his fingers that he doesn’t know how to say in words without sounding stupid. “No, I just… This is… I’m just a little over my head, here, you know.”
She nods seriously. “Me too.”
“Really?”
She nods again and her mouth pouts so cutely that he can’t keep himself from kissing her once more. Or twice. It really is that nice. Every time.
A few minutes later he backs up. It’s important to tell her now, so she won’t be hurt. “Susan,” he says, “I… I did kiss Ginny Weasley once. Under the mistletoe. Fourth year.”
“Oh.” She blinks at him. “Well, Justin and I kissed a couple of times at the beginning of last year. Before he and Hannah started going together.” Frowning she adds, “And Zach tried to put his tongue in my mouth once after the Halloween Feast this past year. But I made him stop.”
“Smith?” She nods, and the same fury that filled him when he saw that awful woman standing over Susan begins to burn in his gut again. “That… How did you stop him?”
“Jelly-legs Jinx. It was actually very funny.” She says this so seriously that in spite of his anger, in spite of the feel of her body against his, he begins to giggle; at first her eyes fly wide, and then she too begins to laugh.
They roll across the bed together, laughing manically, her hair flying around them, and soon, of course, they are kissing again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Susan says finally. “Me kissing those other boys. It wasn’t anything like this. Like what I feel now.”
“No. Me either.”
“I like you, Neville.”
“Me too,” he answers. “I mean, I like you. Like-you like you, you know?”
She nods. “I’m… I’m glad.” She bites her lip again as she looks deeply into his eyes. “I trust you, Neville. I… You… don’t want to do anything more than kiss… do you?”
“No!” he gasps. Oh, Merlin, now she’s planted a whole new crop of images in his fertile brain. In spite of himself, his hand creeps up a half an inch from where it has been resting on her ribs, not quite reaching the place where her chest swells outward-not quite, but almost. “I mean, not that I wouldn’t, you know, like to. With you. Because…”
“Good,” she says, nodding again. “I mean, maybe… But I don’t think…”
“Not yet.” Not because he was the first one into the room where Mrs. Lestrange was threatening her. Not because she was grateful… But Merlin, her skin, and the warmth of her, breath like orchids…
“No, definitely. Not yet.” They lie there, nose to nose, belly to belly, and Neville’s body is doing its best to crack that resolve, to turn him into Zacharias Smith. Then she smiles in a way that makes Neville’s head light. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t kiss some more.”
Neither of them speaks again for quite a long while.
***
Teddy is sitting right where he was when Eri left, in the big kitchen chair that their mother used to stay up in when Daddy was out. “It’s two in the morning,” he snaps.
“I had to wait until everyone got back; I couldn’t leave Gabrielle alone.” She kicks off the shoes-they were Mother’s too-and rubs her feet. Dancing is fun, but very hard work. “Especially not after her father died.”
Teddy’s scowl falls. “Her… father.”
“Yes,” Eri says. “There was an attack on Diagon Alley, and of course Luna had to help, and so I stayed with Gabrielle. Harry Potter danced with Gabrielle, it made her very happy, even though she knows that it isn’t meant to be.”
Teddy is scowling again. He always scowls.
“Then everyone got back, and Monsieur Delacour was killed, so I had to stay a while longer. And Madam Lestrange got tossed out a window by Neville Longbottom and died.”
“Oh,” says Teddy; he seems to be having trouble following her. He must be tired. “Good riddance.”
“Yes, Luna thought so too. I never met her. But Luna said that she was rather unpleasant.”
For some reason, this makes Teddy laugh.
Yawning, Eri shakes her hair out of the French braid that he helped her to put it in all those hours ago. “Come along, Teddy. I’m very tired. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Yes,” he answers, more agreeable than usual. “But you’re all right?”
“Yes, Teddy,” Eri answers, kissing him on the cheek, “I’m fine.” She reaches her room. No bath tonight. It’s too late. “Good night, Teddy. I’m glad we joined the DA. I wouldn’t want you to have been one of the Death Eaters tonight.”
Her brother shakes his head grimly as he opens the door across from hers. “No. Good night, Eri.”
***
Luna comes home to find a glass of milk and a note from her father: There’s a story brewing in Diagon Alley-I need do some digging with some of my contacts at the Ministry to see whether Scrimgeour’s vampire claque were involved. Have some milk. I’ll see you in the morning.
She wonders how he will feel when he realizes that she was part of the story. He will most likely interview her. Perhaps she will be able to interview Ginny again. And Harry. Yes.
It occurs to Luna that watching them not looking at each other was actually more sexually exciting than seeing them after they had been disturbed in the Burrow, Ginny with her hair undone, Harry with his shirt open, both of them giving off that distinctive scent that Luna has begun to identify with them lately. Is wanting somehow more exciting than actually having? Perhaps not for the people who are actually doing the wanting and having.
When Ginny ran first into the front room of the store, and the twins and Harry and Falnak pushed in front of Luna, Luna felt quite impatient. No, more than impatient: desperate. If she knew how to Apparate, she would have put herself at Ginny’s side. Between Ginny and danger.
Sipping at the milk, Luna is aware that this was completely illogical on her part. Most unlike her. Observations:
No. She is too tired for deductions tonight.
As she wishes her mother’s photograph good night, she hopes that her father is safe. This too she realizes is illogical: the battle is over, and besides, he either is safe or he isn’t. Wishing won’t change anything.
Poor Gabrielle. Poor Fleur.
***
Bill looks down at Fleur-at his wife-and does not know what to say. She has been weeping since they left Diagon Alley-weeping at the Ministry, weeping when they got back to the Burrow, weeping since he carried her here to the tent was supposed to be their wedding-night sanctuary.
They are wrapped together, here on the floor, still in their tar-smirched robes.
Fleur is weeping.
There is nothing to say.
Their marriage has been consummated in blood.
Mum has always said that any marriage is made not in the for better, but in the for worse. If you can survive the hard times together, the good times will always be there.
Tomorrow will be better.
***
Hermione sits at the foot of the bed and watches Ron snore.
She would not return to Ginny’s room even if Harry were not there.
Ron can sleep, and Hermione is glad of it; she is too terrified to close her eyes.
The battle was hard enough-getting separated from Ron, pushed to opposite sides of Diagon Alley-and then getting hit by that Blinding Hex like a complete idiot. One of the Delacours pulled her over behind the steps of Gringotts and tried to break the curse-it is a counter-curse that Hermione has known since fifth year, but she couldn’t think of anything but the fact that Ron was alone, trading hexes with the trapped Death Eaters, and so there she lay, blind, listening outraged at the awful things that Lestrange called Fleur and her family, listening in horror when Lestrange killed Mr. Delacour. Fleur’s rage. The battle after. Lying there, terrified that Ron would be hurt-or Harry, or Ginny, or Neville, over in the shop.
Then the fighting stopped and Ron’s wonderful voice asked if she was all right, and he lifted the curse, and Hermione felt so foolish and so grateful to see his face, to see that he wasn’t hurt, that she kissed him, right there in the street in front of everyone, and he kissed her back.
When they all finally returned to the house, the couples separated without speaking-Harry and Ginny to the room below to complete what the alarm had evidently interrupted, and Ron and Hermione to this one. Flushed with adrenaline and grateful to be here, grateful that he was here, that they were both all right, she threw herself at him the minute they cast an Imperturbable Charm on the door.
Hermione knew very clearly what was going to happen, what she was finally ready to admit that she wanted to happen. She wanted to give herself to Ron. To take him into her. To possess and be possessed. Then she began to move her hand to the front of his trousers, to feel, to let him know… But he grabbed her wrist and groaned, “Merlin, Hermione. No.”
She pulled her hand back, and suddenly she felt very foolish. Boys weren’t supposed to be the ones to stop things. She was stupid. She was ugly…
He kissed her again and moaned, “Can’t lose you, Hermione.” He pulled her close to him and held her tight-so tight-and they rocked there on his bright orange bed, holding each other close until he at last fell asleep.
Hermione, however, cannot sleep. Escapades like tonight’s often ruin her sleep, unsurprisingly. But as night begins to pass toward morning she is not replaying the tactical mistakes that she made, looking for better choices; she knows what she did wrong well enough. The questions whirling through her brain all have to do with what has happened to her and Ron, and with what will happen. He cares for her, doesn’t he? Does he? Does he want her? Does he not want her?
She wants him. She wants him very, very badly. And not just in a Platonic or romantic way. She wants all of him. She wants to give him all of herself. From that truth she can no longer hide-her need has battered up against her pride now so ferociously and for so long that her façade is shattered.
Pulling her knees to her chest she stares at him, at his long nose and the lips that have been her torment in so many ways over the past few years. “God, I hate you, Ron.”
***
Ginny watches out her window as Saturn grows bright in the eastern sky, and she groans.
Mistaking the sound, Harry nuzzles muzzily up behind her, his nose finding the back of her ear through her tangled skein of hair. “D’I fall ‘sleep’n’you?”
“No, love,” Ginny whispers, willing the earth to stop spinning, willing her clock to stop its infuriating, incessant clip-clop towards dawn.
It has been so easy, these past few weeks, to forget that this day has been coming, to forget that he and Hermione and Ron are leaving. They’ve only just come, and though she knows it’s selfish of her to want them to stay longer-though she knows that the war needs to end, that tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, are living in fear and in real danger, and that none of them can afford to stand idle, least of all Harry-though she knows all of this, it is so tempting to draw the curtains and turn back the clock, to hide the calendar, to pretend that it is yesterday.
Though she’s not sure whether any of them could survive another day like yesterday.
Poor Phlegm.
And it was such a lovely wedding. Ron twirling a flushed Hermione around the floor. Feeling Harry’s gaze undressing her as she walked down the aisle in her gold frou-frou… Hermione kissing Ron in the middle of Diagon Alley after the battle.
In a few hours they will be gone, and it’ll be her turn to play the patient one, the one left behind. Ginny hates that job. She always has-she has never been overly blessed with patience-and the idea of staying at home without them, of going to school without Ron and Hermione, without Harry, seems unbearable. Waiting…
“Ginny?” His arms pull her close from behind, so that their naked bodies spoon together again. “Can I ask you something?”
She stiffens; here it comes. “Sure, Harry. Sure.” She tries not to start yelling or crying as she clutches his hand between her breasts. “I’ll wait for you. I’ll be careful. I’ll go back to school in November, and I’ll tell everyone I have no idea where you are or what you’re up to, and I won’t try to owl you or Floo-call every other day, and once I start taking Apparition lessons, I won’t start trying to Apparate to headquarters, trying to see how you are.” She turned in his grasp so that they were nose to nose. “But listen to me, Harry: there’s something you have to do for me if I’m going to act so not like me, do you hear?”
Harry’s eyes, which always looked bigger when he wasn’t wearing his glasses, looked enormous. “What, love?”
“You’re going to bloody live, okay?” She finds that the emotion racing through her now is not the fear or sorrow that kept her up after their last frenzied lovemaking session-fury burns at her throat like acid. “You’re going to be careful and not do anything stupid-or noble for that matter-and you're going to get rid of the filthy old bugger and you are going to come back to me, do you hear me, Harry?”
“Yes. I hear.” He kisses her on the forehead and then on the lips, and now she starts to cry. Blast. He kisses her again and pulls her tight, so that her face is buried under his chin; she is in a cocoon of Harry. “I… I hear you. And I’ll do my best. I swear. I will. But…”
She sobs, and even his shoulders begin to quake. “But you can’t bloody promise.”
“No.”
Late last night, when he gave her Fred and George’s map-his dad’s map really-she knew what this was going to look like. Truly, she’s always known: Harry’s life isn’t his. He belongs to everyone but himself.
For now.
“Try,” she hisses into his neck.
“I will. That I can promise.” They hold each other fiercely-closer almost than sex, they are wrapped in each other. After some time-clip-clop-she feels him start to chuckle.
“What?” she asks.
“Well,” he says, “that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”
Backing out of her nest at his throat, she peers up at him; he looks amused and a bit embarrassed. “What?” she asks.
“I mean,” he says, “I do. For me, selfish, I do need to know that you’re going to be okay. But Ginny? Um…”
“What in Merlin’s name, Harry…?”
“Well, what I was going to ask…” He starts to blush in a shade of pink that would do a Weasley proud. “Do you think that I’ve got… You know. A lot of hair. On…”
Ginny has absolutely no idea where this is going or why he happened to think of it. “On… on what, Harry?”
“On, um… You know. My backside.”
Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
He is turning darker and darker red. “See, Fred and George… All summer… They keep saying, ‘Oi, Potter, get your hairy arse over here!’ And then they laugh like crazy. And I just thought…”
“Harry.”
“Uh, yeah?”
“It’s a stupid joke about your name. ‘Get your harry arse…’”
The look on his face as comprehension dawns is so priceless that she can’t help but smile. “I think your backside is just perfect, Harry.”
He kisses her again, this time more passionately. “I like yours too,” he murmurs, rolling her onto her back.
She welcomes him into her, and for a brief span time does stop. And when they are done, Ginny does begin to drift off to sleep. Suddenly she thinks of other things that she wanted to tell Harry, about her, and about him. About the diary and Luna’s mother…
But sleep is pulling her and her limbs are as thick and insubstantial as flowing honey. They will leave in the morning. She will be patient. It will be all right.
***
Just fifty miles away, in the bowels of Malfoy Mansion, Lord Voldemort, Dark Lord and immortal, stares down at the cowering remnant of his raiding party in rage. “Fools,” he shouts. “Imbeciles!”
The four quake at his feet.
Voldemort is tired. Though his plans are progressing, few of them are going as planned. The Order and Potter’s brats have been far more annoying than they have had any right to be.
The Dementors-only half of the original number-have fled back to Wiltshire and are unwilling to leave the grounds.
The flow of recruits has been slowing; the young ones are patently incompetent, and since the debacle of Potter’s birthday have been less than unquestioning in their discipline.
The gold continues to flow-there is still plenty left in the Malfoys’ coffers, but Parkinson has been bleating about difficulties in meeting his quota. Without gold…
And Bellatrix is dead. He finds that he feels-not sad, hardly that-but annoyed in a particularly irksome way at her loss. He does not remember feeling anything like this before his resurrection.
Really, there is only one answer just now. “CRUCIO!”
On the floor before him, four figures twitch and scream.
It does not provide much relief. But it is something.