'December ’63 (Oh What A Night)', Harry/Ginny, all ages (sequel to 'I've Never Asked')
Title: December ‘63 (Oh What A Night)
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Summary: Tonight, Harry’s daughter is going out. But the ghost of a long-dead parent is going to follow her. Written pre-DH.
Rating: all ages
Word Count: 2368
Disclaimer: JKR’s. Not mine.
Notes: This is the sequel to ‘I’ve Never Asked’. It’s just as weird as the last one. Beta’d by excitedrainbow (♥) and dedicated to G (♥), who is almost as cool as Frank. Almost.
December ’63 (Oh What A Night)
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I stop in the middle of the kitchen, shift my bag on my shoulder and turn to face my mother. Feigning well-practiced nonchalance, I cross my fingers in my pocket.
The only way I’m going to get away with this at all is by acting a bit guilty. “What?”
Her eyes narrow.
“Fine,” I say, trying to look caught. “I’m going to Frank’s.”
“To stay over?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yes I did. Yesterday.”
“Wasn’t that about next week?”
“No. I meant tonight.”
“But what about your OWL results?”
“I’ll be back in time - promise! Come on, Mum,” I plead against her unrelenting expression,
and for a horrifying second I actually believe she’s going to keep me in. “We’re just having a sleepover. To take my mind off it - you know.”
Imperceptibly to all but the most seasoned experts, her face softens. “Make sure you’re back for ten tomorrow morning,” she says. I beam at her and turn to go. “I mean it! Hermione’s coming round, remember? There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to stop her from ripping open the envelope herself if it gets here before you do.”
I pause, despite myself. “Does she have to come?”
“She can’t do this with her own daughter for ten years,” says Mum. “What did you expect?”
I pause, and she gives me a look. “Are you going, or not?”
“Oh - yeah.” I dart into the living room.
“Have a nice time!”
“Yeah - bye!” I call back, and pretend to fuss with my bag as I wait for her to go upstairs.
The second I hear her bedroom door close, I grab the pot, toss some Floo powder into the grate, step into the warm flames and whisper, “The Leaky Cauldron.”
Five seconds later I’m expelled into the midst of the ram-packed pub. Dusting soot from my outfit and keeping my head down, I whip through to the courtyard at the back, tap the brick and enter the cool, dark, mostly silent Diagon Alley.
I dash round the corner and down a side street. Frank’s leaning against a wall and smoking a Gauloise.
“Took your time,” he says as I fumble for the heels in my bag and crouch in the gutter to switch them for my trainers.
“Sorry, sorry, Mum decided to give me a hard time,” I pant, gasping for air, as I totter to my feet. “Have you got it?”
“Of course.” He reaches into his jacket and withdraws the stiff, rectangular piece of parchment. I take it off him and turn it this way and that in the dim amber light cast by the street-lamp; my picture winks up at me as I examine the seal in the corner. “Tonight, you go to Beauxbatons,” he says. “I changed your surname, as well.”
I check it: apparently, I am now a Delacour.
“Changed mine, too,” he says, pulling his own from his pocket with a flourish. “Weasley’s as much of a curse as Potter, some places.” He takes another drag on his foul-smelling cigarette. “Ready?”
“Hang on a sec -” I fling off my coat and stuff it into my bag.
He eyes my skirt and raises his eyebrows. “What would your mother say?”
I give him a shove and he retaliates by lightly poking my shoulder: the flick of his finger is enough to make me stumble in these ridiculous shoes, and out of the corner of my eye I see him smirk.
Round three corners, passing the occasional couple or rowdy group of friends, and suddenly we’re there: about halfway down Chitterton Alley, crowds of people are being nodded into the stylish-looking bar Frank has assured me of.
“Show no fear,” he whispers in my ear, and as I push my shoulders back and my chest out, we saunter up to the door.
The bouncer looks us up and down. I avoid his eyes and stare at his nametag. It says G. Goyle.
“You got any ID?” he says eventually.
“Oh - yeah,” I say, reaching into my bag and pulling it out as if mildly confused as to why an über-confident eighteen-and-a-half-year-old such as I would be being ID’d.
He examines them both, and looks up into our faces.
After a long moment, he nods and takes a half step to the side so that we can pass.
And we’re in: walking through a plush foyer bit and into the stainless steel interior. The room is lit with blue and there’s a long bar down one side, with a few groups of people standing around attempting to talk to each other over the loud music.
I’m tempted to do a victory dance, and Frank knows it. He grabs my elbow. “Don’t ruin it.”
I glance around the room. To be honest, it looks a bit dead. “So when are your friends getting here?”
“Already here,” he says as he sizes up girls on the other side of the room from through his fringe. “There’ll be through there.”
Sure enough, when I look in the direction in which he’s nodding, I see an archway at the other side of the room, at the end of the bar, revealing a darker room from which the music seems to be emanating. I can just about glimpse another bar - one that’s a lot more crowded.
He flashes me a grin. “Come on, then.”
“Don’t you want a drink?”
“Later. Let’s find them first.”
So we head off up towards the next, somewhat noisier, room of this ‘bar-club-pub place’, Frank
shooting quick smiles at pretty girls as we pass. We’re strolling past the bar, cool as cucumbers, when above the barmen, something catches my eye.
“Wait -” I grab Frank’s sleeve.
“What?” he asks; then, his eyes follow mine to the row of black and white photographs hanging on the wall above the bar. “Hey, is that -”
“My celebrity photos?” asks one of the barmen; I look away and stare at the speaker, slightly shell-shocked. He’s a silver-haired man with a friendly smile, leaning over the counter and wiping a glass with a rag. “I’ve been collecting them for thirty-five years. Here’s the most recent -”
He points to the end of the row, nearest the archway leading to the next room. Most of them depict him (a variety of outfits, hairstyles and wrinkles displaying the timeline) shaking hands vigorously with some sort of famous visitor to what I now assume is his bar.
All except the one that caught my eye.
Two left of the centrepiece, between Gwenog Jones and Kirley McCormack Duke, a teenage boy with messy dark hair and glasses grins back at me bemusedly.
I swallow. “So is that … that’s Harry Potter?”
He grins. “Yep! The Boy-Who-Lived himself. What can I get you?”
“Oh, we’re just … going through to meet …” I gesture helplessly at the next room.
“Actually, I’ll have an Ogden’s, please,” says Frank, pulling a galleon from his back pocket, and twin waves of annoyance and gratefulness towards my cousin rush through me.
“So, this photo,” says Frank, leaning onto the bar.
“That’s the one people always want to know about,” says the barman with a knowing smile at the wide eyes of the young customers. “You wouldn’t guess it, but I almost didn’t get that one. Very cagey, he was, refused to have his picture taken - you’ll notice I’m not in it. But then,” he adds, eyes twinkling, “he loosened up a little, if you know what I mean … and allowed me to take it.”
Harry Potter - my father - grins down at us, sitting at the very bar at which we now stand with his hand on his drink, his eyes relaxed, his hair sticking up. The bar looks darker, seedier, grottier than it does now, but it’s unmistakeably the same place.
He looks as if he’s on the brink of laughing, but he never actually does; just blinks a bit, and looks to his side. He can’t be more than seventeen.
Well, obviously.
“You know,” says the barman, warming to his theme as he passes Frank his drink and takes his money, “ta, son - that could well be one of the very last photos taken of Harry Potter.”
Under the photo, a small plaque reads 12TH OCTOBER 1997. The war didn’t end until the July of 1998, but the old man could well be telling the truth.
The very last photo I’ve seen is one taken around the Christmas of ’96 by one of my uncles, but Harry’s only a tiny background figure. Engorging the picture just makes him go blurry.
“People ask me all sorts of questions,” the barman winks, and even though part of me wants to run away before he launches into what is obviously a well-practiced routine about my dad, I can’t quite force my feet to move. “You wouldn’t believe … what did he drink, was he a regular, how late did he stay, what on earth was he doing in a pub when he had a war to fight … I’ll tell you what I tell everyone,” he says, and I wonder if there are questions I’m supposed to be asking. “I think, after all he did for us, he was allowed one night off.”
Harry’s smile widens. Such a brave young man. You must be very proud, young lady.
After all he did for us.
“Yes, I’m sorry to say it was only the once I had the privilege of meeting him. I didn’t speak to him too much, I must admit - these were days in which you didn’t speak to any strangers, of course, no matter how famous they were - and besides …” He breaks off, smiling mischievously. “He didn’t really want to be disturbed, what with his girl, and all.”
Just at that second, photo-Harry leans down and whispers something in the ear of the person sitting next to him, who turns and comes into the frame. His girl. Mum. Ginny.
She looks at me almost suspiciously, thick hair down on her shoulders, eyes outlined in too much eyeliner.
“That’s the one that went on to have his baby, you know,” says the barman in a low voice, returning to the wiping of his glass. “And, well -” He leans forward with a confidential air. “To be honest, she’s the one I get asked the most questions about. I’m sure you two can imagine the sort of thing. And - and this is the truth - I’ll tell you what I’ve told everyone else who’s asked about that picture in the last twenty years: what were they to each other, etcetera, etcetera … Here. I know love - I’ve seen an awful lot of it. And with him and her -”
Harry puts his arm around her; she looks out at the bar defiantly.
“ - that’s what it was. Completely.”
It’s stupid, but my heart twists.
“See, that’s why he wouldn’t let me get my camera out. Very protective. Of course, that changed once I got a few drinks down him.” The barman reaches for another glass. “It’s a nice picture, isn’t it?”
They look quite glamorous, as a couple: the black and white photograph, framed and hung up among all these other stars; her huge, artificially dark eyes and ridiculously nineties sequinned top. Their moment of the war has been captured very well: defensive and scared, but at the same time, foolhardy.
They’re two people I don’t know. They’re a couple - Harry and Ginny - not a pair of parents.
The barman ducks down behind the counter and Frank draws closer to me, probably to ask if we can move on yet.
“Hey …” he mutters. “Not meaning to be gross or anything, but look at the date.”
“What about it?”
He grins. “Count forwards nine months and two days.”
Nine months and two -
Oh.
Oh.
“It’s a pity he died, isn’t it?” the barman asks, emerging from behind the counter, seemingly oblivious to our whispered exchange. “Inevitable, though, I suppose.”
I look down at my hands. I can’t answer that.
“They say she never got over him, you know,” he says, gesturing towards the photograph. He nods like one all knowing. “I can see that.”
I can’t answer that, either.
“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he asks. His Harry Potter repertoire has seemingly come to a close.
“No, er, I’ll - I’ll just …”
I back away, away from their slightly drunken grins and fierce wartime suspicion, away from their whispers and their hauntingly frozen yet alive eyes, and Frank quickly catches up with me in the walk to the next room.
As we go under the archway we’re met with a cheer, and a group of boys who surely should have been chucked out by now shout our names from where they sit, crammed around a table in a far corner.
Frank grins. “Sure you don’t want a drink? I’m paying.”
“Give me half an hour.”
“Come on!” yells one of Frank’s friends from the corner. Thank God this place is so noisy we can barely hear him. “Hurry up with the gold, man!”
Looking out at his friends, Frank pulls out another of his pretentious French cigarettes, seemingly not ready to go and join them. He lights it, takes a drag, and turns his keen eyes to me. “Are you all right?”
I avoid his gaze and look out at the crowded bar, at the dancing couples and the groups of friends, leaning over tables to shout drunkenly at each other over the music. Unbidden, all of the questions that have often plagued me rise to the forefront of my mind. Did they dance, drink, socialise? How often did they kiss? Did they ever have conversations? Were they more friends than lovers? What did they think of each other?
Maybe I won’t feel like this in the morning - but tonight, it feels like it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Yeah,” I say. I look at the seething mass of soon-to-be fifth years in the corner, waiting to greet us and swallow our evening. Suddenly, I feel a grin tug at my lips. “Yeah, I am.”
FIN
Notes: The Ron/Hermione sequel/prequel, 'The Dead Boy' can be found here.
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Summary: Tonight, Harry’s daughter is going out. But the ghost of a long-dead parent is going to follow her. Written pre-DH.
Rating: all ages
Word Count: 2368
Disclaimer: JKR’s. Not mine.
Notes: This is the sequel to ‘I’ve Never Asked’. It’s just as weird as the last one. Beta’d by excitedrainbow (♥) and dedicated to G (♥), who is almost as cool as Frank. Almost.
December ’63 (Oh What A Night)
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I stop in the middle of the kitchen, shift my bag on my shoulder and turn to face my mother. Feigning well-practiced nonchalance, I cross my fingers in my pocket.
The only way I’m going to get away with this at all is by acting a bit guilty. “What?”
Her eyes narrow.
“Fine,” I say, trying to look caught. “I’m going to Frank’s.”
“To stay over?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yes I did. Yesterday.”
“Wasn’t that about next week?”
“No. I meant tonight.”
“But what about your OWL results?”
“I’ll be back in time - promise! Come on, Mum,” I plead against her unrelenting expression,
and for a horrifying second I actually believe she’s going to keep me in. “We’re just having a sleepover. To take my mind off it - you know.”
Imperceptibly to all but the most seasoned experts, her face softens. “Make sure you’re back for ten tomorrow morning,” she says. I beam at her and turn to go. “I mean it! Hermione’s coming round, remember? There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to stop her from ripping open the envelope herself if it gets here before you do.”
I pause, despite myself. “Does she have to come?”
“She can’t do this with her own daughter for ten years,” says Mum. “What did you expect?”
I pause, and she gives me a look. “Are you going, or not?”
“Oh - yeah.” I dart into the living room.
“Have a nice time!”
“Yeah - bye!” I call back, and pretend to fuss with my bag as I wait for her to go upstairs.
The second I hear her bedroom door close, I grab the pot, toss some Floo powder into the grate, step into the warm flames and whisper, “The Leaky Cauldron.”
Five seconds later I’m expelled into the midst of the ram-packed pub. Dusting soot from my outfit and keeping my head down, I whip through to the courtyard at the back, tap the brick and enter the cool, dark, mostly silent Diagon Alley.
I dash round the corner and down a side street. Frank’s leaning against a wall and smoking a Gauloise.
“Took your time,” he says as I fumble for the heels in my bag and crouch in the gutter to switch them for my trainers.
“Sorry, sorry, Mum decided to give me a hard time,” I pant, gasping for air, as I totter to my feet. “Have you got it?”
“Of course.” He reaches into his jacket and withdraws the stiff, rectangular piece of parchment. I take it off him and turn it this way and that in the dim amber light cast by the street-lamp; my picture winks up at me as I examine the seal in the corner. “Tonight, you go to Beauxbatons,” he says. “I changed your surname, as well.”
I check it: apparently, I am now a Delacour.
“Changed mine, too,” he says, pulling his own from his pocket with a flourish. “Weasley’s as much of a curse as Potter, some places.” He takes another drag on his foul-smelling cigarette. “Ready?”
“Hang on a sec -” I fling off my coat and stuff it into my bag.
He eyes my skirt and raises his eyebrows. “What would your mother say?”
I give him a shove and he retaliates by lightly poking my shoulder: the flick of his finger is enough to make me stumble in these ridiculous shoes, and out of the corner of my eye I see him smirk.
Round three corners, passing the occasional couple or rowdy group of friends, and suddenly we’re there: about halfway down Chitterton Alley, crowds of people are being nodded into the stylish-looking bar Frank has assured me of.
“Show no fear,” he whispers in my ear, and as I push my shoulders back and my chest out, we saunter up to the door.
The bouncer looks us up and down. I avoid his eyes and stare at his nametag. It says G. Goyle.
“You got any ID?” he says eventually.
“Oh - yeah,” I say, reaching into my bag and pulling it out as if mildly confused as to why an über-confident eighteen-and-a-half-year-old such as I would be being ID’d.
He examines them both, and looks up into our faces.
After a long moment, he nods and takes a half step to the side so that we can pass.
And we’re in: walking through a plush foyer bit and into the stainless steel interior. The room is lit with blue and there’s a long bar down one side, with a few groups of people standing around attempting to talk to each other over the loud music.
I’m tempted to do a victory dance, and Frank knows it. He grabs my elbow. “Don’t ruin it.”
I glance around the room. To be honest, it looks a bit dead. “So when are your friends getting here?”
“Already here,” he says as he sizes up girls on the other side of the room from through his fringe. “There’ll be through there.”
Sure enough, when I look in the direction in which he’s nodding, I see an archway at the other side of the room, at the end of the bar, revealing a darker room from which the music seems to be emanating. I can just about glimpse another bar - one that’s a lot more crowded.
He flashes me a grin. “Come on, then.”
“Don’t you want a drink?”
“Later. Let’s find them first.”
So we head off up towards the next, somewhat noisier, room of this ‘bar-club-pub place’, Frank
shooting quick smiles at pretty girls as we pass. We’re strolling past the bar, cool as cucumbers, when above the barmen, something catches my eye.
“Wait -” I grab Frank’s sleeve.
“What?” he asks; then, his eyes follow mine to the row of black and white photographs hanging on the wall above the bar. “Hey, is that -”
“My celebrity photos?” asks one of the barmen; I look away and stare at the speaker, slightly shell-shocked. He’s a silver-haired man with a friendly smile, leaning over the counter and wiping a glass with a rag. “I’ve been collecting them for thirty-five years. Here’s the most recent -”
He points to the end of the row, nearest the archway leading to the next room. Most of them depict him (a variety of outfits, hairstyles and wrinkles displaying the timeline) shaking hands vigorously with some sort of famous visitor to what I now assume is his bar.
All except the one that caught my eye.
Two left of the centrepiece, between Gwenog Jones and Kirley McCormack Duke, a teenage boy with messy dark hair and glasses grins back at me bemusedly.
I swallow. “So is that … that’s Harry Potter?”
He grins. “Yep! The Boy-Who-Lived himself. What can I get you?”
“Oh, we’re just … going through to meet …” I gesture helplessly at the next room.
“Actually, I’ll have an Ogden’s, please,” says Frank, pulling a galleon from his back pocket, and twin waves of annoyance and gratefulness towards my cousin rush through me.
“So, this photo,” says Frank, leaning onto the bar.
“That’s the one people always want to know about,” says the barman with a knowing smile at the wide eyes of the young customers. “You wouldn’t guess it, but I almost didn’t get that one. Very cagey, he was, refused to have his picture taken - you’ll notice I’m not in it. But then,” he adds, eyes twinkling, “he loosened up a little, if you know what I mean … and allowed me to take it.”
Harry Potter - my father - grins down at us, sitting at the very bar at which we now stand with his hand on his drink, his eyes relaxed, his hair sticking up. The bar looks darker, seedier, grottier than it does now, but it’s unmistakeably the same place.
He looks as if he’s on the brink of laughing, but he never actually does; just blinks a bit, and looks to his side. He can’t be more than seventeen.
Well, obviously.
“You know,” says the barman, warming to his theme as he passes Frank his drink and takes his money, “ta, son - that could well be one of the very last photos taken of Harry Potter.”
Under the photo, a small plaque reads 12TH OCTOBER 1997. The war didn’t end until the July of 1998, but the old man could well be telling the truth.
The very last photo I’ve seen is one taken around the Christmas of ’96 by one of my uncles, but Harry’s only a tiny background figure. Engorging the picture just makes him go blurry.
“People ask me all sorts of questions,” the barman winks, and even though part of me wants to run away before he launches into what is obviously a well-practiced routine about my dad, I can’t quite force my feet to move. “You wouldn’t believe … what did he drink, was he a regular, how late did he stay, what on earth was he doing in a pub when he had a war to fight … I’ll tell you what I tell everyone,” he says, and I wonder if there are questions I’m supposed to be asking. “I think, after all he did for us, he was allowed one night off.”
Harry’s smile widens. Such a brave young man. You must be very proud, young lady.
After all he did for us.
“Yes, I’m sorry to say it was only the once I had the privilege of meeting him. I didn’t speak to him too much, I must admit - these were days in which you didn’t speak to any strangers, of course, no matter how famous they were - and besides …” He breaks off, smiling mischievously. “He didn’t really want to be disturbed, what with his girl, and all.”
Just at that second, photo-Harry leans down and whispers something in the ear of the person sitting next to him, who turns and comes into the frame. His girl. Mum. Ginny.
She looks at me almost suspiciously, thick hair down on her shoulders, eyes outlined in too much eyeliner.
“That’s the one that went on to have his baby, you know,” says the barman in a low voice, returning to the wiping of his glass. “And, well -” He leans forward with a confidential air. “To be honest, she’s the one I get asked the most questions about. I’m sure you two can imagine the sort of thing. And - and this is the truth - I’ll tell you what I’ve told everyone else who’s asked about that picture in the last twenty years: what were they to each other, etcetera, etcetera … Here. I know love - I’ve seen an awful lot of it. And with him and her -”
Harry puts his arm around her; she looks out at the bar defiantly.
“ - that’s what it was. Completely.”
It’s stupid, but my heart twists.
“See, that’s why he wouldn’t let me get my camera out. Very protective. Of course, that changed once I got a few drinks down him.” The barman reaches for another glass. “It’s a nice picture, isn’t it?”
They look quite glamorous, as a couple: the black and white photograph, framed and hung up among all these other stars; her huge, artificially dark eyes and ridiculously nineties sequinned top. Their moment of the war has been captured very well: defensive and scared, but at the same time, foolhardy.
They’re two people I don’t know. They’re a couple - Harry and Ginny - not a pair of parents.
The barman ducks down behind the counter and Frank draws closer to me, probably to ask if we can move on yet.
“Hey …” he mutters. “Not meaning to be gross or anything, but look at the date.”
“What about it?”
He grins. “Count forwards nine months and two days.”
Nine months and two -
Oh.
Oh.
“It’s a pity he died, isn’t it?” the barman asks, emerging from behind the counter, seemingly oblivious to our whispered exchange. “Inevitable, though, I suppose.”
I look down at my hands. I can’t answer that.
“They say she never got over him, you know,” he says, gesturing towards the photograph. He nods like one all knowing. “I can see that.”
I can’t answer that, either.
“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he asks. His Harry Potter repertoire has seemingly come to a close.
“No, er, I’ll - I’ll just …”
I back away, away from their slightly drunken grins and fierce wartime suspicion, away from their whispers and their hauntingly frozen yet alive eyes, and Frank quickly catches up with me in the walk to the next room.
As we go under the archway we’re met with a cheer, and a group of boys who surely should have been chucked out by now shout our names from where they sit, crammed around a table in a far corner.
Frank grins. “Sure you don’t want a drink? I’m paying.”
“Give me half an hour.”
“Come on!” yells one of Frank’s friends from the corner. Thank God this place is so noisy we can barely hear him. “Hurry up with the gold, man!”
Looking out at his friends, Frank pulls out another of his pretentious French cigarettes, seemingly not ready to go and join them. He lights it, takes a drag, and turns his keen eyes to me. “Are you all right?”
I avoid his gaze and look out at the crowded bar, at the dancing couples and the groups of friends, leaning over tables to shout drunkenly at each other over the music. Unbidden, all of the questions that have often plagued me rise to the forefront of my mind. Did they dance, drink, socialise? How often did they kiss? Did they ever have conversations? Were they more friends than lovers? What did they think of each other?
Maybe I won’t feel like this in the morning - but tonight, it feels like it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Yeah,” I say. I look at the seething mass of soon-to-be fifth years in the corner, waiting to greet us and swallow our evening. Suddenly, I feel a grin tug at my lips. “Yeah, I am.”
FIN
Notes: The Ron/Hermione sequel/prequel, 'The Dead Boy' can be found here.