'Dig for Victory', Gen, Weasleys (some Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione), 12+ (sequel to 'The Covenant')
Title: Dig for Victory
Characters/Ships: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, George; (Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione)
Summary: Harry finds himself criticising flower arrangements while Ginny spends all her time trying to remember as many embarrassing stories about the happy couple as she can. Everything’s twisted after the war and in more ways than one, and Harry’s worried that if George doesn’t stop drinking everything’s going to fall apart again. The sequel to The Covenant and the final in the Dreams Only series.
Rating: 12+
Word Count: ~3900
Notes: Ladies and gentlemen, I mean it sincerely when I say that you made writing this a pleasure. Special special love for my beta once again, Mingle. ♥ Also, just a reminder that this universe was conceived pre-DH, although it bears huge similarities to the post-DH one, so it probably won’t mess with your head too much. The other two stories in this universe can be found here.
Dig for Victory
XI.
It takes time, but they get better.
In September, as promised, Ron and Hermione go back to Hogwarts for their seventh year. Harry and Ginny wave them off at the station as they board the train with students at least two years younger than them, the light glinting off Hermione’s ring, and then they walk out and into the sunshine. Harry wonders idly about getting a job; Ginny grazes his shoulder with her hand.
X.
He doesn’t say he loves her.
In October, they walk down a cobbled street somewhere in London near the Thames. She is tucked into his arm; he is wearing Sirius’ big black coat.
‘When did you fall in love with me?’ she asks.
First year, sixth year, not ‘til a month ago - he doesn’t know.
‘I’m not going to fall in love with you until tomorrow,’ he says.
She is content.
IX.
Christmas is a flurry of wedding plans; Ron and Hermione take over the kitchen table with voluminous seating charts and trails of chiffon. The best man and the maid of honour are unwilling to be lured into the fray, but on the one day when they do attempt to offer some help, Harry finds himself criticising flower arrangements while Ginny spends all her time trying to remember as many embarrassing stories about the happy couple as she can. ‘Maybe we got you two the wrong way round,’ says Ron. Harry kicks him.
‘All I want,’ Hermione sighs one day, falling back onto Harry’s bed, ‘is to be his wife.’
Harry blinks, and wonders if perhaps the person turning her dreamy upside down gaze to the window is an impostor.
‘I mean, I know it’s awful,’ she says, swivelling her head back round to face Harry. ‘I don’t want to be a housewife or anything. I know that I have my career ahead of me and my own life and things … but sometimes, all I can really bring myself to care about is standing up next to him at a wedding and then us being each other’s partners. Forever.’ She rolls up onto her front. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he says, sitting down at the desk.
‘And sometimes,’ she says, looking down at her hands with shame, ‘sometimes, I do think I might be quite content if all I ever did in life was be married to Ron.’
He props his folded arms on top of the back of the chair. ‘Hermione Granger, that’s not very twenty-first century, is it?’
‘You must never tell my mum I said it,’ she whispers.
He grins. ‘What about Molly?’
‘Oh, God no!’ she cries in horror. ‘She’d be delighted!’
VIII.
She doesn’t say she loves him.
In May, she lies tummy-down on the long grass and reads a book as he digs a shovel into his new vegetable patch. ‘Do you want to give me a hand?’
‘I’m reading,’ she says without looking up.
Two more shovels of earth go by.
‘What are you reading?’ he asks.
‘Jane something. I don’t know.’
‘A Muggle book?’
‘Mmm.’
He thinks. ‘Austen or Eyre?’
She looks up from the book. ‘You what?’
He shrugs. ‘Jane Austen or Jane Eyre? They’re Jane books.’
Giving him a look, she goes back to the book. ‘I don’t know.’
‘And you can’t look at the front of the book because …?’
‘It’s funnier listening to you pretending you know things about books.’
‘I know some things,’ he says defiantly.
‘How?’ she asks without looking up from the book. ‘You’ve read them?’
‘Yes.’ He chucks some mud over his shoulder.
‘When?’
‘Primary school.’
She raises one beautiful ginger eyebrow. ‘No, you haven’t.’
‘Fine,’ he confesses. ‘I’ve seen Hermione with them. Did she lend you it?’
‘Yes.’
After a second, he looks up expectantly. ‘Well …?’
‘Well, what?’
‘Which one is it?’
‘Harry, shut up. I’m trying to read.’
‘Just because I know things about books and you don’t.’
‘You know nothing about literature. Muggle or ours.’
‘Well, you know nothing about gardening.’
‘I never claimed to!’ she cries indignantly.
‘Gardening’s more important.’
‘Says who?’
He pushes his fringe out of his eyes and rests folded arms upon the shovel’s handle. ‘Dig for Victory!’
‘You what?’
‘Muggles used to put it on posters in the Second World War,’ he says. ‘So that people would grow their own food.’
‘Why?’
He resumes his digging. ‘To try and defeat Hitler with cabbages.’
‘Who was Hitler?’
‘The baddie.’
‘Why don’t you buy one of the posters? You could put it up in your room.’ She goes back to reading. ‘Shut up now, please.’
‘I don’t think they still make them,’ he says, giving the spade a good kick and feeling it sink through wet soil. ‘Not since the forties.’
‘I’ll find you one. We can hang it in our house when we’re grown up.’
Her eyes keep moving across the pages and she does not show any awareness of having said anything of any import to Harry.
He lets her read.
VII.
Ron in dark blue puts his arm around his new wife; Hermione’s robes are white silk and the hair curling down to her waist is filled with apple blossom. Her laughter is filling The Burrow’s dark garden.
‘Do you think this is a bad idea?’ Harry asks George from where they stand at the side of the dance floor.
George furrows his brow thoughtfully over the rim of his Firewhiskey. ‘I think she’s rebelling.’
‘Explain.’
‘Hermione’s had her life mapped out since she was about eight,’ says George authoritatively. ‘She isn’t meant to do this. She’s meant to do her NEWTs, get a nice, well-paying, meaningful job, fall in love at about twenty-seven, give or take a couple of years -’ he knocks back the whiskey and puts the glass down on the table next to them - ‘get married at thirty in a pair of jeans, have two children and live happily ever after. Pink flowers -’
‘Apple blossom.’
‘- were never a part of it.’
‘So …’ Harry considers his words but cannot think of a tactful way to put it. ‘You think this is a mistake?’
‘I never said that.’
‘But you don’t believe this is what Hermione should be doing?’
George shrugs, then grins. ‘Maybe a bit of rebelling against your fate is healthy. And I believe in Ron and Hermione. Come on,’ he says abruptly, and he grabs Harry’s hand. ‘You owe me a dance, and I haven’t got anyone to tango with.’
Harry puts his champagne glass down on a table. ‘Don’t start something you can’t finish.’
VI.
One day in June Harry has just stumbled into the kitchen and is staring blearily at a Prophet as he chews cornflakes when Ginny walks in, fully dressed and trying to balance a tray full of used crockery.
This sight is so unfamiliar at this time of the morning that it takes many moments for Harry to process it. ‘What are you doing up so early?’
‘Father’s Day, remember?’ she says with the slightest irritation as she tries to make her way to the sink without everything she’s balancing falling to the floor. ‘Breakfast in bed and all that.’
‘I didn’t know,’ says Harry, at a loss.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ she says, dumping everything at the side of the sink and turning on the taps. ‘He doesn’t expect anything from you.’
‘But -’
‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she says quickly, turning around. ‘I didn’t mean - I just meant that you don’t need to worry. Honestly.’
He shrugs. He looks down at his cornflakes, but he’s gone off his breakfast a bit.
‘Harry -’ He looks up: she’s abandoned the washing up and started towards him. ‘Don’t - don’t get worried about this. It’s a really stupid thing; Mum only told me that I had to make a fuss of him because she knew that she’d be getting breakfast in bed as well.’ She sits down at the table. ‘Honestly. Don’t work yourself into knots about it.’
He can’t help it: he smiles.
She puts her elbows on the table and leans forwards. ‘Good morning.’ He knows an invitation when he sees one, and leaning forwards, kisses her - but after a second, she pushes him off. ‘Don’t you ever brush your teeth?’
He shrugs again and returns to his breakfast. ‘I’m eating.’ His appetite has come back with ferocity, and he digs in with renewed vigour.
‘Harry?’
‘Yeah?’ he says without looking up.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yeah …’
‘Do you get the impression George is drinking a bit more than is healthy?’
His spoon slows.
‘Well?’
‘Yeah, a bit.’
He looks up: she’s chewing her lower lip.
‘Well?’ he asks.
‘Nothing,’ she says with a sigh. ‘Just checking that it’s not just in my head.’
He goes back to eating his breakfast in the calm quietness, but once again he can feel his desire for food fading.
‘Harry?’ she says again after a few minutes.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you fancy going to Godric’s Hollow? I mean,’ she adds hurriedly, ‘I know the only time you’ve been there was when you, you know, killed him, at the end, and everything, and I completely get it if you don’t want to, but -’
‘Yeah, I do,’ he says. ‘That’d be good. Do you - I mean, are you offering to come?’
Suddenly she looks shy. ‘If that’s OK.’
‘Yeah, no,’ he says, swallowing, ‘that’d be brilliant. I’ve never been there with anyone else. Apart from Voldemort.’
‘I can’t imagine that he’s the best grave-visiting partner,’ she says.
He grins. ‘Do you want to go now?’
‘Yeah, OK - do you know what flowers you’re bringing?’ Her eyes are twinkling. ‘You’re not thinking of going without flowers, are you?’
He ignores her slightly jibing comment and looks out the window and at the back garden to choose, but before he can think about it, he is struck with a rather different thought. ‘Hey, Ginny - will you come somewhere else with me?’
‘Where?’
‘It’s just that … my aunt Petunia,’ he mumbles. ‘I think she’s buried at St Paul’s in Little Whinging … I’ve never been there.’
‘Of course,’ she says; he looks up, relieved.
Then, she grins.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Oh, I was just thinking that it’s probably a good thing she’s not alive to hear you call her your father figure.’
V.
When they are grown up, Harry and Ginny buy a small, droughty house near the Holloway Road in London. Somehow, it manages the feat of being both old and without character, and the fact that they end up purchasing it makes Harry wish he hadn’t so hastily donated most of his money to the rebuild of Hogwarts, but it has a garden with some ugly flowerbeds that he can start ripping out straight away, and Ginny likes the view from the attic.
IV.
‘We have to do something,’ says Hermione one day as she paces up and down in Harry and Ginny’s kitchen, hands in a knot.
‘Like what?’ asks Ron tiredly. ‘We’ve all tried talking to him. He’s brushed us all off. He doesn’t care. Short of tying him up and dragging him off to see a Healer …’
‘Well - well, maybe it has come to that,’ says Hermione agitatedly.
Ginny makes some kind of noise and folds her arms.
Harry sends her what he hopes she recognizes as a warning look. He doesn’t think she notices.
‘We’re running out of options,’ says Hermione in her boardroom voice. ‘We’re going to have to come up with a plan -’
‘It’s not the end of the world,’ says Ginny. ‘I don’t think we need a battle strategy.’
‘Don’t be flippant,’ reprimands Hermione. ‘All I mean is that we need to talk about what the next step is going to be.’
‘To be honest, if alcoholism’s the worst thing that happens to him after everything, then I’m grateful,’ says Ginny.
‘Oh, that’s useful,’ says Hermione.
Ginny shrugs and turns to look out of the window.
‘Ah, maybe Ginny’s right,’ says Ron. ‘There are worse things he could do. I’d prefer he be an alcoholic than other things.’
‘Deflecting this by saying “at least he’s not molesting children” isn’t helpful,’ snaps Hermione.
‘No, but at least he isn’t dead,’ says Ginny, turning round again. ‘If this is the way that he’s coping with Fred’s death, then -’
‘I’m not saying that he hasn’t had a lot - a terrible thing - to cope with,’ interrupts Hermione, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to sit here and watch him do this to himself!’
‘Don’t then,’ says Ginny sharply. ‘It’s really not your business.’
‘And it is yours?’
‘Hang on,’ interjects Ron with alarm, ‘let’s just calm dow-’
‘No, it isn’t,’ says Ginny, folding her arms. ‘But it’s more mine than yours - yeah.’
‘Fine,’ says Hermione, crossing over to the table, grabbing her briefcase and slamming it shut. ‘Fine, then. Watch him drink himself to death. See if I care.’ Swinging the briefcase down from the table, she starts towards the door, but before she manages to make it the whole way, she turns back. ‘Because that’s what will happen, you know! There’ll be more than one dead Weasley if nobody does anything!’
‘Hermione,’ says Ron, reaching out for her, ‘here, come here - calm down -’
‘Get off me,’ she snaps, and she storms out of the house and Disapparates.
Ron presses his hands to his face. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. Why the fuck did the pair of you have to turn that into a bitch fight?’
Ginny looks outraged. ‘I didn’t -’
‘Fuck it, I don’t care,’ he says, checking his watch. ‘Kingsley’ll have my arse if I’m late again, I’ve got to go, see you later -’
And with a nod to the pair of them, he follows in his wife’s footsteps and Disapparates.
Silence swirls between the two people left in the kitchen.
Harry lifts a mug from the table and pretends to polish it with his sleeve.
‘Go on then, give me the lecture,’ Ginny snaps. ‘But hurry up and make it qui-’
He slams the mug back down on the table. ‘Was that necessary?’
She purses her lips. ‘I’m not sure that I can handle much more of her approach to “dealing” with my brother.’
‘She’s trying to help.’
‘I don’t care!’ Ginny explodes prematurely. ‘This has been going on for months! We’ve all tried talking to him! I have; you have; she and Ron have, separately and together; both Bill and Charlie have tried “having a little word”; I had to talk Percy out of making his own attempt, because we all know how well that would have gone - he’s had fights with Mum and Dad, Lee gave up months ago -’ Her voice breaks. ‘He knows what we think, but if he doesn’t want to change then there’s nothing we can do -’ Abruptly, she breaks off with a sob.
‘Hey, Gin, come here,’ he says, drawing her into his arms quickly, and to his relief, she does not brush him off in the way Hermione did to Ron earlier, but lets herself fall against his chest.
‘The whole thing makes me so angry,’ she mumbles.
He rubs her back. ‘Gin, don’t you think you were a little bit vicious?’
‘I don’t care,’ she repeats stubbornly in a small voice. ‘I just had to stop her - stop her pacing around the room like he’s a puzzle she can fix if she, you know, if she only thinks hard enough. He’s still a person.’
‘I don’t think she thinks that he isn’t a person, Gin.’
‘But he’s not a puzzle. This isn’t - this isn’t going to go away.’
‘Do you think …’ He swallows. ‘Do you think that maybe you should say sorry?’
‘I meant everything I said.’
‘Ginny, you’re not a complete bitch.’
‘I mean it!’
‘Even the bit about it not being her business?’
‘Oh, fuck off.’
He grins and kisses her forehead.
The fight, of course, doesn’t last long. Both Ginny and Hermione apologise, to Ron’s far-too-apparent relief, and life goes on.
And in a way, of course, they are both right. Addiction is a bad thing, and Hermione is right to want rid of it so desperately; but after all, it is only a communal twitch at parties and the occasional awkwardness when invited to the pub, and Ginny is right to say that there are much worse things in the world.
This is life, Harry has finally learnt. There are always going to be unpleasant things to deal with, whether they be uneasiness at family gatherings or having to watch the slow degeneration of an old friend, but if you don’t take them, then you can’t have the pub with Ron or laughing at the baby name books with Hermione or watching Ginny take her earrings off.
III.
‘You busy?’ says Ginny in a brisk, you-are-not-allowed-to-say-yes tone, marching into their garden one April day when Harry is weeding.
‘Not really,’ he says, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
‘Mum and Dad are going to Fred’s crematorium stone and they want flowers, but she’s decided that none of hers are appropriate,’ she says with an eye-roll. ‘I told her I’d see if we had anything.’
‘Appropriate?’ asks Harry, squinting up.
‘For Fred,’ says Ginny with another eye-roll. ‘Because, you know, he was really one for daisies. I suggested Honking Daffodils, but she wasn’t best pleased.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Harry, looking around the garden - ‘Muggle or magical?’
‘Muggle, I reckon. They do have to go in Ottery St Catchpole’s graveyard.’
‘There are -’ He thinks of tiger lilies. ‘I’m trying to grow some lilies, but they’re pink ones, not - and they’re not flowering yet -’
‘Well, ones we actually have in the garden might be nice …’
He squints back up at her. ‘Are you going with them?’
‘I don’t … I’m not sure about going at the same time as them …’ she says hesitantly. ‘But they’ve sort of - put it in my mind. I haven’t been in ages - I - do you want to come?’
Harry remembers well the one and only time he and Ginny went to Fred’s stone; she cried uncontrollably and was then in a terrible mood for the rest of the day. On the other hand … ‘We’d have to be back for the evening, for the pub with George. You know, it being his birthday, and all.’
‘How could I forget that we have that joy to look forward to,’ she says with a bit of a grimace. ‘But do you want to come? You don’t have to, you look busy -’
‘No, I’ll come,’ he says, not as enthusiastically as he possibly could, it’s true, but then - ‘Oh, wait -’ He jumps up, and running to the other side of the garden, uses his wand to sever a few sprays of snapdragon at their roots, and brings them back to her.
‘Snapdragons,’ he says. ‘They’re flowering a bit early this year, but that’s the global whatsit for you, I suppose -’
‘They do actually look like dragons,’ she says, and as she holds the violent red and orange flowers up to her face her smile blossoms. ‘They’re perfect.’ She kisses his cheek. ‘We’ll go about four, OK?’
‘Perfect,’ he says, and he watches her as, with a positive bounce in her step, she walks off back towards the house.
II.
On a Mother’s Day some years later, maybe two, maybe twenty, Ginny walks into the kitchen as Harry is putting on Sirius’ coat.
‘I’m just going to Godric’s Hollow,’ he says as he puts his arms into the sleeves. ‘Then St Paul’s. I’ll be back for lunch.’
She folds her arms and leans against the doorframe. ‘Want some company?’
He looks up from his buttons; he expected she’d be in the study all day. ‘You finished the article?’
‘No, but I’m meeting George in an hour …’ She shrugs. ‘I’m not going to get any work done. I may as well come with you.’
‘Yeah, all right then,’ he says with a smile as he gathers up the bunches of flowers from the table. ‘Any particular reason you’re meeting George?’
‘Oh.’ She looks away from him as she reaches for her Muggle jacket. ‘I’m going with him to Mungo’s.’
Harry stops. ‘What?’
‘Yeah.’ She looks down at the jacket clutched in her hands. ‘He sent me an owl this morning. He’s booked an appointment with a specialist Healer. A therapy thing. You know. He wants me to come with him.’
Slowly, Harry takes the jacket from her hands and holds it out; she slides her arms into the sleeves. ‘He’s going into therapy?’ he asks.
‘Seems so.’
‘Voluntarily?’
‘No, I’m paying him to do it,’ she says with a roll of her eyes.
‘It’s just - wow,’ says Harry. ‘I didn’t see this coming.’
‘Me neither. Keys?’
‘They’re on the -’ Harry grabs them up from the table. ‘Ready?’
She nods and they walk through their hall and out into the March day. As Harry slams and locks the front door with a twist of the keys and a surreptitious tap of his wand, he says, ‘Good for him.’
‘Mmm,’ says Ginny, squinting up into the bright sunlight. ‘Don’t say that to him, though, will you?’
‘Er, OK then. Do you want to drive or Apparate?’
‘It’s just that - can you imagine if everyone he knows comes up to him and claps him on the shoulder and says “good for you”? It’ll be awful. He’ll be drinking again by lunchtime.’
‘I won’t say a word. I won’t even come with you. Driving or Apparating?’
‘I don’t know how many other people he’s told.’
‘Driving or -’
‘Oh, er - let’s Apparate,’ she says. ‘I’m assuming you want to go to Godric’s Hollow first, and unless you feel like driving all the way to practically Wales -’
‘I was thinking of doing Little Whinging first just for the sake of the drive and then Apparating on to Godric’s, but if you have to meet George then there’s not much time for the journey -’
‘No, I suppose not,’ she says absently.
‘Apparating it is, then,’ he says. ‘What were you saying about -?’
‘Oh, just that I don’t think he’s told many people yet.’
They walk down their front path. ‘Do you think he’s going to?’ Harry asks.
‘I don’t know. I thought if today went well I’d tell Ron and Hermione, and Mum and Dad. If he’s OK with that. And if it keeps going well, then the others. We’ll see how it goes.’
Harry pushes open the front gate. ‘Do you think today will go well?’
‘I hope so. Anyway,’ she says, looking up into his face with a truly happy smile, ‘it’s good enough that he’s trying, isn’t it?’
Harry smiles and moves to put his arm around her shoulders, but at the last second he changes his mind and instead does something he hasn’t done in a while, and reaches down and takes her hand.
He squeezes tightly; she squeezes back.
I.
It takes time, but they get better.
THE END
Characters/Ships: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, George; (Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione)
Summary: Harry finds himself criticising flower arrangements while Ginny spends all her time trying to remember as many embarrassing stories about the happy couple as she can. Everything’s twisted after the war and in more ways than one, and Harry’s worried that if George doesn’t stop drinking everything’s going to fall apart again. The sequel to The Covenant and the final in the Dreams Only series.
Rating: 12+
Word Count: ~3900
Notes: Ladies and gentlemen, I mean it sincerely when I say that you made writing this a pleasure. Special special love for my beta once again, Mingle. ♥ Also, just a reminder that this universe was conceived pre-DH, although it bears huge similarities to the post-DH one, so it probably won’t mess with your head too much. The other two stories in this universe can be found here.
Dig for Victory
XI.
It takes time, but they get better.
In September, as promised, Ron and Hermione go back to Hogwarts for their seventh year. Harry and Ginny wave them off at the station as they board the train with students at least two years younger than them, the light glinting off Hermione’s ring, and then they walk out and into the sunshine. Harry wonders idly about getting a job; Ginny grazes his shoulder with her hand.
X.
He doesn’t say he loves her.
In October, they walk down a cobbled street somewhere in London near the Thames. She is tucked into his arm; he is wearing Sirius’ big black coat.
‘When did you fall in love with me?’ she asks.
First year, sixth year, not ‘til a month ago - he doesn’t know.
‘I’m not going to fall in love with you until tomorrow,’ he says.
She is content.
IX.
Christmas is a flurry of wedding plans; Ron and Hermione take over the kitchen table with voluminous seating charts and trails of chiffon. The best man and the maid of honour are unwilling to be lured into the fray, but on the one day when they do attempt to offer some help, Harry finds himself criticising flower arrangements while Ginny spends all her time trying to remember as many embarrassing stories about the happy couple as she can. ‘Maybe we got you two the wrong way round,’ says Ron. Harry kicks him.
‘All I want,’ Hermione sighs one day, falling back onto Harry’s bed, ‘is to be his wife.’
Harry blinks, and wonders if perhaps the person turning her dreamy upside down gaze to the window is an impostor.
‘I mean, I know it’s awful,’ she says, swivelling her head back round to face Harry. ‘I don’t want to be a housewife or anything. I know that I have my career ahead of me and my own life and things … but sometimes, all I can really bring myself to care about is standing up next to him at a wedding and then us being each other’s partners. Forever.’ She rolls up onto her front. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he says, sitting down at the desk.
‘And sometimes,’ she says, looking down at her hands with shame, ‘sometimes, I do think I might be quite content if all I ever did in life was be married to Ron.’
He props his folded arms on top of the back of the chair. ‘Hermione Granger, that’s not very twenty-first century, is it?’
‘You must never tell my mum I said it,’ she whispers.
He grins. ‘What about Molly?’
‘Oh, God no!’ she cries in horror. ‘She’d be delighted!’
VIII.
She doesn’t say she loves him.
In May, she lies tummy-down on the long grass and reads a book as he digs a shovel into his new vegetable patch. ‘Do you want to give me a hand?’
‘I’m reading,’ she says without looking up.
Two more shovels of earth go by.
‘What are you reading?’ he asks.
‘Jane something. I don’t know.’
‘A Muggle book?’
‘Mmm.’
He thinks. ‘Austen or Eyre?’
She looks up from the book. ‘You what?’
He shrugs. ‘Jane Austen or Jane Eyre? They’re Jane books.’
Giving him a look, she goes back to the book. ‘I don’t know.’
‘And you can’t look at the front of the book because …?’
‘It’s funnier listening to you pretending you know things about books.’
‘I know some things,’ he says defiantly.
‘How?’ she asks without looking up from the book. ‘You’ve read them?’
‘Yes.’ He chucks some mud over his shoulder.
‘When?’
‘Primary school.’
She raises one beautiful ginger eyebrow. ‘No, you haven’t.’
‘Fine,’ he confesses. ‘I’ve seen Hermione with them. Did she lend you it?’
‘Yes.’
After a second, he looks up expectantly. ‘Well …?’
‘Well, what?’
‘Which one is it?’
‘Harry, shut up. I’m trying to read.’
‘Just because I know things about books and you don’t.’
‘You know nothing about literature. Muggle or ours.’
‘Well, you know nothing about gardening.’
‘I never claimed to!’ she cries indignantly.
‘Gardening’s more important.’
‘Says who?’
He pushes his fringe out of his eyes and rests folded arms upon the shovel’s handle. ‘Dig for Victory!’
‘You what?’
‘Muggles used to put it on posters in the Second World War,’ he says. ‘So that people would grow their own food.’
‘Why?’
He resumes his digging. ‘To try and defeat Hitler with cabbages.’
‘Who was Hitler?’
‘The baddie.’
‘Why don’t you buy one of the posters? You could put it up in your room.’ She goes back to reading. ‘Shut up now, please.’
‘I don’t think they still make them,’ he says, giving the spade a good kick and feeling it sink through wet soil. ‘Not since the forties.’
‘I’ll find you one. We can hang it in our house when we’re grown up.’
Her eyes keep moving across the pages and she does not show any awareness of having said anything of any import to Harry.
He lets her read.
VII.
Ron in dark blue puts his arm around his new wife; Hermione’s robes are white silk and the hair curling down to her waist is filled with apple blossom. Her laughter is filling The Burrow’s dark garden.
‘Do you think this is a bad idea?’ Harry asks George from where they stand at the side of the dance floor.
George furrows his brow thoughtfully over the rim of his Firewhiskey. ‘I think she’s rebelling.’
‘Explain.’
‘Hermione’s had her life mapped out since she was about eight,’ says George authoritatively. ‘She isn’t meant to do this. She’s meant to do her NEWTs, get a nice, well-paying, meaningful job, fall in love at about twenty-seven, give or take a couple of years -’ he knocks back the whiskey and puts the glass down on the table next to them - ‘get married at thirty in a pair of jeans, have two children and live happily ever after. Pink flowers -’
‘Apple blossom.’
‘- were never a part of it.’
‘So …’ Harry considers his words but cannot think of a tactful way to put it. ‘You think this is a mistake?’
‘I never said that.’
‘But you don’t believe this is what Hermione should be doing?’
George shrugs, then grins. ‘Maybe a bit of rebelling against your fate is healthy. And I believe in Ron and Hermione. Come on,’ he says abruptly, and he grabs Harry’s hand. ‘You owe me a dance, and I haven’t got anyone to tango with.’
Harry puts his champagne glass down on a table. ‘Don’t start something you can’t finish.’
VI.
One day in June Harry has just stumbled into the kitchen and is staring blearily at a Prophet as he chews cornflakes when Ginny walks in, fully dressed and trying to balance a tray full of used crockery.
This sight is so unfamiliar at this time of the morning that it takes many moments for Harry to process it. ‘What are you doing up so early?’
‘Father’s Day, remember?’ she says with the slightest irritation as she tries to make her way to the sink without everything she’s balancing falling to the floor. ‘Breakfast in bed and all that.’
‘I didn’t know,’ says Harry, at a loss.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ she says, dumping everything at the side of the sink and turning on the taps. ‘He doesn’t expect anything from you.’
‘But -’
‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she says quickly, turning around. ‘I didn’t mean - I just meant that you don’t need to worry. Honestly.’
He shrugs. He looks down at his cornflakes, but he’s gone off his breakfast a bit.
‘Harry -’ He looks up: she’s abandoned the washing up and started towards him. ‘Don’t - don’t get worried about this. It’s a really stupid thing; Mum only told me that I had to make a fuss of him because she knew that she’d be getting breakfast in bed as well.’ She sits down at the table. ‘Honestly. Don’t work yourself into knots about it.’
He can’t help it: he smiles.
She puts her elbows on the table and leans forwards. ‘Good morning.’ He knows an invitation when he sees one, and leaning forwards, kisses her - but after a second, she pushes him off. ‘Don’t you ever brush your teeth?’
He shrugs again and returns to his breakfast. ‘I’m eating.’ His appetite has come back with ferocity, and he digs in with renewed vigour.
‘Harry?’
‘Yeah?’ he says without looking up.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yeah …’
‘Do you get the impression George is drinking a bit more than is healthy?’
His spoon slows.
‘Well?’
‘Yeah, a bit.’
He looks up: she’s chewing her lower lip.
‘Well?’ he asks.
‘Nothing,’ she says with a sigh. ‘Just checking that it’s not just in my head.’
He goes back to eating his breakfast in the calm quietness, but once again he can feel his desire for food fading.
‘Harry?’ she says again after a few minutes.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you fancy going to Godric’s Hollow? I mean,’ she adds hurriedly, ‘I know the only time you’ve been there was when you, you know, killed him, at the end, and everything, and I completely get it if you don’t want to, but -’
‘Yeah, I do,’ he says. ‘That’d be good. Do you - I mean, are you offering to come?’
Suddenly she looks shy. ‘If that’s OK.’
‘Yeah, no,’ he says, swallowing, ‘that’d be brilliant. I’ve never been there with anyone else. Apart from Voldemort.’
‘I can’t imagine that he’s the best grave-visiting partner,’ she says.
He grins. ‘Do you want to go now?’
‘Yeah, OK - do you know what flowers you’re bringing?’ Her eyes are twinkling. ‘You’re not thinking of going without flowers, are you?’
He ignores her slightly jibing comment and looks out the window and at the back garden to choose, but before he can think about it, he is struck with a rather different thought. ‘Hey, Ginny - will you come somewhere else with me?’
‘Where?’
‘It’s just that … my aunt Petunia,’ he mumbles. ‘I think she’s buried at St Paul’s in Little Whinging … I’ve never been there.’
‘Of course,’ she says; he looks up, relieved.
Then, she grins.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Oh, I was just thinking that it’s probably a good thing she’s not alive to hear you call her your father figure.’
V.
When they are grown up, Harry and Ginny buy a small, droughty house near the Holloway Road in London. Somehow, it manages the feat of being both old and without character, and the fact that they end up purchasing it makes Harry wish he hadn’t so hastily donated most of his money to the rebuild of Hogwarts, but it has a garden with some ugly flowerbeds that he can start ripping out straight away, and Ginny likes the view from the attic.
IV.
‘We have to do something,’ says Hermione one day as she paces up and down in Harry and Ginny’s kitchen, hands in a knot.
‘Like what?’ asks Ron tiredly. ‘We’ve all tried talking to him. He’s brushed us all off. He doesn’t care. Short of tying him up and dragging him off to see a Healer …’
‘Well - well, maybe it has come to that,’ says Hermione agitatedly.
Ginny makes some kind of noise and folds her arms.
Harry sends her what he hopes she recognizes as a warning look. He doesn’t think she notices.
‘We’re running out of options,’ says Hermione in her boardroom voice. ‘We’re going to have to come up with a plan -’
‘It’s not the end of the world,’ says Ginny. ‘I don’t think we need a battle strategy.’
‘Don’t be flippant,’ reprimands Hermione. ‘All I mean is that we need to talk about what the next step is going to be.’
‘To be honest, if alcoholism’s the worst thing that happens to him after everything, then I’m grateful,’ says Ginny.
‘Oh, that’s useful,’ says Hermione.
Ginny shrugs and turns to look out of the window.
‘Ah, maybe Ginny’s right,’ says Ron. ‘There are worse things he could do. I’d prefer he be an alcoholic than other things.’
‘Deflecting this by saying “at least he’s not molesting children” isn’t helpful,’ snaps Hermione.
‘No, but at least he isn’t dead,’ says Ginny, turning round again. ‘If this is the way that he’s coping with Fred’s death, then -’
‘I’m not saying that he hasn’t had a lot - a terrible thing - to cope with,’ interrupts Hermione, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to sit here and watch him do this to himself!’
‘Don’t then,’ says Ginny sharply. ‘It’s really not your business.’
‘And it is yours?’
‘Hang on,’ interjects Ron with alarm, ‘let’s just calm dow-’
‘No, it isn’t,’ says Ginny, folding her arms. ‘But it’s more mine than yours - yeah.’
‘Fine,’ says Hermione, crossing over to the table, grabbing her briefcase and slamming it shut. ‘Fine, then. Watch him drink himself to death. See if I care.’ Swinging the briefcase down from the table, she starts towards the door, but before she manages to make it the whole way, she turns back. ‘Because that’s what will happen, you know! There’ll be more than one dead Weasley if nobody does anything!’
‘Hermione,’ says Ron, reaching out for her, ‘here, come here - calm down -’
‘Get off me,’ she snaps, and she storms out of the house and Disapparates.
Ron presses his hands to his face. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. Why the fuck did the pair of you have to turn that into a bitch fight?’
Ginny looks outraged. ‘I didn’t -’
‘Fuck it, I don’t care,’ he says, checking his watch. ‘Kingsley’ll have my arse if I’m late again, I’ve got to go, see you later -’
And with a nod to the pair of them, he follows in his wife’s footsteps and Disapparates.
Silence swirls between the two people left in the kitchen.
Harry lifts a mug from the table and pretends to polish it with his sleeve.
‘Go on then, give me the lecture,’ Ginny snaps. ‘But hurry up and make it qui-’
He slams the mug back down on the table. ‘Was that necessary?’
She purses her lips. ‘I’m not sure that I can handle much more of her approach to “dealing” with my brother.’
‘She’s trying to help.’
‘I don’t care!’ Ginny explodes prematurely. ‘This has been going on for months! We’ve all tried talking to him! I have; you have; she and Ron have, separately and together; both Bill and Charlie have tried “having a little word”; I had to talk Percy out of making his own attempt, because we all know how well that would have gone - he’s had fights with Mum and Dad, Lee gave up months ago -’ Her voice breaks. ‘He knows what we think, but if he doesn’t want to change then there’s nothing we can do -’ Abruptly, she breaks off with a sob.
‘Hey, Gin, come here,’ he says, drawing her into his arms quickly, and to his relief, she does not brush him off in the way Hermione did to Ron earlier, but lets herself fall against his chest.
‘The whole thing makes me so angry,’ she mumbles.
He rubs her back. ‘Gin, don’t you think you were a little bit vicious?’
‘I don’t care,’ she repeats stubbornly in a small voice. ‘I just had to stop her - stop her pacing around the room like he’s a puzzle she can fix if she, you know, if she only thinks hard enough. He’s still a person.’
‘I don’t think she thinks that he isn’t a person, Gin.’
‘But he’s not a puzzle. This isn’t - this isn’t going to go away.’
‘Do you think …’ He swallows. ‘Do you think that maybe you should say sorry?’
‘I meant everything I said.’
‘Ginny, you’re not a complete bitch.’
‘I mean it!’
‘Even the bit about it not being her business?’
‘Oh, fuck off.’
He grins and kisses her forehead.
The fight, of course, doesn’t last long. Both Ginny and Hermione apologise, to Ron’s far-too-apparent relief, and life goes on.
And in a way, of course, they are both right. Addiction is a bad thing, and Hermione is right to want rid of it so desperately; but after all, it is only a communal twitch at parties and the occasional awkwardness when invited to the pub, and Ginny is right to say that there are much worse things in the world.
This is life, Harry has finally learnt. There are always going to be unpleasant things to deal with, whether they be uneasiness at family gatherings or having to watch the slow degeneration of an old friend, but if you don’t take them, then you can’t have the pub with Ron or laughing at the baby name books with Hermione or watching Ginny take her earrings off.
III.
‘You busy?’ says Ginny in a brisk, you-are-not-allowed-to-say-yes tone, marching into their garden one April day when Harry is weeding.
‘Not really,’ he says, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
‘Mum and Dad are going to Fred’s crematorium stone and they want flowers, but she’s decided that none of hers are appropriate,’ she says with an eye-roll. ‘I told her I’d see if we had anything.’
‘Appropriate?’ asks Harry, squinting up.
‘For Fred,’ says Ginny with another eye-roll. ‘Because, you know, he was really one for daisies. I suggested Honking Daffodils, but she wasn’t best pleased.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Harry, looking around the garden - ‘Muggle or magical?’
‘Muggle, I reckon. They do have to go in Ottery St Catchpole’s graveyard.’
‘There are -’ He thinks of tiger lilies. ‘I’m trying to grow some lilies, but they’re pink ones, not - and they’re not flowering yet -’
‘Well, ones we actually have in the garden might be nice …’
He squints back up at her. ‘Are you going with them?’
‘I don’t … I’m not sure about going at the same time as them …’ she says hesitantly. ‘But they’ve sort of - put it in my mind. I haven’t been in ages - I - do you want to come?’
Harry remembers well the one and only time he and Ginny went to Fred’s stone; she cried uncontrollably and was then in a terrible mood for the rest of the day. On the other hand … ‘We’d have to be back for the evening, for the pub with George. You know, it being his birthday, and all.’
‘How could I forget that we have that joy to look forward to,’ she says with a bit of a grimace. ‘But do you want to come? You don’t have to, you look busy -’
‘No, I’ll come,’ he says, not as enthusiastically as he possibly could, it’s true, but then - ‘Oh, wait -’ He jumps up, and running to the other side of the garden, uses his wand to sever a few sprays of snapdragon at their roots, and brings them back to her.
‘Snapdragons,’ he says. ‘They’re flowering a bit early this year, but that’s the global whatsit for you, I suppose -’
‘They do actually look like dragons,’ she says, and as she holds the violent red and orange flowers up to her face her smile blossoms. ‘They’re perfect.’ She kisses his cheek. ‘We’ll go about four, OK?’
‘Perfect,’ he says, and he watches her as, with a positive bounce in her step, she walks off back towards the house.
II.
On a Mother’s Day some years later, maybe two, maybe twenty, Ginny walks into the kitchen as Harry is putting on Sirius’ coat.
‘I’m just going to Godric’s Hollow,’ he says as he puts his arms into the sleeves. ‘Then St Paul’s. I’ll be back for lunch.’
She folds her arms and leans against the doorframe. ‘Want some company?’
He looks up from his buttons; he expected she’d be in the study all day. ‘You finished the article?’
‘No, but I’m meeting George in an hour …’ She shrugs. ‘I’m not going to get any work done. I may as well come with you.’
‘Yeah, all right then,’ he says with a smile as he gathers up the bunches of flowers from the table. ‘Any particular reason you’re meeting George?’
‘Oh.’ She looks away from him as she reaches for her Muggle jacket. ‘I’m going with him to Mungo’s.’
Harry stops. ‘What?’
‘Yeah.’ She looks down at the jacket clutched in her hands. ‘He sent me an owl this morning. He’s booked an appointment with a specialist Healer. A therapy thing. You know. He wants me to come with him.’
Slowly, Harry takes the jacket from her hands and holds it out; she slides her arms into the sleeves. ‘He’s going into therapy?’ he asks.
‘Seems so.’
‘Voluntarily?’
‘No, I’m paying him to do it,’ she says with a roll of her eyes.
‘It’s just - wow,’ says Harry. ‘I didn’t see this coming.’
‘Me neither. Keys?’
‘They’re on the -’ Harry grabs them up from the table. ‘Ready?’
She nods and they walk through their hall and out into the March day. As Harry slams and locks the front door with a twist of the keys and a surreptitious tap of his wand, he says, ‘Good for him.’
‘Mmm,’ says Ginny, squinting up into the bright sunlight. ‘Don’t say that to him, though, will you?’
‘Er, OK then. Do you want to drive or Apparate?’
‘It’s just that - can you imagine if everyone he knows comes up to him and claps him on the shoulder and says “good for you”? It’ll be awful. He’ll be drinking again by lunchtime.’
‘I won’t say a word. I won’t even come with you. Driving or Apparating?’
‘I don’t know how many other people he’s told.’
‘Driving or -’
‘Oh, er - let’s Apparate,’ she says. ‘I’m assuming you want to go to Godric’s Hollow first, and unless you feel like driving all the way to practically Wales -’
‘I was thinking of doing Little Whinging first just for the sake of the drive and then Apparating on to Godric’s, but if you have to meet George then there’s not much time for the journey -’
‘No, I suppose not,’ she says absently.
‘Apparating it is, then,’ he says. ‘What were you saying about -?’
‘Oh, just that I don’t think he’s told many people yet.’
They walk down their front path. ‘Do you think he’s going to?’ Harry asks.
‘I don’t know. I thought if today went well I’d tell Ron and Hermione, and Mum and Dad. If he’s OK with that. And if it keeps going well, then the others. We’ll see how it goes.’
Harry pushes open the front gate. ‘Do you think today will go well?’
‘I hope so. Anyway,’ she says, looking up into his face with a truly happy smile, ‘it’s good enough that he’s trying, isn’t it?’
Harry smiles and moves to put his arm around her shoulders, but at the last second he changes his mind and instead does something he hasn’t done in a while, and reaches down and takes her hand.
He squeezes tightly; she squeezes back.
I.
It takes time, but they get better.
THE END