Fic: The Potters At Home
The Potters At Home
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Harry/Ginny, Harry/?
Summary: Witch World calls them the perfect couple. But Harry is seeing someone else, and Ginny is in love with the bottle.
Rating: PG-13
AN: This was written for the Fabulous No-Pressure Laissez-Faire HP_Unfaithful Challenge. My prompt was Two characters keep a charade of marriage for the press. What happens when one of them is accused of infidelity?
AN2: The characters’ occupations are all derived from information in the HP Lexicon.
The Potters At Home
The October issue of Witch World comes out on September 23rd, a rainy, melancholy day already hinting at the winter ahead. Ginny’s copy is waiting on the wet front step when she gets home with the new skirt she doesn’t need and the dragon-skin boots that cost more than she used to earn in a week. Her face and Harry’s, rain-spattered, gaze at her from the cover, under a banner announcing ‘Exclusive! The Potters At Home.’ Ginny finds it strangely embarrassing to see them like that, exposed to the elements and to anyone who has a Galleon to spend on a glossy magazine.
She also feels guilty that she didn’t wait in for the delivery, especially as there’s an owl from her mother as well. ‘Darling, what a lovely feature! You and Harry look so happy, and of course my grandchildren are adorable.’
Ginny kicks off her shoes, makes a cup of tea and dries the pages carefully with her wand before turning to the article. She can’t help grimacing at ’The perfect couple’, which is just too cheesy, if not quite as bad as ‘The Boy Who Lived At Forty!’ with its dodgy syntax. Still, she has to agree that the six-page spread is wonderful, especially the photo of Lily in the kitchen, standing by the counter in an oversize apron, stirring cake-mix in a big bowl. Every so often, she looks up and grins directly at the camera, and Ginny just can’t help grinning back.
The shoot actually took place just after Harry’s fortieth birthday, at the beginning of August, and the garden features in many of the photos, impossibly green and lush; an enchanted Eden. Now, Eden is lost, the leaves already falling before they’ve even had a chance to turn, and it’s so cold that Ginny kindles some comforting flames in the fireplace.
Besides the eulogies about Harry, there’s a whole half-page taken up with a photo of Ginny at her desk, sucking the end of a quill and looking thoughtful. ’Harry Potter’s beautiful wife, the former Ginny Weasley, is famous for her spectacular Quidditch career’, the caption reads. ’Following her illustrious stint with our sister publication, the Prophet, she is currently working on her first book.’’
In fact, the book, a study of the Holyhead Harpies, is going nowhere fast.
Ginny examines her smiling face with a frown. She shouldn’t have had her hair cut so short, she now realises: really, she looks like one of her brothers. Sometimes, though it sounds pretty sick, she wonders whether Harry was actually marrying his best friend. ‘Except I’m his best friend,’ she says aloud. Her voice sounds small and defiant, like her daughter’s.
She prefers the photo of the five of them together on the sofa, Harry with one arm round her, the other round Lily, James and Al sitting beside their sister. The sofa has come out especially well, white, plump and immaculate with its blue and pink cushions. Besides their lovely sofa, the Potters have French windows leading into that large, leafy, garden; they have five big bedrooms; they have what Witch World calls ’a wonderful selection of Muggle artefacts and appliances’, including a fridge and a television.
They also have a remarkably quiet house at the moment, for a couple with three children; but of course, they’re all at Hogwarts now. The perfect couple probably wouldn’t get Empty Nest Syndrome, but sometimes, Ginny reads about Muggle schools and wishes that her children could go somewhere local, that they’d come home after school every day and spend weekends with the family. Wizarding education is harsh. Ginny sighs, laying her hand palm-down on the photo of James and Al picking apples in the orchard, as if she could trap them, keep them here forever. Lucky the children aren’t homesick, because she certainly is sick for missing them, especially her baby, Lily. She feels redundant. This is it, life over at thirty-nine. She has nothing to look forward to except old age and death.
Or a drink. The clock is ticking agonisingly slowly towards six. It isn’t like the clock at home, with the hands pointing to ‘Work’ or ‘Deadly Peril’. It’s just an ordinary clock. ‘I don’t like being tracked,’ Harry said, not quite playfully, when they were furnishing the house. Right now, Ginny doesn’t give a fuck what sort of clock it is. She just wishes that the bloody minute hand would get a move on. For her part, she’s played fair, she’s waited; she’s even had a cup of tea. She always feels a bit disconcerted when people talk about a cup of tea as an actual event. To her, it’s filler, something to do between late afternoon and that first heavenly glass of wine.
Still another few minutes to go. Ginny leans back against the sofa cushions that look so wonderful in the Witch World spread. The fire is burning well, and she has an almost irresistible urge to shove the article into it, reduce the smiling faces and the lovely house and garden to ashes. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ her rational half admonishes, snatching the magazine and putting it safely out of reach on a high bookshelf.
The clock strikes six, and Ginny rushes to uncork the half-full bottle of claret waiting patiently on the kitchen counter. Before she pours it, she reflexively looks round for a Magic Marker to draw a line on the bottle, so she won’t drink too much, something she’s done ever since she started drinking more than a couple of glasses. But then she remembers that it doesn’t matter. The children are at school, and she can drink as much as she damn well likes. And once she’s had that first gulp, which is more like half a glass, she opens a new bottle so it’s ready as soon as she wants it.
Before she gets too drunk, she rummages for the takeaway menus hidden in the corner cupboard behind the tins of baked beans: Harry hates beans. They remind him of the Dursleys. ‘We always had baked beans on toast on Sunday nights,’ Harry often tells the children. ‘Or rather, they did. I just cooked the beans. Not that I minded missing out, of course.’
She decides on Indian tonight, from the Tandoori Cauldron. Curry is good. Curry is always a winner, easy to disguise as something homemade, prepared with love for the perfect husband by the perfect wife. It’s also quick: about ten minutes after she’s dispatched the order, the delivery boy knocks on the door, much to Ginny’s relief. He’s a bit of a daredevil, and she always worries that he’ll spill her order halfway to the house.
‘Hello, Mrs Potter,’ he says, handing her the brown bag. ‘I’ll put it on your account, shall I?’
‘Thank you, Jamal.’ Ginny tips him five Sickles, and he whistles as he sets off again, looping the loop on his broomstick, brushing the tops of trees as he swoops down.
The chef has included an extra order of naan bread, and Ginny nibbles it as she pours her first glass from the second bottle. Well, she’s still under the nine units. Not that nine units a day is particularly great.
She empties the chicken korma into a casserole, adds a cooked, chopped chicken breast and a handful of ground almonds, then puts the pan on a Gentle Simmer spell. She didn’t cook the chicken either, but bought it from the supermarket in Diagon Alley. The dinner will remain perfect until Harry comes home. If he does come home. Recently, he’s been working hard, staging a series of all-nighters while his men stake out a new breed of suspect Death Eaters, or so he tells her.
Does she believe him? Maybe. Still, as the evening goes on, she’s glad he introduced her to Muggle gin. She pours a slug into her wine, not caring how foul it tastes.
At nine, Ginny jumps up, spilling her wine and gin cocktail, startled by the insistent ringing in her ears. Even after all these years, she still hasn’t got the hang of the telephone, and has to take a couple of deep, calming breaths before she answers.
Harry sounds hyper, overexcited, as he often does on these long days. ‘Hey, Ginny, I’ll be really late. Don’t wait up.’
Ginny never has liked talking to people she can’t see. She snaps, ‘What’s the problem this time? I mean, surely you can delegate the work. Otherwise, there’s no point being the boss.’
Harry pauses, obviously making an effort to sound patient. ‘I wouldn’t be the boss if I wasn’t willing to take on responsibilities. I’ve got to meet Draco Malfoy. He’s going to give me the names of a few of the new Death Eaters.’
Ginny wants to ask, ‘Since when have you two even spoken to each other?’ or ‘Since when has a Malfoy grassed to the Aurors?’ but manages to bite the words back. If he wants to pretend he’s spending his evenings with Draco Malfoy, let him. At least she can watch the TV programmes she likes best, a quiz show followed by a romantic comedy that would bore Harry to tears.
During the first ad break she tries to think back to the beginning of September, to the Hogwarts Express, to the slight panic when Al thought he’d left his dress robes behind. Sometimes, there are gaps in her memory: she couldn’t actually say whether Draco was seeing Scorpius off, but he must have been. Certainly he and Harry can’t have acknowledged each other. She’d have noticed that, even though she was more concerned with her son. Trust Harry not to think up a better excuse! She grits her teeth, literally, when she thinks how much he takes her for a fool, and has to obliterate her anger with another drink, more gin than wine this time.
Often, she comes to sprawled on the sofa, while Harry shakes her roughly by the shoulder, roughly enough to leave a bruise or two. Tonight, or rather, this morning, she surfaces at three, alone, in the cold house.
She can imagine Witch World’s caption: ’The beautiful Ginny Potter dead drunk on the sofa. The Boy Who Lived says, ‘Nobody can put the booze away faster than the other half of this perfect couple!’ Ginny sniggers, and remembers to stop the Simmer spell before she makes her uneven way up to the empty bed.
*
In the morning, it’s still raining, and Ginny wakes gently with grey light in her eyes: or as gently as one can with a raging headache. She grabs her wand and gabbles the familiar incantation of the hangover cure, waiting a minute or two before staggering downstairs.
An owl has just delivered a letter from Lily, and the daily copy of the Prophet. Ginny rips open the envelope, still standing in the hall, and devours the contents like wine. Like wine with gin in it.
’Mum, James is still teasing me about being in Hufflepuff! You’d think he’d be used to it by now! Can you owl him, please, and tell him to stop?’
There’s a rattle of pans in the kitchen. So Harry did come home after all last night, or maybe he’s only dropped in for breakfast. At any rate, he obviously didn’t make it into bed. Ginny has this vision of her getting up from the sofa at three, and Harry waiting behind the door until she’s gone, then popping in to bed down on the sofa in his turn. She finds the thought amusing, though she knows full well that Harry has taken to sleeping in Al’s room, ‘so I won’t disturb you when I come in late.’ He has no idea that after her first, drugged stupor she often lies awake for hours waiting to hear his footsteps on the stairs.
He’s sitting at the table with a plateful of bacon and eggs and a steaming mug of tea. He looks good: whether or not he had to work all night, his eyes are bright and there’s a tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, which he’s trying to repress. Not aimed at her, then.
‘Letter from Lily. She and Zinnia Smith had supper with Hagrid.’
‘Did they?’ Harry allows his grin to escape. ‘I hope he didn’t offer them his stoat stew.’
Ginny tosses the letter across the table and makes herself a cup of coffee. Her hands are shaking so much, hangover charm or not, that she freezes the water instead of boiling it at first, though her second try produces a reasonable cupful. Fortunately, Harry doesn’t seem to have noticed, absorbed as he is in Lily’s account of school.
‘I always wonder how Zacharias feels about his daughter associating with ours,’ Harry says, looking up. He and Ginny smile at each other, and the old complicity flares up for a moment, long enough for Ginny to say, ‘Oh, yes, I meant to ask you. Did you see us in Witch World?’
Harry folds the letter carefully and finishes his tea. ‘Of course. They got a copy at work. I’m never going to live that one down.’
‘Oh. I thought you’d like it.’
‘I did. But it’s not very realistic, is it? Anyway. I must get in to the office.’
Ginny knows not to nag. She knows not to ask questions. But nevertheless, the stubborn imp that lives in her head blurts out, ‘So will you be home for dinner?’
Harry avoids her eyes. ‘Probably not. We’ve got an impossible workload at the moment. I’ll let you know. I always let you know, don’t I?’
‘Eventually.’
‘Yeah. Okay, I’m off.’
‘Well,’ Ginny says, ‘you could at least wash your fucking pan before you go! I work too, you know.’
‘What’s the big deal? Just use your wand.’
‘You use your wand!’ Ginny screams, but Harry is already gone, and her hands are shaking worse than ever. She never drinks in the morning, or even at lunchtime, never: but this is an emergency, isn’t it? She goes to the baked beans and pulls out the bottle hidden under the takeaway leaflets, pouring such a huge slug of brandy into her cup that it hardly tastes of coffee at all. That’s defiantly better. Or does she mean definitely?
Her hands are steady by the time she sits down at the table with her precious doctored cup and the Prophet. She doesn’t waste time wondering why this new breed of Death Eaters is never in the news, because the Prophet always has reported selectively. However, she does stop dead at an item in Rita Skeeter’s About Town column, which she reads as one watches a Portkey crash, with irresistible horror and fascination.
’I’m sure we all enjoyed that lovely feature on a certain prominent family in Witch World!’ Rita gushes. ’But here’s a riddle for you! Which half of the perfect couple is very good friends with a fair-haired schoolmate?’
‘Which half indeed?’ Ginny says aloud.
It’s not like she doesn’t know! She just doesn’t want anyone else to know. It’s now ten days since she first went through Harry’s robes, and his bedside drawer. She’s already seen the blonde hairs - five of them, to be precise, quite short and obviously not hers - and a twelve-pack of condoms with seven missing, which puzzles her a bit, because what’s wrong with a contraceptive spell? She’s also found a couple of receipts from the Hippogriff Arms, where the bar is dimly-lit and a double room costs twenty-five Galleons per night. Ginny’s decided that Harry wants her to find the stuff, almost as if he has it all laid out ready for her. And no doubt there’s even more damning evidence from last night.
Before she can go upstairs to check, there’s the crack of Apparition at the front door, followed by a frantic knocking. Hermione is standing on the front step, her hair dishevelled, frowning. ‘Ginny? I’m sorry to call so early, but this is important. Don’t look at today’s Prophet. Just don’t.’
‘I already did.’
Hermione follows her into the kitchen, sniffs the cup at Ginny’s place.
‘For God’s sake! You haven’t been drinking?’
‘Not before six!’ Ginny protests. ‘Well, a tiny drop of brandy. Jusht a little one.’ She means it as a joke, but the ‘just’ somehow slurs itself, without any effort on her part.
‘Do you know who she is?’ Hermione always manages to sound brisk rather than curious, Ginny reflects. She feels safe with Hermione. Hermione will help. Hermione is good people. A tear drops on to the kitchen table, and Ginny suppresses a sob.
However, she recovers her composure enough to say, ‘Yeah. Who do we know with blonde hair who was at school with us? Who’s still looking for imaginary animals, and even gets paid for it?’
‘Not Luna?’
‘Yes. Luna.’
‘But...’ Hermione sounds genuinely bewildered. 'I thought Luna was such a good friend of yours. And she’s just got married.’
‘Harry’s married too, or he was last time I looked,’ Ginny says. She wishes she were sixteen again, and could solve all her problems with a new boyfriend, or her Bat-Bogey Hex. Harry wouldn’t find Luna so attractive with bats pouring from her nostrils. She laughs, in spite of herself.
‘You need some strong coffee,’ Hermione says. ‘Real coffee. Without booze. I could do with a cup too, come to that.’ She busies herself with a very complicated percolating spell, and produces two impeccable espressos.
Ginny sips hers. Even Hermione’s best espresso seems lacking this morning. But the warmth of the brandy is still pulsing through her veins: she’s damned if she’ll allow her former colleagues to shit all over her. ‘I should sue Rita, and the editor,’ she says, and Hermione says, ‘That’s a really bad idea. Then everyone will know. If they don’t already.’
‘Still. I’ll get back at them some way.’
‘Are you sure it’s Luna?’ Hermione persists. ‘I mean, Luna’s very sweet, but she really isn’t Harry’s type.’
‘Maybe she’s changed.’
‘Maybe.’ Hermione checks her watch. ‘D’you want me to stay for a while?’
‘No, I’m okay. I need to do some work.’ And Hermione should certainly be at work, at that high-powered job of hers where she earns exactly three times as much as Ron. Not that Ron minds.
‘Work will help,’ Hermione says. ‘You’ll feel a lot better. And don’t worry, Harry’ll get over it. Men and their stupid mid-life crises! ‘
Ginny’s pretty sure that Ron hasn’t had a mid-life crisis; or a mid-wife crisis, as it were. She can’t imagine him cheating on Hermione. He loves Hermione. He’s a wonderful brother. He had a proper party for his fortieth birthday, not a stupid photo-shoot! To stop the tears that threaten again, Ginny takes another sip of her espresso, and as soon as Hermione has Disapparated, she pours just the slightest hint of brandy into it.
She takes her cup in to her desk: force of habit. She likes to pretend she’s working at least, though the book has stopped dead on page 24. Try as she might, Ginny can’t muster the requisite enthusiasm for the Seeker Miracle of 1937, when the game was won in seconds. Even the Quick Quotes Quill Harry gave her last Christmas won’t play, but lies limp in her hand.
To inspire herself, she leafs through her Witch World again, for a fix of that fictitious, happy family immortalised in all its glory. Harry looks up and winks at her as he prunes the roses round the French windows, and though Ginny knows he was actually winking at Al, she still feels cheered by his uncomplicated warmth.
But then she remembers Rita’s gossip column, and everything’s spoiled. It’s spoiled even more when she reflects that possibly Luna has seen the Witch World article. Perhaps Harry showed it to her last night, and Luna said something innocuous like ‘I love your sofa.’
And Ginny can almost hear Harry telling Luna that he’d like to scoop the sofa out of the glossy colour picture and give it to her. Hell, he’d probably like to give Luna the whole damn house, with its wonderful Muggle solar panels, and the charming fireplaces and small-paned windows. He’d love to kiss her goodbye at the front door every morning and have her greet him every night.
‘Yeah, that’s fine while it lasts,’ Ginny says. ‘But if he cheats on me, he’ll certainly cheat on you. ’
She stops dead when she realises that she’s talking to herself again. But so what? Who else will listen to her, now the children are at Hogwarts?
And what was she saying, anyway? Oh, yes. Cheating. Ginny remembers that she was just about to check Harry’s pockets before Hermione arrived.
Up in Al’s room, she finds yesterday’s robes scrunched in a ball on the floor, and in the pocket a bar tab, from the Hippogriff Arms as usual. She laughs sardonically. ‘So that was your meeting with Malfoy, was it? I bet you catch hundreds of Death Eaters in a bar.’
According to the bill, last night Harry and his woman companion got through several rounds of Firewhisky. Ginny can’t quite envisage Luna drinking Firewhisky. Luna only eats food that she can dig out of the soil or pick from trees and bushes, and she only drinks spring water. No doubt Harry downed all the whisky himself, something to bring up next time he nags her about her own drinking. There are no blonde hairs, but when Ginny sniffs the robes they smell faintly musky, faintly sexual, a scent tantalisingly like Harry’s own, but subtly different. Something crosses her mind briefly; a shadow that she can’t quite grasp.
Suddenly, Ginny can’t bear to stay in the house a second longer. She finds her warmest cloak, wraps herself up tightly and Apparates to Diagon Alley. When the rain and the cold air hit her, the drink hits her again too, the equivalent, she calculates, of two or three double brandies in her coffee. It’s a wonderful feeling, and she contemplates another quick one at the Cauldron. But then she notices a young witch glancing at her curiously, either with pity or envy. Who knows? Ginny stands up straight, looks the woman directly in the eye, and manages to negotiate the complicated doors of Flourish & Blotts without faltering. She won’t have a drink, no. She’ll sit on one of the armchairs upstairs, check out the latest Quidditch books. She may even close her eyes, just for a minute...
At one thirty, when she emerges into Diagon Alley again, she’s stone cold sober. And she’s going to stay that way, she vows, ordering a toasted cheese sandwich and lemon tea at the French café, like any other ordinary witch out for a spot of midweek shopping. Nobody’s looking at her any more. Nobody knows, or cares, who she is. And there are sales on at Madam Malkin’s and Twilfit & Tattings.
*
Ginny arrives home with her parcels just after six, and is astounded to see the lights on and Harry in the kitchen, prodding at something with his wand. He turns to her, his glasses askew, faintly bemused.
‘Hey, Ginny. How d’you make gravy?’
Ginny laughs, relieved, because it’s late enough for a drink. She pours a glass of wine and says, ‘Easy. You need a Dissolution Spell.’
‘Dissolution? Sounds fun.’
Ginny reaches over and murmurs over the pan. The horrible lump subsides, dissolves smoothly into the water. ‘See?’
‘Thank you. I was hoping to surprise you.’
‘Oh, Harry! You did, really you did.’
Now Ginny’s downed that first glass of the evening, she’s composed enough to smell roasting meat and potatoes in the oven, see two plates warming on the hob. Harry often doesn’t realise that a simple spell will save him a lot of work, something she still finds endearing. ‘You could use a warming charm,’ she says, smiling.
Harry’s face closes, as it always does when he’s about to be unkind. ‘And you could use a sobering one. That’s wine, not water. You’re really tossing it back tonight.’
His endearing factor instantly slips to zero. ‘So what?’ She deliberately takes another big gulp, though she was about to put her glass down, and adds, ‘Anyway, it’s good of you to drop by.’
Harry actually looks a bit chastened. ‘I’m sorry. But you knew when I took the promotion that it would be hard on you sometimes.’
‘So what’s going on?’ Ginny finds a bottle of Corbières in the rack and opens it.
‘Not a lot. But I have to be in Cornwall this weekend. I’ll try to get back by Monday night.’
‘What on earth are you doing in Cornwall?’ Ginny asks.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Harry says. ‘You get very loud when you’ve been drinking.’
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, Ginny hates more than Harry telling her to keep her voice down. Every time he does it, he lowers his own voice to a drawl, as if to say, ‘I never shout’. When he drawls like that, he sounds uncannily like his arch-enemy, Draco Malfoy.
Usually, when Harry tells her to be quiet she takes great care to pitch her voice even higher when she replies. But tonight she just can’t be fucking bothered, either to shout or to reply at all. She downs her wine, pours more, and takes care not to let Harry see how annoyed she is. After another half glass, though, the alcohol finally starts to kick in properly, and Ginny feels quite calm at the thought of the weekend ahead. She’ll get some gardening done perhaps, or go and see her parents. Her mother’s always asking her to come down. Or she could do some more research for the book.
‘Anyway. I hope we’ll manage to get everything sorted,’ Harry says. ‘Otherwise, I’ll have to stay a bit longer.’
‘I suppose you’ll be with your blonde school-friend?’ Ginny asks. ‘Searching for Blibbering Humdingers or something? You probably haven’t noticed that you two are all over the Prophet.’ She picks up the paper, still open on the kitchen table, and hands it to Harry. His expression as he reads it is almost studiedly blank.
‘Oh, that’s what this scene is all about!’ he says. ‘Don’t be such an idiot. And don’t believe anything you see in the Prophet. You know they’ve always had it in for me. You knew that when you worked there.’
‘So it isn’t true about her? About Luna, I mean.’
‘Luna?’ Harry looks almost as taken aback as Hermione did earlier. If Ginny didn’t know better, she’d believe he was genuinely surprised: Harry always finds it hard to lie when he’s asked a direct question.
She digs her nails into her palm to stop herself losing her temper. ‘I bet you’re not going on your own, though, are you?’
‘Of course not! Draco’s taking me and a couple of my men to a DE safe house, and we’re going to go in there with our warrants and arrest the lot. Satisfied?’
Harry opens the oven, and warm air wafts out; too warm. Ginny can feel her face flushing, as if she weren’t already flushed enough with the wine. ‘Lamb’s done perfectly,’ he says. ‘Here, taste a bit. Isn’t it delicious?’ He’s chopping mint now, and Ginny fetches some redcurrant jelly for herself, finds a spoon for it, lays out knives and forks. While Harry isn’t looking, she pours another drink too, but she doesn’t pour one for him. Let him get his own.
*
Ginny wakes abruptly, unsure for a moment where she is, until her eyes adjust to the dark, and the bedroom comes into focus. She tries to piece the evening together. Harry was home, and he cooked dinner, and he’s going away... Her memory stops there. She has no recollection of eating the meal, but she can feel a tiny bit of meat trapped between two teeth, where she must have been too tired, or too pissed, to brush them. Besides, she still feels uncomfortably full. These days, she rarely eats much, certainly not as much as she used to.
Harry is in the bed beside her. Did they do anything? Surely not. Even in a bad mood, Harry isn’t going to screw her while she’s lying in a stupor. And come to think of it, the last thing she wants is sex with Harry, so if he did try, no doubt she put up a reasonable fight. She just hopes to goodness she didn’t say or do anything too awful. If she mentioned Luna again, she might as well pack her bags and go, seeing as Harry’s so besotted.
She gets up to go to the loo, as quietly as possible. As so often happens, she’s switched from comatose to wide awake, and there’s no way she’ll get to sleep again. She simply can’t face the next couple of hours lying next to a sleeping Harry. Instead, she stays in the bathroom and runs a bath. When did she last have a bath or shower? She has absolutely no idea, which is nothing short of shameful, but at least she’s now soaking in hot, hot water, scented with patchouli oil. Harry hates the smell of patchouli, so Ginny rarely uses it. Come to think of it, patchouli is the sort of scent Luna goes for.
She lies back and imagines she’s a model, posing in a froth of bubbles with a glass of champagne in her hand, sipping slowly to ease the tensions of the day. If it weren’t five in the morning, if she didn’t still feel a bit drunk from yesterday, she’d go downstairs and bring up a bottle from the fridge.
That was one of the things the Witch World interviewer was so impressed with. ’Not only do the Potters have a fridge, but they always keep a couple of bottles of champagne in there, just in case there’s something to celebrate!’ She even insisted on a photo of Ginny and Harry on the terrace, glasses poised for a toast: ’The perfect couple enjoy a glass of champagne as the sun goes down after a lovely summer day’.
The interviewer enjoyed some champagne too, and so did the cameraman and the girl who adjusted the lights. By the time they Disapparated, they were all quite merry, convinced that the Potters must surely be the happiest family in the Wizarding world. Ginny was a bit irritated, because both bottles had been emptied, and she had to Summon a couple more from the cellar. The ones sitting in the fridge now are distant ancestors of those two - goodness knows how much of the stuff Ginny has downed in the intervening weeks. Not that there’s been anything to celebrate: quite the reverse.
For a minute, she contemplates slipping under the water and closing her eyes, simply letting go. It doesn’t especially matter to her whether she lives or dies; though the thought of her little Lily orphaned so young gives her pause. And what if the children end up with Luna for a stepmother, and grow up with those weird ideas? Ginny shudders. Anyway, there’s Friday to look forward to, all the wine she wants, and Harry away, so he won’t make snide comments about her drinking. With any luck, he’ll be off early this morning, and she can lace her coffee with brandy again, before her hangover kicks in. And she’ll definitely go to The Burrow, and take a couple of bottles along, just to be on the safe side...
All the same, she experiments for a while, letting the water gradually cover her mouth and nose to see how long she can manage not to breathe. But she always surfaces again, and again, feeling foolish and just a tiny bit disappointed.
End
By minnow_53
Disclaimer: These characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Harry/Ginny, Harry/?
Summary: Witch World calls them the perfect couple. But Harry is seeing someone else, and Ginny is in love with the bottle.
Rating: PG-13
AN: This was written for the Fabulous No-Pressure Laissez-Faire HP_Unfaithful Challenge. My prompt was Two characters keep a charade of marriage for the press. What happens when one of them is accused of infidelity?
AN2: The characters’ occupations are all derived from information in the HP Lexicon.
The Potters At Home
The October issue of Witch World comes out on September 23rd, a rainy, melancholy day already hinting at the winter ahead. Ginny’s copy is waiting on the wet front step when she gets home with the new skirt she doesn’t need and the dragon-skin boots that cost more than she used to earn in a week. Her face and Harry’s, rain-spattered, gaze at her from the cover, under a banner announcing ‘Exclusive! The Potters At Home.’ Ginny finds it strangely embarrassing to see them like that, exposed to the elements and to anyone who has a Galleon to spend on a glossy magazine.
She also feels guilty that she didn’t wait in for the delivery, especially as there’s an owl from her mother as well. ‘Darling, what a lovely feature! You and Harry look so happy, and of course my grandchildren are adorable.’
Ginny kicks off her shoes, makes a cup of tea and dries the pages carefully with her wand before turning to the article. She can’t help grimacing at ’The perfect couple’, which is just too cheesy, if not quite as bad as ‘The Boy Who Lived At Forty!’ with its dodgy syntax. Still, she has to agree that the six-page spread is wonderful, especially the photo of Lily in the kitchen, standing by the counter in an oversize apron, stirring cake-mix in a big bowl. Every so often, she looks up and grins directly at the camera, and Ginny just can’t help grinning back.
The shoot actually took place just after Harry’s fortieth birthday, at the beginning of August, and the garden features in many of the photos, impossibly green and lush; an enchanted Eden. Now, Eden is lost, the leaves already falling before they’ve even had a chance to turn, and it’s so cold that Ginny kindles some comforting flames in the fireplace.
Besides the eulogies about Harry, there’s a whole half-page taken up with a photo of Ginny at her desk, sucking the end of a quill and looking thoughtful. ’Harry Potter’s beautiful wife, the former Ginny Weasley, is famous for her spectacular Quidditch career’, the caption reads. ’Following her illustrious stint with our sister publication, the Prophet, she is currently working on her first book.’’
In fact, the book, a study of the Holyhead Harpies, is going nowhere fast.
Ginny examines her smiling face with a frown. She shouldn’t have had her hair cut so short, she now realises: really, she looks like one of her brothers. Sometimes, though it sounds pretty sick, she wonders whether Harry was actually marrying his best friend. ‘Except I’m his best friend,’ she says aloud. Her voice sounds small and defiant, like her daughter’s.
She prefers the photo of the five of them together on the sofa, Harry with one arm round her, the other round Lily, James and Al sitting beside their sister. The sofa has come out especially well, white, plump and immaculate with its blue and pink cushions. Besides their lovely sofa, the Potters have French windows leading into that large, leafy, garden; they have five big bedrooms; they have what Witch World calls ’a wonderful selection of Muggle artefacts and appliances’, including a fridge and a television.
They also have a remarkably quiet house at the moment, for a couple with three children; but of course, they’re all at Hogwarts now. The perfect couple probably wouldn’t get Empty Nest Syndrome, but sometimes, Ginny reads about Muggle schools and wishes that her children could go somewhere local, that they’d come home after school every day and spend weekends with the family. Wizarding education is harsh. Ginny sighs, laying her hand palm-down on the photo of James and Al picking apples in the orchard, as if she could trap them, keep them here forever. Lucky the children aren’t homesick, because she certainly is sick for missing them, especially her baby, Lily. She feels redundant. This is it, life over at thirty-nine. She has nothing to look forward to except old age and death.
Or a drink. The clock is ticking agonisingly slowly towards six. It isn’t like the clock at home, with the hands pointing to ‘Work’ or ‘Deadly Peril’. It’s just an ordinary clock. ‘I don’t like being tracked,’ Harry said, not quite playfully, when they were furnishing the house. Right now, Ginny doesn’t give a fuck what sort of clock it is. She just wishes that the bloody minute hand would get a move on. For her part, she’s played fair, she’s waited; she’s even had a cup of tea. She always feels a bit disconcerted when people talk about a cup of tea as an actual event. To her, it’s filler, something to do between late afternoon and that first heavenly glass of wine.
Still another few minutes to go. Ginny leans back against the sofa cushions that look so wonderful in the Witch World spread. The fire is burning well, and she has an almost irresistible urge to shove the article into it, reduce the smiling faces and the lovely house and garden to ashes. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ her rational half admonishes, snatching the magazine and putting it safely out of reach on a high bookshelf.
The clock strikes six, and Ginny rushes to uncork the half-full bottle of claret waiting patiently on the kitchen counter. Before she pours it, she reflexively looks round for a Magic Marker to draw a line on the bottle, so she won’t drink too much, something she’s done ever since she started drinking more than a couple of glasses. But then she remembers that it doesn’t matter. The children are at school, and she can drink as much as she damn well likes. And once she’s had that first gulp, which is more like half a glass, she opens a new bottle so it’s ready as soon as she wants it.
Before she gets too drunk, she rummages for the takeaway menus hidden in the corner cupboard behind the tins of baked beans: Harry hates beans. They remind him of the Dursleys. ‘We always had baked beans on toast on Sunday nights,’ Harry often tells the children. ‘Or rather, they did. I just cooked the beans. Not that I minded missing out, of course.’
She decides on Indian tonight, from the Tandoori Cauldron. Curry is good. Curry is always a winner, easy to disguise as something homemade, prepared with love for the perfect husband by the perfect wife. It’s also quick: about ten minutes after she’s dispatched the order, the delivery boy knocks on the door, much to Ginny’s relief. He’s a bit of a daredevil, and she always worries that he’ll spill her order halfway to the house.
‘Hello, Mrs Potter,’ he says, handing her the brown bag. ‘I’ll put it on your account, shall I?’
‘Thank you, Jamal.’ Ginny tips him five Sickles, and he whistles as he sets off again, looping the loop on his broomstick, brushing the tops of trees as he swoops down.
The chef has included an extra order of naan bread, and Ginny nibbles it as she pours her first glass from the second bottle. Well, she’s still under the nine units. Not that nine units a day is particularly great.
She empties the chicken korma into a casserole, adds a cooked, chopped chicken breast and a handful of ground almonds, then puts the pan on a Gentle Simmer spell. She didn’t cook the chicken either, but bought it from the supermarket in Diagon Alley. The dinner will remain perfect until Harry comes home. If he does come home. Recently, he’s been working hard, staging a series of all-nighters while his men stake out a new breed of suspect Death Eaters, or so he tells her.
Does she believe him? Maybe. Still, as the evening goes on, she’s glad he introduced her to Muggle gin. She pours a slug into her wine, not caring how foul it tastes.
At nine, Ginny jumps up, spilling her wine and gin cocktail, startled by the insistent ringing in her ears. Even after all these years, she still hasn’t got the hang of the telephone, and has to take a couple of deep, calming breaths before she answers.
Harry sounds hyper, overexcited, as he often does on these long days. ‘Hey, Ginny, I’ll be really late. Don’t wait up.’
Ginny never has liked talking to people she can’t see. She snaps, ‘What’s the problem this time? I mean, surely you can delegate the work. Otherwise, there’s no point being the boss.’
Harry pauses, obviously making an effort to sound patient. ‘I wouldn’t be the boss if I wasn’t willing to take on responsibilities. I’ve got to meet Draco Malfoy. He’s going to give me the names of a few of the new Death Eaters.’
Ginny wants to ask, ‘Since when have you two even spoken to each other?’ or ‘Since when has a Malfoy grassed to the Aurors?’ but manages to bite the words back. If he wants to pretend he’s spending his evenings with Draco Malfoy, let him. At least she can watch the TV programmes she likes best, a quiz show followed by a romantic comedy that would bore Harry to tears.
During the first ad break she tries to think back to the beginning of September, to the Hogwarts Express, to the slight panic when Al thought he’d left his dress robes behind. Sometimes, there are gaps in her memory: she couldn’t actually say whether Draco was seeing Scorpius off, but he must have been. Certainly he and Harry can’t have acknowledged each other. She’d have noticed that, even though she was more concerned with her son. Trust Harry not to think up a better excuse! She grits her teeth, literally, when she thinks how much he takes her for a fool, and has to obliterate her anger with another drink, more gin than wine this time.
Often, she comes to sprawled on the sofa, while Harry shakes her roughly by the shoulder, roughly enough to leave a bruise or two. Tonight, or rather, this morning, she surfaces at three, alone, in the cold house.
She can imagine Witch World’s caption: ’The beautiful Ginny Potter dead drunk on the sofa. The Boy Who Lived says, ‘Nobody can put the booze away faster than the other half of this perfect couple!’ Ginny sniggers, and remembers to stop the Simmer spell before she makes her uneven way up to the empty bed.
*
In the morning, it’s still raining, and Ginny wakes gently with grey light in her eyes: or as gently as one can with a raging headache. She grabs her wand and gabbles the familiar incantation of the hangover cure, waiting a minute or two before staggering downstairs.
An owl has just delivered a letter from Lily, and the daily copy of the Prophet. Ginny rips open the envelope, still standing in the hall, and devours the contents like wine. Like wine with gin in it.
’Mum, James is still teasing me about being in Hufflepuff! You’d think he’d be used to it by now! Can you owl him, please, and tell him to stop?’
There’s a rattle of pans in the kitchen. So Harry did come home after all last night, or maybe he’s only dropped in for breakfast. At any rate, he obviously didn’t make it into bed. Ginny has this vision of her getting up from the sofa at three, and Harry waiting behind the door until she’s gone, then popping in to bed down on the sofa in his turn. She finds the thought amusing, though she knows full well that Harry has taken to sleeping in Al’s room, ‘so I won’t disturb you when I come in late.’ He has no idea that after her first, drugged stupor she often lies awake for hours waiting to hear his footsteps on the stairs.
He’s sitting at the table with a plateful of bacon and eggs and a steaming mug of tea. He looks good: whether or not he had to work all night, his eyes are bright and there’s a tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, which he’s trying to repress. Not aimed at her, then.
‘Letter from Lily. She and Zinnia Smith had supper with Hagrid.’
‘Did they?’ Harry allows his grin to escape. ‘I hope he didn’t offer them his stoat stew.’
Ginny tosses the letter across the table and makes herself a cup of coffee. Her hands are shaking so much, hangover charm or not, that she freezes the water instead of boiling it at first, though her second try produces a reasonable cupful. Fortunately, Harry doesn’t seem to have noticed, absorbed as he is in Lily’s account of school.
‘I always wonder how Zacharias feels about his daughter associating with ours,’ Harry says, looking up. He and Ginny smile at each other, and the old complicity flares up for a moment, long enough for Ginny to say, ‘Oh, yes, I meant to ask you. Did you see us in Witch World?’
Harry folds the letter carefully and finishes his tea. ‘Of course. They got a copy at work. I’m never going to live that one down.’
‘Oh. I thought you’d like it.’
‘I did. But it’s not very realistic, is it? Anyway. I must get in to the office.’
Ginny knows not to nag. She knows not to ask questions. But nevertheless, the stubborn imp that lives in her head blurts out, ‘So will you be home for dinner?’
Harry avoids her eyes. ‘Probably not. We’ve got an impossible workload at the moment. I’ll let you know. I always let you know, don’t I?’
‘Eventually.’
‘Yeah. Okay, I’m off.’
‘Well,’ Ginny says, ‘you could at least wash your fucking pan before you go! I work too, you know.’
‘What’s the big deal? Just use your wand.’
‘You use your wand!’ Ginny screams, but Harry is already gone, and her hands are shaking worse than ever. She never drinks in the morning, or even at lunchtime, never: but this is an emergency, isn’t it? She goes to the baked beans and pulls out the bottle hidden under the takeaway leaflets, pouring such a huge slug of brandy into her cup that it hardly tastes of coffee at all. That’s defiantly better. Or does she mean definitely?
Her hands are steady by the time she sits down at the table with her precious doctored cup and the Prophet. She doesn’t waste time wondering why this new breed of Death Eaters is never in the news, because the Prophet always has reported selectively. However, she does stop dead at an item in Rita Skeeter’s About Town column, which she reads as one watches a Portkey crash, with irresistible horror and fascination.
’I’m sure we all enjoyed that lovely feature on a certain prominent family in Witch World!’ Rita gushes. ’But here’s a riddle for you! Which half of the perfect couple is very good friends with a fair-haired schoolmate?’
‘Which half indeed?’ Ginny says aloud.
It’s not like she doesn’t know! She just doesn’t want anyone else to know. It’s now ten days since she first went through Harry’s robes, and his bedside drawer. She’s already seen the blonde hairs - five of them, to be precise, quite short and obviously not hers - and a twelve-pack of condoms with seven missing, which puzzles her a bit, because what’s wrong with a contraceptive spell? She’s also found a couple of receipts from the Hippogriff Arms, where the bar is dimly-lit and a double room costs twenty-five Galleons per night. Ginny’s decided that Harry wants her to find the stuff, almost as if he has it all laid out ready for her. And no doubt there’s even more damning evidence from last night.
Before she can go upstairs to check, there’s the crack of Apparition at the front door, followed by a frantic knocking. Hermione is standing on the front step, her hair dishevelled, frowning. ‘Ginny? I’m sorry to call so early, but this is important. Don’t look at today’s Prophet. Just don’t.’
‘I already did.’
Hermione follows her into the kitchen, sniffs the cup at Ginny’s place.
‘For God’s sake! You haven’t been drinking?’
‘Not before six!’ Ginny protests. ‘Well, a tiny drop of brandy. Jusht a little one.’ She means it as a joke, but the ‘just’ somehow slurs itself, without any effort on her part.
‘Do you know who she is?’ Hermione always manages to sound brisk rather than curious, Ginny reflects. She feels safe with Hermione. Hermione will help. Hermione is good people. A tear drops on to the kitchen table, and Ginny suppresses a sob.
However, she recovers her composure enough to say, ‘Yeah. Who do we know with blonde hair who was at school with us? Who’s still looking for imaginary animals, and even gets paid for it?’
‘Not Luna?’
‘Yes. Luna.’
‘But...’ Hermione sounds genuinely bewildered. 'I thought Luna was such a good friend of yours. And she’s just got married.’
‘Harry’s married too, or he was last time I looked,’ Ginny says. She wishes she were sixteen again, and could solve all her problems with a new boyfriend, or her Bat-Bogey Hex. Harry wouldn’t find Luna so attractive with bats pouring from her nostrils. She laughs, in spite of herself.
‘You need some strong coffee,’ Hermione says. ‘Real coffee. Without booze. I could do with a cup too, come to that.’ She busies herself with a very complicated percolating spell, and produces two impeccable espressos.
Ginny sips hers. Even Hermione’s best espresso seems lacking this morning. But the warmth of the brandy is still pulsing through her veins: she’s damned if she’ll allow her former colleagues to shit all over her. ‘I should sue Rita, and the editor,’ she says, and Hermione says, ‘That’s a really bad idea. Then everyone will know. If they don’t already.’
‘Still. I’ll get back at them some way.’
‘Are you sure it’s Luna?’ Hermione persists. ‘I mean, Luna’s very sweet, but she really isn’t Harry’s type.’
‘Maybe she’s changed.’
‘Maybe.’ Hermione checks her watch. ‘D’you want me to stay for a while?’
‘No, I’m okay. I need to do some work.’ And Hermione should certainly be at work, at that high-powered job of hers where she earns exactly three times as much as Ron. Not that Ron minds.
‘Work will help,’ Hermione says. ‘You’ll feel a lot better. And don’t worry, Harry’ll get over it. Men and their stupid mid-life crises! ‘
Ginny’s pretty sure that Ron hasn’t had a mid-life crisis; or a mid-wife crisis, as it were. She can’t imagine him cheating on Hermione. He loves Hermione. He’s a wonderful brother. He had a proper party for his fortieth birthday, not a stupid photo-shoot! To stop the tears that threaten again, Ginny takes another sip of her espresso, and as soon as Hermione has Disapparated, she pours just the slightest hint of brandy into it.
She takes her cup in to her desk: force of habit. She likes to pretend she’s working at least, though the book has stopped dead on page 24. Try as she might, Ginny can’t muster the requisite enthusiasm for the Seeker Miracle of 1937, when the game was won in seconds. Even the Quick Quotes Quill Harry gave her last Christmas won’t play, but lies limp in her hand.
To inspire herself, she leafs through her Witch World again, for a fix of that fictitious, happy family immortalised in all its glory. Harry looks up and winks at her as he prunes the roses round the French windows, and though Ginny knows he was actually winking at Al, she still feels cheered by his uncomplicated warmth.
But then she remembers Rita’s gossip column, and everything’s spoiled. It’s spoiled even more when she reflects that possibly Luna has seen the Witch World article. Perhaps Harry showed it to her last night, and Luna said something innocuous like ‘I love your sofa.’
And Ginny can almost hear Harry telling Luna that he’d like to scoop the sofa out of the glossy colour picture and give it to her. Hell, he’d probably like to give Luna the whole damn house, with its wonderful Muggle solar panels, and the charming fireplaces and small-paned windows. He’d love to kiss her goodbye at the front door every morning and have her greet him every night.
‘Yeah, that’s fine while it lasts,’ Ginny says. ‘But if he cheats on me, he’ll certainly cheat on you. ’
She stops dead when she realises that she’s talking to herself again. But so what? Who else will listen to her, now the children are at Hogwarts?
And what was she saying, anyway? Oh, yes. Cheating. Ginny remembers that she was just about to check Harry’s pockets before Hermione arrived.
Up in Al’s room, she finds yesterday’s robes scrunched in a ball on the floor, and in the pocket a bar tab, from the Hippogriff Arms as usual. She laughs sardonically. ‘So that was your meeting with Malfoy, was it? I bet you catch hundreds of Death Eaters in a bar.’
According to the bill, last night Harry and his woman companion got through several rounds of Firewhisky. Ginny can’t quite envisage Luna drinking Firewhisky. Luna only eats food that she can dig out of the soil or pick from trees and bushes, and she only drinks spring water. No doubt Harry downed all the whisky himself, something to bring up next time he nags her about her own drinking. There are no blonde hairs, but when Ginny sniffs the robes they smell faintly musky, faintly sexual, a scent tantalisingly like Harry’s own, but subtly different. Something crosses her mind briefly; a shadow that she can’t quite grasp.
Suddenly, Ginny can’t bear to stay in the house a second longer. She finds her warmest cloak, wraps herself up tightly and Apparates to Diagon Alley. When the rain and the cold air hit her, the drink hits her again too, the equivalent, she calculates, of two or three double brandies in her coffee. It’s a wonderful feeling, and she contemplates another quick one at the Cauldron. But then she notices a young witch glancing at her curiously, either with pity or envy. Who knows? Ginny stands up straight, looks the woman directly in the eye, and manages to negotiate the complicated doors of Flourish & Blotts without faltering. She won’t have a drink, no. She’ll sit on one of the armchairs upstairs, check out the latest Quidditch books. She may even close her eyes, just for a minute...
At one thirty, when she emerges into Diagon Alley again, she’s stone cold sober. And she’s going to stay that way, she vows, ordering a toasted cheese sandwich and lemon tea at the French café, like any other ordinary witch out for a spot of midweek shopping. Nobody’s looking at her any more. Nobody knows, or cares, who she is. And there are sales on at Madam Malkin’s and Twilfit & Tattings.
*
Ginny arrives home with her parcels just after six, and is astounded to see the lights on and Harry in the kitchen, prodding at something with his wand. He turns to her, his glasses askew, faintly bemused.
‘Hey, Ginny. How d’you make gravy?’
Ginny laughs, relieved, because it’s late enough for a drink. She pours a glass of wine and says, ‘Easy. You need a Dissolution Spell.’
‘Dissolution? Sounds fun.’
Ginny reaches over and murmurs over the pan. The horrible lump subsides, dissolves smoothly into the water. ‘See?’
‘Thank you. I was hoping to surprise you.’
‘Oh, Harry! You did, really you did.’
Now Ginny’s downed that first glass of the evening, she’s composed enough to smell roasting meat and potatoes in the oven, see two plates warming on the hob. Harry often doesn’t realise that a simple spell will save him a lot of work, something she still finds endearing. ‘You could use a warming charm,’ she says, smiling.
Harry’s face closes, as it always does when he’s about to be unkind. ‘And you could use a sobering one. That’s wine, not water. You’re really tossing it back tonight.’
His endearing factor instantly slips to zero. ‘So what?’ She deliberately takes another big gulp, though she was about to put her glass down, and adds, ‘Anyway, it’s good of you to drop by.’
Harry actually looks a bit chastened. ‘I’m sorry. But you knew when I took the promotion that it would be hard on you sometimes.’
‘So what’s going on?’ Ginny finds a bottle of Corbières in the rack and opens it.
‘Not a lot. But I have to be in Cornwall this weekend. I’ll try to get back by Monday night.’
‘What on earth are you doing in Cornwall?’ Ginny asks.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Harry says. ‘You get very loud when you’ve been drinking.’
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, Ginny hates more than Harry telling her to keep her voice down. Every time he does it, he lowers his own voice to a drawl, as if to say, ‘I never shout’. When he drawls like that, he sounds uncannily like his arch-enemy, Draco Malfoy.
Usually, when Harry tells her to be quiet she takes great care to pitch her voice even higher when she replies. But tonight she just can’t be fucking bothered, either to shout or to reply at all. She downs her wine, pours more, and takes care not to let Harry see how annoyed she is. After another half glass, though, the alcohol finally starts to kick in properly, and Ginny feels quite calm at the thought of the weekend ahead. She’ll get some gardening done perhaps, or go and see her parents. Her mother’s always asking her to come down. Or she could do some more research for the book.
‘Anyway. I hope we’ll manage to get everything sorted,’ Harry says. ‘Otherwise, I’ll have to stay a bit longer.’
‘I suppose you’ll be with your blonde school-friend?’ Ginny asks. ‘Searching for Blibbering Humdingers or something? You probably haven’t noticed that you two are all over the Prophet.’ She picks up the paper, still open on the kitchen table, and hands it to Harry. His expression as he reads it is almost studiedly blank.
‘Oh, that’s what this scene is all about!’ he says. ‘Don’t be such an idiot. And don’t believe anything you see in the Prophet. You know they’ve always had it in for me. You knew that when you worked there.’
‘So it isn’t true about her? About Luna, I mean.’
‘Luna?’ Harry looks almost as taken aback as Hermione did earlier. If Ginny didn’t know better, she’d believe he was genuinely surprised: Harry always finds it hard to lie when he’s asked a direct question.
She digs her nails into her palm to stop herself losing her temper. ‘I bet you’re not going on your own, though, are you?’
‘Of course not! Draco’s taking me and a couple of my men to a DE safe house, and we’re going to go in there with our warrants and arrest the lot. Satisfied?’
Harry opens the oven, and warm air wafts out; too warm. Ginny can feel her face flushing, as if she weren’t already flushed enough with the wine. ‘Lamb’s done perfectly,’ he says. ‘Here, taste a bit. Isn’t it delicious?’ He’s chopping mint now, and Ginny fetches some redcurrant jelly for herself, finds a spoon for it, lays out knives and forks. While Harry isn’t looking, she pours another drink too, but she doesn’t pour one for him. Let him get his own.
*
Ginny wakes abruptly, unsure for a moment where she is, until her eyes adjust to the dark, and the bedroom comes into focus. She tries to piece the evening together. Harry was home, and he cooked dinner, and he’s going away... Her memory stops there. She has no recollection of eating the meal, but she can feel a tiny bit of meat trapped between two teeth, where she must have been too tired, or too pissed, to brush them. Besides, she still feels uncomfortably full. These days, she rarely eats much, certainly not as much as she used to.
Harry is in the bed beside her. Did they do anything? Surely not. Even in a bad mood, Harry isn’t going to screw her while she’s lying in a stupor. And come to think of it, the last thing she wants is sex with Harry, so if he did try, no doubt she put up a reasonable fight. She just hopes to goodness she didn’t say or do anything too awful. If she mentioned Luna again, she might as well pack her bags and go, seeing as Harry’s so besotted.
She gets up to go to the loo, as quietly as possible. As so often happens, she’s switched from comatose to wide awake, and there’s no way she’ll get to sleep again. She simply can’t face the next couple of hours lying next to a sleeping Harry. Instead, she stays in the bathroom and runs a bath. When did she last have a bath or shower? She has absolutely no idea, which is nothing short of shameful, but at least she’s now soaking in hot, hot water, scented with patchouli oil. Harry hates the smell of patchouli, so Ginny rarely uses it. Come to think of it, patchouli is the sort of scent Luna goes for.
She lies back and imagines she’s a model, posing in a froth of bubbles with a glass of champagne in her hand, sipping slowly to ease the tensions of the day. If it weren’t five in the morning, if she didn’t still feel a bit drunk from yesterday, she’d go downstairs and bring up a bottle from the fridge.
That was one of the things the Witch World interviewer was so impressed with. ’Not only do the Potters have a fridge, but they always keep a couple of bottles of champagne in there, just in case there’s something to celebrate!’ She even insisted on a photo of Ginny and Harry on the terrace, glasses poised for a toast: ’The perfect couple enjoy a glass of champagne as the sun goes down after a lovely summer day’.
The interviewer enjoyed some champagne too, and so did the cameraman and the girl who adjusted the lights. By the time they Disapparated, they were all quite merry, convinced that the Potters must surely be the happiest family in the Wizarding world. Ginny was a bit irritated, because both bottles had been emptied, and she had to Summon a couple more from the cellar. The ones sitting in the fridge now are distant ancestors of those two - goodness knows how much of the stuff Ginny has downed in the intervening weeks. Not that there’s been anything to celebrate: quite the reverse.
For a minute, she contemplates slipping under the water and closing her eyes, simply letting go. It doesn’t especially matter to her whether she lives or dies; though the thought of her little Lily orphaned so young gives her pause. And what if the children end up with Luna for a stepmother, and grow up with those weird ideas? Ginny shudders. Anyway, there’s Friday to look forward to, all the wine she wants, and Harry away, so he won’t make snide comments about her drinking. With any luck, he’ll be off early this morning, and she can lace her coffee with brandy again, before her hangover kicks in. And she’ll definitely go to The Burrow, and take a couple of bottles along, just to be on the safe side...
All the same, she experiments for a while, letting the water gradually cover her mouth and nose to see how long she can manage not to breathe. But she always surfaces again, and again, feeling foolish and just a tiny bit disappointed.
End