Fic: The Tough Optioin [1/5]
Title: The Tough Option
Author: luna_plath
Rating: R
Warnings: language, EWE, sex
Word Count: 3,308 words
Genres: Romance, Angst, Gen
Summary: After splitting up fifteen years ago Harry and Ginny are thrown together again when they search for their children during a detention gone wrong. But will their complicated history get in the way of forging a new relationship? A story in five parts. Thanks so much to lyras for the fantastic beta job!
AN: This chapter is Harry/Tracy, but the story will eventually be Harry/Ginny. The next chapter will explain Ginny’s marriage, and chapters following that will detail the lives of their children. I repeat, this fic WILL be H/G eventually.
The Tough Option
Prompt: Harry and Ginny break up after the war. They go onto marry and have children. They are reunited when their kids attend Hogwarts together.
----
1. Balcony Blues
----
The first time he noticed Tracey Davis was after knowing her for ten years.
She’d been in his year at Hogwarts, in Slytherin, so naturally they hadn’t gotten to know each other well. He remembered her spending a lot of time with Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson, her housemates, but just the girls; Harry had no memory of spotting her with her male classmates, except maybe Theodore Nott sometime in their sixth year. But ever since school and the war she seemed to be running in different circles than her friends. And didn’t he know plenty about that.
Teenaged friendships aside, he definitely wouldn’t have called them school chums. Harry didn’t get to know her until he caught Jonathan Swell, a swindling jewelry salesman who sold cursed gemstones to both witches and muggles. Tracey was the dark artifacts specialist for the Auror Office and she had analyzed multiple pieces for him. She was good enough at her job to have earned a private office, a rarity in the DMLE, especially for someone so young.
One afternoon he stopped by her open doorway, rapping his knuckles against the frame while leaning against it. “Davis, have you taken a break all day?”
She looked up at him, her silver, hoop earrings glinting as she moved, reminding Harry of the fairy lights he always woke up to after an auror mission landed him in St. Mungo’s. “Not yet. I just finished up this report for Robards.”
He nodded toward the door leading out of the office. “Up for some tea then? I’ve got to make the rounds in magical London if you want to come.” He was already wearing his now trademark dragon-hide jacket.
Her dusty, golden hair reminded him of a lioness; it was layered, dark in places and pale blond in others. Harry thought that he could’ve spent ages watching her hair move and never figure out what color it actually was.
“Alright,” she agreed, blotting her eagle feather quill and placing it on her desk. He watched her stand, noticing the thin sliver of peachy skin that showed between her black skirt and off-the-shoulder jumper as she reached for her pea coat.
Harry tore his eyes away and waited for her in the doorway, brushing his longish black hair out of his eyes and trying not to meet Ron’s shrewd gaze from across the room.
----
After Ginny left him he felt like he’d lost much more than just a girlfriend. He was Harry Potter. He’d been through pain and sacrifice and innumerable angry, sleepless nights-and even worse mornings. He’d grown up without any parents to speak of, he’d broken countless bones, he’d seen his own friends die in battle, he’d fought murderers and nearly been murdered himself. But giving up Ginny Weasley had felt tougher than all of that.
After the war he had been optimistic. The logical part of his brain had told him not to pin too many hopes on her, on what they had together, but after so much hurt and neglect and time, he couldn’t help but give himself completely over to her. Being with Ginny was like standing on the edge of a ship, toes pointing seaward, balanced on the balls of his feet with the wind gently pushing one way or the other. It had been new and exciting and beautiful and, at times, painful.
Hitting the icy water on the other side had been the most painful of all.
“This isn’t working,” she’d said, arms crossed over her chest. “We aren’t working.”
At the time he’d already seen the decision forming in her eyes-their cool, brown gaze like a sharp jab to the chest. They’d been together for three-and-a-half years and this had been coming for at least one of them.
Fred’s death had been hard on her. She’d spent the last year of her education in and out of McGonagall’s office with that same tired, consumed look he’d seen her wear all of her first year, pink lips pulled close together while she considered her options.
What am I going to do? she’d asked, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders, tugged her hair behind her ear, told her: Whatever you want.
What Ginny wanted was a name of her own. She wanted to be remembered as Somebody, not Somebody’s Girl, and even though it broke his heart to hear her say it, he wasn’t surprised.
She’d always been independent. It was what he liked most about her.
----
Harry pulled the zipper up on his second-hand jacket and stood on the corner of a busy street in muggle London, Tracey Davis at his side. It was early November, well on its way to winter, and he was grateful for the warmth of the coffee in his cold hand.
Peering out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a pendant on a long chain, visible through her open pea coat.
“That’s pretty,” he said, nodding to the necklace she wore. Looking down, she plucked the Celtic cross from the folds of her clothes, holding the onyx charm in the palm of her hand.
“Thank you,” she replied.
“You didn’t pick it up from a bloke by the name of Jonathan Swell, did you?”
“No,” she chuckled. “Thankfully not.”
The light changed and they began to cross the busy road, Tracey sipping from her lidded cup of tea.
“From a boyfriend then,” Harry said, shoving his unoccupied hand in the pocket of his jacket. A cool wind picked up and they both ducked a little lower into their outerwear.
Shooting him a knowing look, she answered, “I don’t have a boyfriend. The necklace used to belong to my mum. It was a gift from my dad for their ten-year anniversary, but now it makes her sad so she gave it to me. Said a good piece of jewelry didn’t belong in a drawer somewhere.”
She had told him the week before about her father, a story she’d shared in an almost off-hand way when he’d mentioned a bill that Hermione was proposing from the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures on centaurs and magical horses.
“That was my father’s business,” she’d said, organizing stacks of parchment in her office. “I’m half-blood, my father being the wizard. I grew up on a horse farm on the southern coast where we raised Irish sport horses for hunting and magical purposes. The hair from their mane and tail are quite useful.”
When Harry had pressed her to keep talking, she’d gone into a bit more detail, sharing about her father’s death when she was only fourteen and her family’s eventual relocation to London.
“At first it was a real shock. Losing my father was almost like loosing my tie to the magical world, like somehow without him I didn’t belong anymore, and even worse than feeling displaced was losing the horses. My whole life changed very quickly,” Tracey had explained to a frowning Harry.
They crossed over to a less crowded street, the sounds of muggle automobiles fading slightly. “And you?” she asked. “Have you got a girlfriend?”
Even just a month ago an internal voice would have thought yes, a vestigial reaction from his three-and-a-half-year relationship with Ginny, but when he looked at the blonde witch walking next to him he righted himself. “No, not now.”
She arched a honey-colored eyebrow in his direction but the cluster of freckles that decorated her cheeks and the bridge of her nose distracted him.
As they approached Ashworth Square Harry shifted his thoughts from his coworker to the task at hand. “Best keep close,” he advised, adjusting the grip on the wand in his pocket. “This isn’t exactly a nice part of London.”
Tracey nodded and adopted a cool expression that reminded him of the teenaged girl he’d been acquainted with at school-his classmate who’d been a friend to Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott, who’d lost her father and her heritage in one blow-and he couldn’t help the tightness that started in his chest and spread to the tips of his fingers, a hot prickling that felt initially alien with this new woman.
But, for the first time in six months, he was feeling interest and attraction towards something that wasn’t just his memory of Ginny Weasley.
----
There hadn’t been a big fight; there had been no screaming, no crying, just the sort of conversation that two people would have over tea on a Saturday afternoon.
He’d just gotten back from a month-long mission in Africa and his skin was at least two shades darker than usual, but he was still so intensely himself that he couldn’t-refused to-fight her. Ginny’s mind was made up and begging would only hurt his pride. Harry felt cold, snide anger emerge - anger that he’d become intimately acquainted with during his fifth year - and accepted her reasons with few words and a stiff jaw.
Later he would wonder if he’d made the right decision, if he should have said something, promised something, but the headstrong, stubborn part of him dug his heels in and he let her walk out of his life instead of pleading her to stay.
When Ron came upstairs looking for him, still in his pajamas from the looks of it, he’d asked Harry what he was so buggered about.
He’d shrugged, exhaled his cigarette smoke, and explained that Ginny had left him.
“And?” his best mate had asked, temper immediately showing. “What’d you do?”
“Bloody nothing, alright? I don’t even know. Go ask Ginny. She has plenty of reasons,” he said, leaning against the balcony railing. It was dark by now, Grimmauld Place’s busiest hour, and the April air breathed a sigh of warmth against his skin.
Ron seemed to be oscillating between confusion, disapproval, and understanding. “Really, mate? I mean, really?”
He was shocked enough for the both of them, it seemed. “Yeah,” Harry said, dropping what was left of his cigarette in the jar of water he kept on the balcony. “Really.”
----
By the end of November he’d taken Tracey out on a proper date in muggle London. Harry had opted out of somewhere familiar like the Leaky Cauldron or one of the other wizarding establishments to give them some anonymity; he knew all too well what kind of mad rumors people could spread, and he didn’t want to scare her off before they even got to know each other.
It was even colder at the end of November than it had been on the day they’d done the London beat together, and he felt her physically shiver when he grabbed her hand on the walk to her flat.
Tracey lived in a muggle flat not far away from the Ministry, which wasn’t all that surprising, considering her only living relative was her non-magical mother. He followed her with nervousness itching through him like the cold upwelling of water, a strong pull that encircled his heart and lapped at his throat. Once they reached her landing she smiled slightly at him, unlocking the front door while he crossed the threshold and shrugged out of his coat, getting a mental grip on his anxiety.
This was the part he was nervous about: the time alone, the sex, the confrontation with the knowledge that he would really never be with Ginny again. It was a present, but fleeting, thought; he’d been remembering her less and less of late, and most of the apprehension he was feeling was centered on the fact that he’d only sexually been with one person. How many twenty-two-year-olds could say that? It certainly wouldn’t be expected from someone like him, meaning someone who had an entire gossip column devoted to his romantic interests in Witch Weekly.
But the fact remained that he was undoubtedly attracted to her. Where Ginny had been bold and feisty and stubborn and so ready to prove herself, Tracey was experienced and honest and independent in her own right.
They’d kissed once before in his office. He’d been working on a new case of murders in Manchester and hadn’t noticed the late time until she’d stopped by to say good night. Tracey had worn her hair up that day, her usual hoop earrings in place, and with the Auror Office deserted it had been more temptation than he could handle.
After a much longer kiss than he’d planned, she’d pulled away, her golden hair falling out of its bun. “I’m late to meet Daphne,” she’d said. It was then that he’d asked her to dinner, forming it as more of a statement than a question. Tracey had agreed to see him, but the Manchester killer had expanded their sights to Bristol as well, which had kept him busy and limited their opportunities for a repeat performance.
He hadn’t addressed his worries about the situation until half an hour before his date when he’d begun to realize the potential problems with what he was about to do. Was he still in love with Ginny? Was this thing with Tracey actually going to make it anywhere? Was there even any point in looking for a long-term girlfriend when he was consistently working until midnight some weeks or out of the country for others?
When she handed him a tall glass of brandy Harry resolved to forget about the critical voice in the back of his head and what his friends would say about him dating a Slytherin girl, determinedly putting his shredded heart and his innocence aside. I’m not fucking sixteen anymore, he told himself. Who cares about house pride or ex-girlfriends when half the people I know are dead and I’m lonelier then I can even admit.
Instead of begging off he kissed her full on the mouth in the middle of her kitchen, her body warm and arching towards him like a current in a young stream.
----
After he caught the Manchester killer Harry gained a sort of quiet respect from his colleagues in the Auror Office, an appreciation that stemmed from his actions rather than his reputation, and there was talk among the newer recruits of whether he’d be promoted.
“It’s a done deal,” Ron said, lazily making a slashing motion with his wand and igniting the gas stovetop in their tiny tent-kitchen. “Maybe not immediately, but if you keep bagging people like Swell and this Manchester bloke then Robards is bound to push you forward.”
They were camped out near the Scottish border in midwinter, looking for signs of an overactive vampire coven. Neville sat at the table with Harry, both of them nursing mugs of hot tea while sleet descended on the frozen landscape.
“I suppose,” Harry admitted. “But I’m not expecting anything. It’s not like I really need the extra gold.”
“Gold’s not the point, is it? It would be like finally being accepted,” Neville supplied.
He shrugged in response, sharpening his pocket knife while Ron tossed some vegetables into the warming pot of broth on the stove.
“Alright then, chatty. New subject. I’ve been curious about this one for a while, but Hermione reckons it’s none of my business if you haven’t already said. Answer me straight: are you or are you not banging that Davis girl?” Ron asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter.
The shrewd look he wore was more than Harry could take; the right corner of his mouth twitched and he tried to hide his growing, unrepentant smile.
“Hermione’s right,” he said playfully. “It is none of your business. But yeah, we’re together.”
“You sly git,” his friend exclaimed. “I knew it! She owes me two galleons. Hermione was betting that you were still moping over Ginny, but this has been coming on for a bit, hasn’t it? Anyway, now that you’ve found a different girl then I can go ahead and tell you. Ginny’s seeing some photographer bloke that she met on tour with the Harpies. Apparently it’s nothing serious, but I felt weird not telling you about it.”
Ron returned to stirring the pot of beef stew, checking the contents and covering it with a lid while the foul weather continued outside, the wind reaching a strong pitch.
Harry shrugged, wearing an unaffected expression. “You don’t have to feel that way. I don’t really care,” he said easily, leaning back on the rear legs of his chair. Ron seemed to accept this statement without much investigation, but Neville’s blue eyes were trained on his face while he continued to work with the pocket knife.
The steady scraping of his tool against the sharp metal was a relief in the silent kitchen. The wind quieted as Neville placed a hand on his shoulder, earnestly claiming that he was happy for him. Harry would have believed him if it weren’t for the searching, expectant look in his friend’s eyes that said more than Ron or Neville ever would.
----
After they’d been together for six months, he talked Tracey into moving in with him. His demands at work had only increased since the Manchester case and he missed her on the nights they were apart.
I’m old enough to do this, he reasoned with himself, watching his blonde girlfriend quietly breathe next to him in bed, her pink lips parted and inviting. Harry tucked his arm under his head and stared at the high ceiling, his chest in knots. Ron and Hermione had been supportive; he’d met Tracey’s mother and got on well with her. Mrs. Davis had given him a bright, intuitive look that had made him feel like he was a silly, love struck teenager again, like he was fifteen and probing Sirius for advice on girls. And still, after everything that had happened, a part of him couldn’t let go of the childish idea that he was supposed to be with his first love.
It had happened to his parents, and even though Harry wouldn’t describe himself as the sentimental type he had harbored that idea-the idea that he would end up with Ginny for good, because she was his first, because the two of them together would make him a real Weasley, because she looked so much like his mother-for longer that was probably advisable. For so long he’d felt entitled to the happiness that had eluded him previously. I have given so much, he’d thought, fuming and bitter, don’t I deserve to be happy? Don’t I deserve to get the girl and live peacefully now that this is over?
Harry’s biggest lesson had come afterward, when he had realized that life would never work that way. It simply didn’t, and he was just an unfortunately overused character in its demonstration. He was with Tracey Davis and Ginny was with Eddie Carmichael and he was finally okay with that. Professor Trelawney wasn’t going to make any more prophecies about his future and the stars weren’t going to align and it didn’t matter that he was the Chosen One or the Boy Who Lived because life didn’t owe him a damn thing and it was intent on showing him that.
He closed his eyes and slid his arm around his naked girlfriend, determined not to feel the disappointment that he had created.
----
Author: luna_plath
Rating: R
Warnings: language, EWE, sex
Word Count: 3,308 words
Genres: Romance, Angst, Gen
Summary: After splitting up fifteen years ago Harry and Ginny are thrown together again when they search for their children during a detention gone wrong. But will their complicated history get in the way of forging a new relationship? A story in five parts. Thanks so much to lyras for the fantastic beta job!
AN: This chapter is Harry/Tracy, but the story will eventually be Harry/Ginny. The next chapter will explain Ginny’s marriage, and chapters following that will detail the lives of their children. I repeat, this fic WILL be H/G eventually.
The Tough Option
Prompt: Harry and Ginny break up after the war. They go onto marry and have children. They are reunited when their kids attend Hogwarts together.
----
1. Balcony Blues
----
The first time he noticed Tracey Davis was after knowing her for ten years.
She’d been in his year at Hogwarts, in Slytherin, so naturally they hadn’t gotten to know each other well. He remembered her spending a lot of time with Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson, her housemates, but just the girls; Harry had no memory of spotting her with her male classmates, except maybe Theodore Nott sometime in their sixth year. But ever since school and the war she seemed to be running in different circles than her friends. And didn’t he know plenty about that.
Teenaged friendships aside, he definitely wouldn’t have called them school chums. Harry didn’t get to know her until he caught Jonathan Swell, a swindling jewelry salesman who sold cursed gemstones to both witches and muggles. Tracey was the dark artifacts specialist for the Auror Office and she had analyzed multiple pieces for him. She was good enough at her job to have earned a private office, a rarity in the DMLE, especially for someone so young.
One afternoon he stopped by her open doorway, rapping his knuckles against the frame while leaning against it. “Davis, have you taken a break all day?”
She looked up at him, her silver, hoop earrings glinting as she moved, reminding Harry of the fairy lights he always woke up to after an auror mission landed him in St. Mungo’s. “Not yet. I just finished up this report for Robards.”
He nodded toward the door leading out of the office. “Up for some tea then? I’ve got to make the rounds in magical London if you want to come.” He was already wearing his now trademark dragon-hide jacket.
Her dusty, golden hair reminded him of a lioness; it was layered, dark in places and pale blond in others. Harry thought that he could’ve spent ages watching her hair move and never figure out what color it actually was.
“Alright,” she agreed, blotting her eagle feather quill and placing it on her desk. He watched her stand, noticing the thin sliver of peachy skin that showed between her black skirt and off-the-shoulder jumper as she reached for her pea coat.
Harry tore his eyes away and waited for her in the doorway, brushing his longish black hair out of his eyes and trying not to meet Ron’s shrewd gaze from across the room.
----
After Ginny left him he felt like he’d lost much more than just a girlfriend. He was Harry Potter. He’d been through pain and sacrifice and innumerable angry, sleepless nights-and even worse mornings. He’d grown up without any parents to speak of, he’d broken countless bones, he’d seen his own friends die in battle, he’d fought murderers and nearly been murdered himself. But giving up Ginny Weasley had felt tougher than all of that.
After the war he had been optimistic. The logical part of his brain had told him not to pin too many hopes on her, on what they had together, but after so much hurt and neglect and time, he couldn’t help but give himself completely over to her. Being with Ginny was like standing on the edge of a ship, toes pointing seaward, balanced on the balls of his feet with the wind gently pushing one way or the other. It had been new and exciting and beautiful and, at times, painful.
Hitting the icy water on the other side had been the most painful of all.
“This isn’t working,” she’d said, arms crossed over her chest. “We aren’t working.”
At the time he’d already seen the decision forming in her eyes-their cool, brown gaze like a sharp jab to the chest. They’d been together for three-and-a-half years and this had been coming for at least one of them.
Fred’s death had been hard on her. She’d spent the last year of her education in and out of McGonagall’s office with that same tired, consumed look he’d seen her wear all of her first year, pink lips pulled close together while she considered her options.
What am I going to do? she’d asked, and he’d put his arm around her shoulders, tugged her hair behind her ear, told her: Whatever you want.
What Ginny wanted was a name of her own. She wanted to be remembered as Somebody, not Somebody’s Girl, and even though it broke his heart to hear her say it, he wasn’t surprised.
She’d always been independent. It was what he liked most about her.
----
Harry pulled the zipper up on his second-hand jacket and stood on the corner of a busy street in muggle London, Tracey Davis at his side. It was early November, well on its way to winter, and he was grateful for the warmth of the coffee in his cold hand.
Peering out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a pendant on a long chain, visible through her open pea coat.
“That’s pretty,” he said, nodding to the necklace she wore. Looking down, she plucked the Celtic cross from the folds of her clothes, holding the onyx charm in the palm of her hand.
“Thank you,” she replied.
“You didn’t pick it up from a bloke by the name of Jonathan Swell, did you?”
“No,” she chuckled. “Thankfully not.”
The light changed and they began to cross the busy road, Tracey sipping from her lidded cup of tea.
“From a boyfriend then,” Harry said, shoving his unoccupied hand in the pocket of his jacket. A cool wind picked up and they both ducked a little lower into their outerwear.
Shooting him a knowing look, she answered, “I don’t have a boyfriend. The necklace used to belong to my mum. It was a gift from my dad for their ten-year anniversary, but now it makes her sad so she gave it to me. Said a good piece of jewelry didn’t belong in a drawer somewhere.”
She had told him the week before about her father, a story she’d shared in an almost off-hand way when he’d mentioned a bill that Hermione was proposing from the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures on centaurs and magical horses.
“That was my father’s business,” she’d said, organizing stacks of parchment in her office. “I’m half-blood, my father being the wizard. I grew up on a horse farm on the southern coast where we raised Irish sport horses for hunting and magical purposes. The hair from their mane and tail are quite useful.”
When Harry had pressed her to keep talking, she’d gone into a bit more detail, sharing about her father’s death when she was only fourteen and her family’s eventual relocation to London.
“At first it was a real shock. Losing my father was almost like loosing my tie to the magical world, like somehow without him I didn’t belong anymore, and even worse than feeling displaced was losing the horses. My whole life changed very quickly,” Tracey had explained to a frowning Harry.
They crossed over to a less crowded street, the sounds of muggle automobiles fading slightly. “And you?” she asked. “Have you got a girlfriend?”
Even just a month ago an internal voice would have thought yes, a vestigial reaction from his three-and-a-half-year relationship with Ginny, but when he looked at the blonde witch walking next to him he righted himself. “No, not now.”
She arched a honey-colored eyebrow in his direction but the cluster of freckles that decorated her cheeks and the bridge of her nose distracted him.
As they approached Ashworth Square Harry shifted his thoughts from his coworker to the task at hand. “Best keep close,” he advised, adjusting the grip on the wand in his pocket. “This isn’t exactly a nice part of London.”
Tracey nodded and adopted a cool expression that reminded him of the teenaged girl he’d been acquainted with at school-his classmate who’d been a friend to Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott, who’d lost her father and her heritage in one blow-and he couldn’t help the tightness that started in his chest and spread to the tips of his fingers, a hot prickling that felt initially alien with this new woman.
But, for the first time in six months, he was feeling interest and attraction towards something that wasn’t just his memory of Ginny Weasley.
----
There hadn’t been a big fight; there had been no screaming, no crying, just the sort of conversation that two people would have over tea on a Saturday afternoon.
He’d just gotten back from a month-long mission in Africa and his skin was at least two shades darker than usual, but he was still so intensely himself that he couldn’t-refused to-fight her. Ginny’s mind was made up and begging would only hurt his pride. Harry felt cold, snide anger emerge - anger that he’d become intimately acquainted with during his fifth year - and accepted her reasons with few words and a stiff jaw.
Later he would wonder if he’d made the right decision, if he should have said something, promised something, but the headstrong, stubborn part of him dug his heels in and he let her walk out of his life instead of pleading her to stay.
When Ron came upstairs looking for him, still in his pajamas from the looks of it, he’d asked Harry what he was so buggered about.
He’d shrugged, exhaled his cigarette smoke, and explained that Ginny had left him.
“And?” his best mate had asked, temper immediately showing. “What’d you do?”
“Bloody nothing, alright? I don’t even know. Go ask Ginny. She has plenty of reasons,” he said, leaning against the balcony railing. It was dark by now, Grimmauld Place’s busiest hour, and the April air breathed a sigh of warmth against his skin.
Ron seemed to be oscillating between confusion, disapproval, and understanding. “Really, mate? I mean, really?”
He was shocked enough for the both of them, it seemed. “Yeah,” Harry said, dropping what was left of his cigarette in the jar of water he kept on the balcony. “Really.”
----
By the end of November he’d taken Tracey out on a proper date in muggle London. Harry had opted out of somewhere familiar like the Leaky Cauldron or one of the other wizarding establishments to give them some anonymity; he knew all too well what kind of mad rumors people could spread, and he didn’t want to scare her off before they even got to know each other.
It was even colder at the end of November than it had been on the day they’d done the London beat together, and he felt her physically shiver when he grabbed her hand on the walk to her flat.
Tracey lived in a muggle flat not far away from the Ministry, which wasn’t all that surprising, considering her only living relative was her non-magical mother. He followed her with nervousness itching through him like the cold upwelling of water, a strong pull that encircled his heart and lapped at his throat. Once they reached her landing she smiled slightly at him, unlocking the front door while he crossed the threshold and shrugged out of his coat, getting a mental grip on his anxiety.
This was the part he was nervous about: the time alone, the sex, the confrontation with the knowledge that he would really never be with Ginny again. It was a present, but fleeting, thought; he’d been remembering her less and less of late, and most of the apprehension he was feeling was centered on the fact that he’d only sexually been with one person. How many twenty-two-year-olds could say that? It certainly wouldn’t be expected from someone like him, meaning someone who had an entire gossip column devoted to his romantic interests in Witch Weekly.
But the fact remained that he was undoubtedly attracted to her. Where Ginny had been bold and feisty and stubborn and so ready to prove herself, Tracey was experienced and honest and independent in her own right.
They’d kissed once before in his office. He’d been working on a new case of murders in Manchester and hadn’t noticed the late time until she’d stopped by to say good night. Tracey had worn her hair up that day, her usual hoop earrings in place, and with the Auror Office deserted it had been more temptation than he could handle.
After a much longer kiss than he’d planned, she’d pulled away, her golden hair falling out of its bun. “I’m late to meet Daphne,” she’d said. It was then that he’d asked her to dinner, forming it as more of a statement than a question. Tracey had agreed to see him, but the Manchester killer had expanded their sights to Bristol as well, which had kept him busy and limited their opportunities for a repeat performance.
He hadn’t addressed his worries about the situation until half an hour before his date when he’d begun to realize the potential problems with what he was about to do. Was he still in love with Ginny? Was this thing with Tracey actually going to make it anywhere? Was there even any point in looking for a long-term girlfriend when he was consistently working until midnight some weeks or out of the country for others?
When she handed him a tall glass of brandy Harry resolved to forget about the critical voice in the back of his head and what his friends would say about him dating a Slytherin girl, determinedly putting his shredded heart and his innocence aside. I’m not fucking sixteen anymore, he told himself. Who cares about house pride or ex-girlfriends when half the people I know are dead and I’m lonelier then I can even admit.
Instead of begging off he kissed her full on the mouth in the middle of her kitchen, her body warm and arching towards him like a current in a young stream.
----
After he caught the Manchester killer Harry gained a sort of quiet respect from his colleagues in the Auror Office, an appreciation that stemmed from his actions rather than his reputation, and there was talk among the newer recruits of whether he’d be promoted.
“It’s a done deal,” Ron said, lazily making a slashing motion with his wand and igniting the gas stovetop in their tiny tent-kitchen. “Maybe not immediately, but if you keep bagging people like Swell and this Manchester bloke then Robards is bound to push you forward.”
They were camped out near the Scottish border in midwinter, looking for signs of an overactive vampire coven. Neville sat at the table with Harry, both of them nursing mugs of hot tea while sleet descended on the frozen landscape.
“I suppose,” Harry admitted. “But I’m not expecting anything. It’s not like I really need the extra gold.”
“Gold’s not the point, is it? It would be like finally being accepted,” Neville supplied.
He shrugged in response, sharpening his pocket knife while Ron tossed some vegetables into the warming pot of broth on the stove.
“Alright then, chatty. New subject. I’ve been curious about this one for a while, but Hermione reckons it’s none of my business if you haven’t already said. Answer me straight: are you or are you not banging that Davis girl?” Ron asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter.
The shrewd look he wore was more than Harry could take; the right corner of his mouth twitched and he tried to hide his growing, unrepentant smile.
“Hermione’s right,” he said playfully. “It is none of your business. But yeah, we’re together.”
“You sly git,” his friend exclaimed. “I knew it! She owes me two galleons. Hermione was betting that you were still moping over Ginny, but this has been coming on for a bit, hasn’t it? Anyway, now that you’ve found a different girl then I can go ahead and tell you. Ginny’s seeing some photographer bloke that she met on tour with the Harpies. Apparently it’s nothing serious, but I felt weird not telling you about it.”
Ron returned to stirring the pot of beef stew, checking the contents and covering it with a lid while the foul weather continued outside, the wind reaching a strong pitch.
Harry shrugged, wearing an unaffected expression. “You don’t have to feel that way. I don’t really care,” he said easily, leaning back on the rear legs of his chair. Ron seemed to accept this statement without much investigation, but Neville’s blue eyes were trained on his face while he continued to work with the pocket knife.
The steady scraping of his tool against the sharp metal was a relief in the silent kitchen. The wind quieted as Neville placed a hand on his shoulder, earnestly claiming that he was happy for him. Harry would have believed him if it weren’t for the searching, expectant look in his friend’s eyes that said more than Ron or Neville ever would.
----
After they’d been together for six months, he talked Tracey into moving in with him. His demands at work had only increased since the Manchester case and he missed her on the nights they were apart.
I’m old enough to do this, he reasoned with himself, watching his blonde girlfriend quietly breathe next to him in bed, her pink lips parted and inviting. Harry tucked his arm under his head and stared at the high ceiling, his chest in knots. Ron and Hermione had been supportive; he’d met Tracey’s mother and got on well with her. Mrs. Davis had given him a bright, intuitive look that had made him feel like he was a silly, love struck teenager again, like he was fifteen and probing Sirius for advice on girls. And still, after everything that had happened, a part of him couldn’t let go of the childish idea that he was supposed to be with his first love.
It had happened to his parents, and even though Harry wouldn’t describe himself as the sentimental type he had harbored that idea-the idea that he would end up with Ginny for good, because she was his first, because the two of them together would make him a real Weasley, because she looked so much like his mother-for longer that was probably advisable. For so long he’d felt entitled to the happiness that had eluded him previously. I have given so much, he’d thought, fuming and bitter, don’t I deserve to be happy? Don’t I deserve to get the girl and live peacefully now that this is over?
Harry’s biggest lesson had come afterward, when he had realized that life would never work that way. It simply didn’t, and he was just an unfortunately overused character in its demonstration. He was with Tracey Davis and Ginny was with Eddie Carmichael and he was finally okay with that. Professor Trelawney wasn’t going to make any more prophecies about his future and the stars weren’t going to align and it didn’t matter that he was the Chosen One or the Boy Who Lived because life didn’t owe him a damn thing and it was intent on showing him that.
He closed his eyes and slid his arm around his naked girlfriend, determined not to feel the disappointment that he had created.
----