Mondo Bongo - 2/3 (HP, Various, 20595 words, 15+)
[ Full Headers and Mix | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]
"No, no, no," Dennis says, waving his quill with one hand and a bacon sandwich with the other, papers spread out all over the table, "you've gotta -- see, because, look, it's a soft boundary condition; that's why you have to factor in non-material interference! But you can treat the sub-structure as essentially liquid, right -- well, okay, it's not actually liquid in any real sense, it's more sort of marbles-y or -- but my point, my point is--!"
"How do the grease stains fit in?" Blaise asks lazily, back against the balcony wall, arms spread and head tilted back to catch the sun.
"Systemic flow minimax analysis!" says Dennis triumphantly, and then blinks at him in confusion. "Wait, what?"
"You're dripping, dear," Natalie says, leaning over his shoulder to put a plate down and kissing his ear as she straightens up.
"Oh!" Dennis treats them to a sunny smile. "Don't worry, it's still readable!"
Natalie chuckles softly. Her fingers trail against Ginny's shoulders as she passes, asking, "More coffee?"
"Please," Ginny says, proffering her mug for the refill and ignoring the way Blaise's head came up to watch the two of them, eyes appraising. "I can't believe no-one notices you added a sun-deck up here."
(She can do casual with the best of them.)
"Muggles never notice anything."
"Blaise!" Natalie and Dennis chorus. He just chuckles.
"The table folds down and the extension charms are self-recoiling, because there are trigger wards in the door-frame to track things in and out," Dennis says. "It was Natalie's idea. Blaise did the charm work!"
"Blaise is always charming," Natalie says dryly, dropping into the seat next to him as she tops his mug up from the pot. He says something to her in a language Ginny doesn't recognise. Natalie just laughs and steals his last sandwich.
"See if you get a window seat now," Blaise says with mock-annoyance.
"Window seat?" Ginny asks.
It's the biggest fucking train she's ever seen. Tie two Hogwarts Expresses side by side, add another two at the back, maybe you'd get close.
"Does two-eighty on the good bits," Dennis says, beaming excitedly. "Which, okay, is only, like, thirty, forty percent of the track, because the other bits have mountains and jungles and rivers and things, or they're just really poor, which is pretty sad, but still! Two-eighty!"
"Muggles at the back, wizards at the front, dining carts in the middle," Blaise says. He's wearing a passable Muggle impression, provided you believed you'd accidentally transported yourself back a couple of centuries. It's very mad poet. Only subtle cooling charms are keeping him from melting in the heat.
Natalie sports a knee-length, flowery sundress and an ease of movement in high-heels that Ginny refuses to admit she envies. Porters move at Natalie's command, carrying their luggage, and Ginny isn't surprised to recognise her own bags, retrieved somehow from the Quidditch quarters.
"It's not really stealing if they're already yours," Dennis says, following her gaze.
"It's efficiency," Blaise supplies, opening the door to their compartment. The platform is at ground level, but the doors are a good three, maybe four feet up, fronted by steps so steep they're practically ladders, and a metal hand-rail that gleams greasily in the constant sunlight. Blaise gives Dennis a shove up and then offers his hand rather more solicitously to Ginny.
"Never expend more effort than you have to?" she asks.
His smile isn't quite a smirk. "It's the Slytherin way."
Ginny's reaching out to take his hand when Dennis sticks his head back out and says, "No it isn't!"
"It's the good Slytherin way, then," Blaise grouses. "Get back in the train, munchkin; I'm trying to be suave here."
"Oh. My bad!" Dennis grins at Ginny and ducks back inside.
"Really," Blaise sighs. "You just can't get the minions these days."
"Now, now," Natalie says, coming out of nowhere to sweep between them, close enough that she brushes both. She jumps up onto the train and then turns and smirks at Blaise. "You're not so bad as all that."
Her smile turns challenging as she offers a hand to Ginny without looking away from Blaise.
"Yeah, I'm going in the other door," Ginny says and does, ignoring the sharp whispered fight that breaks out behind her.
It's hours later and Natalie is saying, "You can't just look at the play statistics; it's like tracking businesses for Gringotts. You have to factor in the human element. Everyone knows the real reason Portree / Puddlemere matches are so vicious is because Wood is shagging their captain."
They're in something more state-room sized than compartment, beds curtained off to one side, seats and a table where they are, small, almost balconies on either side. They have the doors fixed open and the speed of the train gives them something of a breeze, but it's still drowsily hot. While Dennis and Blaise are shoulder to shoulder, scribbling things on constantly moving paper, Natalie and Ginny have claimed corners, sprawling out, feet just touching. They're sipping iced tea.
"You work for Gringotts?" Ginny asks.
"Sort of freelance for goblins, technically, for tax reasons," Natalie says, "but yeah, pretty much. I scout potential acquisitions. You really don't want to know how much of international wizarding finance is based on nepotism and intrigue."
"Confidence is value," Blaise says. "Business is just like everything else: fake it until you make it."
"The three body problem is kind of inherently chaotic," Dennis says and then, when everyone looks at him in bemusement, "Er. Go Cannons?"
Blaise reaches out and affectionately musses his hair.
It's hours later and the chatter of the train wheels makes up for the slow silence inside. It's too hot for talking. Bright greens and dark swish past, whispering like water. Ginny drifts, not asleep, not entirely awake. The carriage rocks gently around them. It feels unreal, like the real Ginny Weasley is back in the Burrow on some lazy Sunday morning, dreaming some exotic future. Somewhere, the real her is playing by all the rules, living a conventional life like any other happy house-witch, washing sheets and feeding chickens and raising a bushel of children who don't have 'no' as their favourite word. But, no. That wouldn't be her either, would it?
"I am way too young to be having a mid-life crisis," she sighs.
When she opens her eyes, it's in time to see Dennis flushing a little, ducking his head, smiling shyly. Blaise doesn't bother looking away, like he watches people sleep all the time, and they should be happy with that. Maybe he does. Maybe they are.
"You're only as old as you feel," Blaise says.
"So that's why you keep us around," Natalie says, smiling without opening her eyes.
Ginny smiles back at Dennis and closes her own again.
It's hours later and she wakes, not because of the soft conversation around her in some foreign tongue, but because a warm drop of water splashes against her cheeks. She blinks sleep away in confusion. There are light taps on the roof and another drop hits her, but it still takes her almost a minute to connect the two together, to connect them both to the still open windows. It's grown darker outside, but not all of that's the growing lateness of the hour.
"Hey!" Dennis beams. "I think it's raining."
Natalie leans back, holds a hand out of the window. "Seems like."
"Shame we can't go out in it," Dennis says.
"Why not?" Blaise asks. "There's always the roof."
"The roof," Ginny repeats sceptically.
"The roof!" Dennis beams.
"Did I wake up in a vaudeville routine?" Natalie asks, but she gets up anyway, moving to the door that connects their carriage to the next along. She leans out and looks up. "Seems doable."
"Sweet!" Dennis pulls all the papers together into a hasty pile and bounces to his feet, bounding across to join her. He brushes a kiss against her cheek before looking back at Blaise, almost, Ginny thinks, as if asking permission. When Ginny turns, though, Blaise is looking at her, not the doorway. The rain taps an arrhythmic beat on the roof, slow and gentle. He slow smiles, and pushes himself to his feet.
Ginny can't help following. It's like being stuck in a pensieve. You go where the action is. The track rushes past under their feet, but the carriages are steady. There's no real feel of speed, little of motion. They could be anywhere.
There's no ladder, per se, but there are frames and eaves and pipes enough to make one. Dennis scrambles ungainly up, feet flailing until he finds a hold. Natalie follows with an amused smile and lithe grace. Blaise moves with no less ease but, Ginny thinks, with much more conscious control. It's too deliberate, the loping, the smooth turns, the oh-so-casual look back.
"Coming?" he asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. A challenge, not an invitation.
He goes up, and she's right behind him, has climbed enough trees behind the Burrow that this, too, is child's play. There's a little fence around the edge of the roof, which curves slightly, rising in the centre. It's barely enough to reach her back if she were sat down, but it somehow makes it feel safer than opening on nothing but the drop. To her surprise, they're not the only people up there; both of the immediate carriages have passengers on the roofs, and she can see others down the train.
The rain starts coming down harder, and Dennis laughs, wandering out to the middle of the roof, arms spread wide, head thrown back. Ginny can't help doing the same. It's cool and clear and sweet on her lips. She pushes wet hair back from her forehead, shakes it out, grins when she realises everyone is watching her.
Dennis shakes himself like a dog, water droplets flying every which way, and laughs. "It's like that movie, you know--" He hums something Ginny doesn't recognise, jiggling a little on the spot, something like a dance. There are laughs and catcalls from the other roofs.
Natalie holds her hand out to Blaise, a challenge in the curl of her lips, the glitter of her eyes. Ginny feels him look her way, looks back in time to see him slow smile, half-amused, half-predatory. He's still looking at her when he takes Natalie's hand, and then the two of them are spinning away, Natalie laughing as someone starts drumming a simple tango beat on the roof.
The rain starts coming down harder. They move together, stepping into and out of each other's spaces in ways that really should end up with them tripping but somehow don't. Their timing is perfect. Natalie cups a hand against the back of Blaise's neck. Blaise loops an arm around her waist. They turn together, step in, out, turn again, and then Blaise is somehow dipping her even as they spin, Natalie laughing, falling back, her hair spilling down almost to the roof. It whips around her as she's straightened back up, sending droplets flying.
Her dress and Blaise's shirt, soaked, are all but translucent, clinging obscenely. Ginny hears Dennis make appreciative noises beside her, clapping along. There are whistles, sharp in the rain. Blaise catches Natalie's wrist and spins her out, pulls her in. Her back to him, she loops an arm around his neck, and they shimmy together. Ginny wonders why the rain doesn't steam. It's practically vertical sex.
Blaise spins Natalie out again, her dress swirling out around her, water splashing, sliding under foot, and the carriage jerks all of sudden under them, and Natalie's feet come down on nothing but rain, Blaise's lunging hand barely grazing hers, and Ginny's breath catches in her throat as Natalie goes out over empty space and out and down and before Ginny even registers the flash of movement Natalie's somehow floating, sliding back on a curve that brings her right into Blaise's waiting arms, and they twirl together, arms tight clutched around each other, laughing giddily. Ginny blinks the rain out of her eyes, reminds herself to breathe, and looks sideways in time to see Dennis nonchalantly tuck his wand back under his belt.
"It's all in the reflexes," he says in an atrocious American accent, grinning at her.
She stares, but he's already gotten distracted again by the dancing, and none of the people on the other roofs seem to have taken it as anything more than a really showy move. Ginny tries to watch herself, but instead finds herself thinking about caverns and brooms and falling in slow motion and--
"I'll make us a nice pudding," Molly says. "A big steamed fruit cake with hot toffee sauce, just like you like it."
Ginny digs out her bags, finds a towel. She can hear the rain on the roof, and their footsteps, and the drumming, still. She expects to be alone but, when she turns around, it's to see Dennis drop into the doorway, grabbing at the frame to keep himself upright.
"Uh," he manages, pushing wet hair back from his forehead. It's gone dark in the rain, from his usual mouse to a matt brown. Water drips off him. She sighs and tosses him her towel, turning back to dig another out, stealing it from Blaise's case.
"Thanks," Dennis says from behind the towel, scrubbing at his face, and then his hair. "Are you okay? Natalie's fine -- I mean, Blaise would have caught her, even if I hadn't, or she would have caught herself, because she has her wand on her and she's brilliant at magic, honest!"
"Something you practice a lot, then?" Ginny asks flatly. "Catching people?"
"Personal levitation charms are a simple extension of mobicorp-- Ohhh," Dennis says, frowning a little. "You're not talking about the roof, are you? You mean at the pitch."
"It was you," Ginny says, expecting excuses.
Dennis just nods. "Yep."
"And the door?"
"That was Natalie's idea," Dennis says and then, anticipating the next question, "She lead you to Blaise."
"This-- The whole thing was a set-up?"
"Yes? Not in a bad way!" Dennis quickly adds. "Just in, you know, a planned sort of way. Blaise wanted to see you. Properly, I mean, not just whizzing around." He eyes her carefully. "You're mad, aren't you?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"You shouldn't be. Well," Dennis corrects himself, "you can be mad, if you want, because there's nothing wrong with feeling things; you can't really control your emotions, only what you do with them which, uh, i-isn't the point. The point is, um. Please don't be mad? It wasn't a prank or anything, just, ugh." He pulls a face and tugs at his wet T-shirt. "Hang on!"
He strips it off unselfconsciously and pulls the towel around his shoulders like a shawl.
"So, um, yes." Dennis frowns. "Wait, what was I talking about?"
Before Ginny can answer, there's another clatter, and first Natalie and then Blaise drop down into the doorway. Natalie promptly pins Blaise against the doorframe and kisses him thoroughly. He laughs against her, pushes her away, and then go dancing across the floor between Dennis and Ginny, leaving trails of wet footprints and Blaise's discarded shirt behind them. Natalie ducks through the curtains that divide the beds from the rest of the room and, with a searing grin at the both of them, Blaise follows after.
Ginny sighs and rubs her forehead. Dennis sighs and picks Blaise's shirt up off the floor, shaking it out a little and then gives up and hangs it on one of coat-hooks along with his t-shirt.
"It's like being stuck at home for summer all over again," Dennis says. "You don't realise how much you rely on magic for simple comforts until you're not supposed to use it." Ginny stares at him. He looks back, confused. "What?"
A moaning giggle escapes the curtains. Ginny moves away, taking the seat on the far side of the room, only to find it gives her a view through the gap in half-closed curtains. Dennis is still watching her curiously, although now he's doing it while taking his shoes and socks off. Ginny looks at the line of footprints and wonders what happened to Blaise's boots, Natalie's high heels.
"Don't you get jealous?" she asks.
Dennis shrugs, a little. "Sure, sometimes." Ginny, expecting a denial, is thrown. Dennis just smiles. "I bet you and Harry fight all the time."
"Not really," Ginny says. Weirdly, it's true. Sure, they argue over meals and places to go and how much either of them work and, lately, over James (Harry insists it's just a phase, but what does he know?) but they never really fight. Not the way Hermione and Ron do, or Bill and Fleur, or George and Angelina who had managed to get themselves arrested twice in the same day.
There's a whump as it hits the curtains, and then Natalie's dress falls out. Blaise's trousers follow after. Ginny smothers the laughter that suddenly wells up inside and looks back to find Dennis smiling with annoyed affection.
"He's just going to complain later that they're all wrinkled," Dennis says. He comes to sit by Ginny, absently folding the towel to place under him. Ginny watches a bead of water drip down his neck. "He really does like you, you know."
"He said."
"He doesn't lie. Well, no, Blaise lies all the time -- it's scandalous! -- but he doesn't lie about stuff like that."
"You love him." It wasn't a question, but Dennis nodded anyway. "And you love her." Dennis nodded again. "And now you're sat out here while they fuck like rabbits."
"I've never actually seen bunnies have sex," Dennis says.
He doesn't seem to be trying to be funny. Ginny stares at him anyway.
"It's okay. I mean, I know they don't love me the same way I love them. But then that's always the way, isn't it?" Dennis smiles. "People are different. That's what makes it interesting!"
"Yeah," says Ginny dubiously.
"...is it true?" Dennis asks. "What you said about to Blaise about Draco Malfoy and Harry?"
"Yeah," Ginny repeats. She wants a drink, remembers there's nothing stopping her having one, and starts to get up because there's wine in the cooler.
Dennis catches the look and bounces to his feet. "I'll get it! You still love Harry, right?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "See? It's like that."
"It's not quite the same," Ginny says. It's less mutual for one thing. These days, Malfoy never manages to instil in her much more than indifference. He's Harry's toy, not hers.
"I said: people are different." Dennis struggles with the corkscrew for a moment, then gives up and snags his wand and with a quick, sheepish, "No-one will see!", opens the bottle with a whisper and a twirl of his wrist. He pours two glasses, and brings them back. "But, the thing is."
"Is--?" Ginny prompts.
Dennis frowns, considering, and then suddenly beams, holding the glass out to her. "All love is true, I think."
It's a nice thought, and Ginny says as much as she takes the wine, but she can't help adding, "I don't think it's enough, though."
"Of course not," Dennis says indignantly. "Love is just part of it. So is sex. I mean, relationships are things you work at, not that just happen -- or, well, they can just happen to start with, I guess, but you have to work to keep them, but that's okay, you know? Because that, that's what makes it satisfying. If it was completely easy, it wouldn't be worth anything!"
She can't help smiling at his enthusiasm, raises her glass in toast, and takes a sip. It's good, cold and dry, with a lingering fruity after-taste. Dennis takes a gulp of his, pulls a face, and then, to her amusement, takes another gulp.
They sit for a moment in something like silence, except it's hard to think of it as that when you're listening to people have noisy, enthusiastic sex right there. Through the gap in the curtains, Ginny can see Natalie's bronze thigh, bright against Blaise's darkness even as it was dark against her own paleness, against Dennis's before. She tries to think of something else, sees the papers still on the table and almost asks what he's working on when Blaise makes a guttural noise that wipes all thought from her head. Natalie's moan follows like thunder after lightning.
Dennis is watching her. She looks away, takes a sip from her glass, looks back. She was a Gryffindor, after all. Brave and reckless to a fault. Dennis is still watching.
"Colin really liked you."
"I know."
"I like you too," Dennis says. "I- I mean, you're pretty, and you're smart, and kind, and funny, sometimes, and you're brilliant on a broom! That match against the Bats when you guys knocked them off the top of the league? That was awesome. And that interview you gave after, where you basically cut their plays to shreds, that was brilliant too. Blaise kept quoting that to us for, like, months after. You should do more of that."
"Quote Blaise?" Ginny asks, sipping at her wine.
"No! Quidditch commentary! Oh, well, I guess you can't while you're playing, because it would be a bit distracting, but maybe you could commentate on other people's games; that'd be cool too." Dennis frowns. "Wait, I lost my point. Um."
Ginny finishes off her glass. The bed creak, creak, creaks. Dennis puts his own glass down, biting his lip. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, moves a little closer.
"What I mean, is," he says, "is that I'd quite like to kiss you. And it's totally okay if you don't want to, because I know it's really Blaise, and Harry, of course, and it might be weird for you or. I mean, if you don't want to, you don't, you know? And I won't ask again, honest. But I would. Like to kiss you. Please?"
Ginny considers her glass for a moment, and then sets it down next to Dennis's.
"Um," says Dennis and then, "Oh," when she leans forward, and closes the rest of the way. His mouth parts against hers. He tastes oddly of chocolate. "Mm."
When she moves back, he comes with her, until they're sprawled together on the seat, and he has one hand on her neck, thumb rubbing slow circles, and her fingers draw slow lines down his still rain-damp back.
Natalie jokes and laughs with the guards, her Spanish and Portuguese fluent, unaccented. Dennis's is pure London, half-garbled, English mixed; it also seems to require him waving his hands a lot, though Ginny can't work out what half the gestures are supposed to mean. She knows only a few stilted, polite phrases, but the guards pay little attention to her and none at all to Blaise, who crosses the border with far too much quiet calm for an internationally wanted fugitive.
"There's a room," Blaise is telling her.
They're alone in the dining cart. Blaise has somehow wrangled candles, lots of them, glittering all around them. Something cool and jazzy plays softly in the background. Their food is served by waiters so silent and discrete they might as well have been House Elves.
"Should you be telling me this?" she asks.
He laughs. "I'm already wanted. But not too much, of course. They like me where I am. We try not to bother each other, and Dennis sends a report in every couple of weeks telling them he's on my trail."
"Why did you do it?" she asks, holding her glass out. There are waiters, but she likes making him do it. Maybe she'll become an alcoholic. That would pass the days.
"I was telling you," Blaise insists, topping it up.
"You set fire to the Department of Mystery's records and blew up the Hall of Prophecy because they have a room full of love," she says sceptically. They're drinking red now. It goes with the melt in the mouth beef.
"A room that they say is full of love," Blaise corrects. "There's a fountain, not of water, but of Amortentia."
Ginny almost chokes on her wine. "The Unspeakables have their own fountain of love potion? Why would you ever leave?"
He actually looks hurt for a second, but it quickly becomes a wry smile. "You're hardly the poster-child for conventional relationships, yourself."
"I'm having a very odd few days," Ginny admits, and adds, "I blame you entirely."
Blaise chuckles.
There's a hill, thick with deep green trees. There's a slow curve of a white gravel path. There's a thick stone wall of blue-black stone, impregnated with glittering quartz. There's a complex of interlocked white stone buildings with gently sloping brick-orange tiled roofs, a broad spread of a patio, a large twist of pools.
"Show off," Ginny says.
Blaise smirks, just a little, and offers her his arm. Dennis bounds ahead of them to pull the doorbell, though Ginny is pretty sure the elves that opened the main gates for their carriage have already announced their arrival. She lets Blaise guide her up. Natalie falls behind for a moment to, so far as Ginny can tell, pay the horses, but both she and Dennis are back at their side by the time Blaise presses his hand to the main doors. The white somehow gets brighter for a moment before they swing inwards, perfectly silently.
The Burrow would probably fit in the entrance hall. Ginny reminds herself that Harry has a fortune and that she's made more than enough from her Quidditch so far that she could probably retire right now and live off the interest for the rest of her life. They too could have a ridiculously huge house in the middle of nowhere to call their summer place, if they wanted, which they don't. She tries to imagine Hermione's reaction to this and has to stifle a laugh. Blaise throws her a questioning look, which she ignores, in favour of staring at the woman coming down the stairs.
The woman is tall, and built for it, all strength and elegance, bedecked in simple but elegant gold robes that make it seem as if she is gliding to meet them. She has Blaise's mouth, his eyes. Diamond loops cross her throat and dangle from her ears, glittering expensively against the thick black curls of her hair. Ginny is seized with a sudden urge to bury her fingers in them, to see if they are as soft, as luxurious as they look, and is unexpectedly thankful for Blaise's hand tightening on hers. The woman favours them all with an appraising look. Ginny stands up straighter.
"Mother," Blaise says.
"Hello, Mrs Zabini," Dennis says, cheerfully.
"I see you've brought your little friends." She smiles and her eyes take it, make a mockery of it. "I suppose you better come in then."
"That's when I understood it," Blaise says.
"I looked at that fountain, that was supposed to teach them about love and would, at best, confuse them with infatuation, and I realised it was symbol of absolutely everything wrong with the ministry. There had been a war, a massive clash of ideologies, and good had supposedly triumphed, but nothing had really changed. The idea of the thing and thing itself weren't even close to each. We'd been lied to. We were still being lied to. I looked at that fountain and I realised none of it mattered, not one thing I had ever done, neither past nor future. After that, it was easy."
Blaise smiles softly, taking her hand in his.
"I did it for love, you see. Doesn't everybody?"
Ginny wakes to gauzy sunshine and a cool breeze and, after her shower, a table handily laden with coffee, fresh fruit, toast and cereals. The house is a maze. She eats impossibly fresh oranges while wandering long halls with high ceilings and a hundred openings from which to view the scenery sprawling away to the blue streak of a horizon. In one round room, she discovers a portrait gallery, Blaise on one side in an empty wall, Ms. Antonia Zabini on the other, flanked by men, young and old.
"My mother likes to collect," portrait!Blaise says. He's younger than the real Blaise, dressed like a king in rich purple robes. He looks at her with undisguised attraction. The other portraits remain silent, though one -- the man who looks the most like Blaise, cast older and darker but no less stunning -- winks at her as she passes.
Whenever she thinks she's getting somewhere, the house suddenly twists back on itself. She finds herself entering the entrance hall six times, each from a different entrance, despite being sure every time that she'd not taken enough turns to loop back on herself. Laughter draws her on, and she follows the echoes as best she can, but when she can finally see the others, it's from a high balcony only, one from which she can find no ready way down to where Dennis, Natalie and Blaise are frolicking in the pool, laughing and splashing at each other.
"He talks about you."
Ginny startles, spins to see Antonia gliding towards her, and only just stops herself drawing her wand. Antonia smiles wryly.
"You never quite lose them, do you? Those dire instincts. After the Bastille riots of sixty-eight, I couldn't stand the smell of pork for years. Oh," she adds, waving an airy hand, "we say we move on, we make all the appropriate gestures and actions, but it never goes away, not really. It just sinks down into the dark depths of our thoughts, submerged under brighter memories; and we live in the hope that nothing will disturb it."
Her accent is smooth, rolling, international. It has something of Fleur in there, something of Blaise's plummy British vowels, something of Spanish and Portuguese. It is, Ginny thinks, the sort of accent someone uses when they want to be just a little bit of a stranger wherever they go.
"Good morning," Ginny says, for something to say.
It earns that cool smile again, an ironic edge to the returned "Good morning." Antonia moves to the balcony edge, looking down at the three in the pool. Dennis disappears under the water as Natalie jumps on him; seconds later, Blaise yelps as he goes under, and all three resurface, spluttering and laughing. Their conversation is too quiet to hear, but Ginny gets the import when Natalie and Dennis start backing off and Blaise dodges towards them, grinning ominously. Dennis gets nabbed first, receiving a slow kiss and a fast dunking for his troubles; Blaise crows triumphantly and turns on Natalie who squeals, splashing at him.
Antonia's lips curl up in a wry smile. "My son. You have a child of your own, I believe."
"James," Ginny supplies. "He's in England, with Harry. He's too young to travel."
Also, he cries when I pick him up, and everyone tells me it's just a phase, as if this should help, as if he won't grow up and forget it when I never will.
"You miss them when you're apart," Antonia says, an oddly wistful note in her voice. "You miss them even when, perhaps most when, you're the reason they're not with you."
"It's just while the games are on," Ginny says, a little defensively.
"Games are always on," Antonia admonishes her. "If you're going to take up with my son, you should remember that. Blaise never has just one reason for anything. Take those two. A half-blood and a mud-blood -- Muggleborn, then," she says, off Ginny's expression, "though the word separates us just as specifically. One as bright and flighty as a butterfly, the other like flint wrapped in wool, all sharp edges and unexpected strength. Do you know what they are to each other?"
"Lovers?" Ginny offers. Antonia's gaze is steady. Ginny shrugs easily. "It's complicated." Thinking of Dennis, she adds, "People are."
"We so rarely want what we actually need," Antonia says, as if this should follow from that, leaving Ginny momentarily floundering. "And here is my son, without even a by your leave; and he will be gone soon, just as easily. How much of what he does is to hurt me... But he is my son, and I love him, and I will give him what I can regardless."
Her eyes sweep Ginny, critically. Ginny looks steadily back. She's had detentions with McGonagall; this is nothing.
"You understand this, I think," Antonia says. "Blaise talks about you, and about that Potter of yours."
"I didn't do it to be nice," Ginny surprises herself saying. Antonia looks at her curiously. "Letting Harry have Malfoy. I wasn't being open, or kind, or even making the best of things. I was doing it to be mean, because I knew Harry would always come back to me, no matter what Malfoy said, or did."
For the first time, Antonia's smile seems genuine. "Want and need have never been gentle masters."
They watch the trio for a moment. Blaise catches Dennis from behind, presses close; Natalie matches him from Dennis's front, her arms around both their necks as she kisses Blaise over Dennis's shoulder.
"Beautiful, isn't he?" Antonia asks.
"Yes," Ginny says without hesitation, and then, more thoughtfully, "They all are."
"I loved my husbands. All of them." Antonia smiles thinly. "Some days, I think my son knows that; on others, I only hope it. Is that too much to ask for him too?"
"He does love them, I think," Ginny says. She can't help adding, "In his own way."
Swimming costumes bob gently up and down on the water's surface.
"I'm going to have to have the pool cleaned," Antonia sighs.
Blaise isn't there when Ginny comes down, but a spread has been left out, all of Ginny's favourites piled together in a mouth-watering display.
"Stalkerish tendencies aren't cute," she mutters to herself, but the fruit is fresh and improbably ripe, the toast is stacked high and there's butter, jams, and honeys aplenty. With a sigh and a smile, she fills a plate to bursting, resorting to a flick of her wand to get the juice and coffee to follow her as she winds her way through this lounge and that until she comes out on the patio. Natalie waves Ginny over from where she's sat next to Dennis in the shade of an angled white umbrella.
The remains of their own food is neatly stacked, in the middle of the table, and Dennis has his papers out over one corner. Ginny takes the next so she can fit in the shade, putting her plates down and waving her drinks to follow. She glances across the sheets as she butters her toast, recognising bits and pieces of arithmancy in the midst of Dennis's scrawl. One part seems to be a distribution system, probability trees and returns. The Quidditch stats are the most familiar, although she can't make head nor tail of what they're being used for.
Natalie keeps stealing Dennis's quill and making notes in the margins, and then making pointed comments when he snatches it back and scribbles equations down one handed while waving the other to illustrate his ideas. They aren't speaking English, but it takes Ginny a moment to realise it's not Spanish, either, nor any of the local creole. Still, it is familiar, something she has heard snatches of in the deep places under London, travelling on rails to goblin sealed doors. "Is that Gobbledegook?"
"It's called Urkesh," Natalie corrects.
Off Ginny's bemused look, Dennis explains, "Gobbledegook is just what wizards call the goblin language to be insulting. It's actually lots of different languages, used for different purposes, like Stoll, and Gripna, and Urkesh!"
"Ah," says Ginny, for lack of something better. She knows that sort of opening. It's like the ones Hermione uses before she goes off on a rant about her latest cause. Something of this must show on her face, because Dennis grins and Natalie giggles. "Do you talk -- Urkesh, was it? You speak it a lot?"
"It has an interestingly unambiguous syntax, simultaneously minimising obligatory categorisation -- like disconnecting tense from verbs -- while forcing rigorous sentence construction using predicates," Dennis says with enthusiasm. "Did you do metalinguistics at Hogwarts? You have Arithmancy and Runes NEWTs, right? See, Urkesh is actually a--"
"It makes talking about money easier," Natalie cuts in, smiling at him. "It's the formal trading language between international goblin--" She says a word that's somehow all consonants and then, off Ginny's look, adds, "Clan? Maybe? The social structures don't really translate into English."
Dennis beams. "Goblin societies are really interesting! Much of the similarities between goblin nations is actually a result of wizard interference, you know; internal cultures are quite often totally different! Except for the part where they all pretty much want more freedom from wizards."
"Goblins run our banks," Ginny objects. "They could just take all our money."
"There's alllll sorts of magical reasons why they can't do that," Dennis says. "That's why goblins like bets, you know."
"It's one of the few ways they can get money that's just theirs," Natalie adds. "No strings attached. Didn't you ever wonder why they insist anything they build still belongs to them? It's because pretty much everything else they have, they only have because wizards let them."
"They're very oppressed," Dennis continues. "They end up fighting each other a lot because of wizards. It's really sad!"
Ginny pauses with mango half-way to her mouth, suddenly remembering a mention of game-fixing, and frowns at them in suspicion. "Wait. You're talking about betting on Quidditch games. Actual bets on actual games, not just theoretical maths things."
"Yes?" Dennis says, looking a little confused.
Ginny looks at the papers, and then back at the two of them. "Are you using Quidditch bets to launder money for the goblins?"
"I like to think of it as an alternate funding revenue stream," Natalie says.
"It's for a good cause?" Dennis offers. "No, really!"
Ginny stares at them both for a moment, then goes back to her mango. "I've just decided this is none of my business."
"Er, okay?" Dennis blinks at her in confusion, then shrugs it off, and goes back to writing.
Natalie watches her steadily for a moment, then says, "We only do it on the international circuit. Every game you've won, you've done it on your own merits."
"And the team's," Dennis adds without looking up.
Natalie smiles. "And your team's." She nabs the quill back to make a correction.
"I wasn't going to ask," Ginny says, truthfully enough. She pours a little honey over her cut fruit, and then sucks her fingers clean, only noticing afterwards that they both stopped to watch. She arches an eyebrow at them, but can't help the amused smile.
"Goblin languages aren't just good for maths," Natalie says. "Gripna is the language of poetry, the great epics and the simple legends. It contains subtleties in single words it would take entire paragraphs of English to accurately represent. Nimukerfagri; strength in beauty, crowned with fire, daughter of the sun. Goblins write the best love poetry, you know."
She recites something, a long roll of warm, liquid syllables, and Ginny finds herself fascinated by the way Natalie's tongue slips against her lips, by the shape of her mouth.
"I love it when you talk foreign," Dennis sighs.
"'Talk foreign'," Natalie repeats, gently mocking.
"I know a dirty limerick in Spanish?" Dennis offers, grinning.
"I know a much better use for your mouth," Natalie says, leaning towards him. Dennis leans in expectantly and gets a mouthful of honeyed mango instead of the expected kiss. He blinks at her in surprise while Natalie just grins, sucking juice from her fingers and then stealing another piece from Ginny's plate.
Ginny raps Natalie's knuckles lightly with her spoon. "Hey!"
"Did you want some too?" Natalie asks innocently, lifting her hand to Ginny's mouth. Ginny gives her a reproving look, but takes the fruit anyway, nipping at Natalie's fingers. Natalie just smiles wider.
Later, Ginny can't quite remember how they get from fruit to her grinding herself against Dennis's tongue while Natalie pegs him with a vibrating, double-ended strap-on, only that it seems perfectly straight-forward at the time, as rational and inevitable as dominoes falling, all in a row.
"We're not like you, or Harry," Blaise says over dessert, the two of them sharing a bowl, idly fighting with spoons. "We're not heroes. People don't remember us."
"Is that so bad?"
"We're outside, now. When you're inside, you can't see it; all that history, pressing down on you. Do you know why they made Harry an auror so quickly? Because it makes him part of the structure. It chains his every move. He can slap a new coat of paint on the walls, but they're still there."
"Have you ever considered that maybe you're just paranoid?" Ginny offers.
Blaise doesn't smile. "When I was a kid, I thought working for the Department of Mysteries would be the best thing in the world. But all they do is hide the mystery away. In the end, it doesn't matter whose faces they wear, light masks or Dark. All that matters is control -- and they have it."
[ Full Headers and Mix | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]
"No, no, no," Dennis says, waving his quill with one hand and a bacon sandwich with the other, papers spread out all over the table, "you've gotta -- see, because, look, it's a soft boundary condition; that's why you have to factor in non-material interference! But you can treat the sub-structure as essentially liquid, right -- well, okay, it's not actually liquid in any real sense, it's more sort of marbles-y or -- but my point, my point is--!"
"How do the grease stains fit in?" Blaise asks lazily, back against the balcony wall, arms spread and head tilted back to catch the sun.
"Systemic flow minimax analysis!" says Dennis triumphantly, and then blinks at him in confusion. "Wait, what?"
"You're dripping, dear," Natalie says, leaning over his shoulder to put a plate down and kissing his ear as she straightens up.
"Oh!" Dennis treats them to a sunny smile. "Don't worry, it's still readable!"
Natalie chuckles softly. Her fingers trail against Ginny's shoulders as she passes, asking, "More coffee?"
"Please," Ginny says, proffering her mug for the refill and ignoring the way Blaise's head came up to watch the two of them, eyes appraising. "I can't believe no-one notices you added a sun-deck up here."
(She can do casual with the best of them.)
"Muggles never notice anything."
"Blaise!" Natalie and Dennis chorus. He just chuckles.
"The table folds down and the extension charms are self-recoiling, because there are trigger wards in the door-frame to track things in and out," Dennis says. "It was Natalie's idea. Blaise did the charm work!"
"Blaise is always charming," Natalie says dryly, dropping into the seat next to him as she tops his mug up from the pot. He says something to her in a language Ginny doesn't recognise. Natalie just laughs and steals his last sandwich.
"See if you get a window seat now," Blaise says with mock-annoyance.
"Window seat?" Ginny asks.
It's the biggest fucking train she's ever seen. Tie two Hogwarts Expresses side by side, add another two at the back, maybe you'd get close.
"Does two-eighty on the good bits," Dennis says, beaming excitedly. "Which, okay, is only, like, thirty, forty percent of the track, because the other bits have mountains and jungles and rivers and things, or they're just really poor, which is pretty sad, but still! Two-eighty!"
"Muggles at the back, wizards at the front, dining carts in the middle," Blaise says. He's wearing a passable Muggle impression, provided you believed you'd accidentally transported yourself back a couple of centuries. It's very mad poet. Only subtle cooling charms are keeping him from melting in the heat.
Natalie sports a knee-length, flowery sundress and an ease of movement in high-heels that Ginny refuses to admit she envies. Porters move at Natalie's command, carrying their luggage, and Ginny isn't surprised to recognise her own bags, retrieved somehow from the Quidditch quarters.
"It's not really stealing if they're already yours," Dennis says, following her gaze.
"It's efficiency," Blaise supplies, opening the door to their compartment. The platform is at ground level, but the doors are a good three, maybe four feet up, fronted by steps so steep they're practically ladders, and a metal hand-rail that gleams greasily in the constant sunlight. Blaise gives Dennis a shove up and then offers his hand rather more solicitously to Ginny.
"Never expend more effort than you have to?" she asks.
His smile isn't quite a smirk. "It's the Slytherin way."
Ginny's reaching out to take his hand when Dennis sticks his head back out and says, "No it isn't!"
"It's the good Slytherin way, then," Blaise grouses. "Get back in the train, munchkin; I'm trying to be suave here."
"Oh. My bad!" Dennis grins at Ginny and ducks back inside.
"Really," Blaise sighs. "You just can't get the minions these days."
"Now, now," Natalie says, coming out of nowhere to sweep between them, close enough that she brushes both. She jumps up onto the train and then turns and smirks at Blaise. "You're not so bad as all that."
Her smile turns challenging as she offers a hand to Ginny without looking away from Blaise.
"Yeah, I'm going in the other door," Ginny says and does, ignoring the sharp whispered fight that breaks out behind her.
It's hours later and Natalie is saying, "You can't just look at the play statistics; it's like tracking businesses for Gringotts. You have to factor in the human element. Everyone knows the real reason Portree / Puddlemere matches are so vicious is because Wood is shagging their captain."
They're in something more state-room sized than compartment, beds curtained off to one side, seats and a table where they are, small, almost balconies on either side. They have the doors fixed open and the speed of the train gives them something of a breeze, but it's still drowsily hot. While Dennis and Blaise are shoulder to shoulder, scribbling things on constantly moving paper, Natalie and Ginny have claimed corners, sprawling out, feet just touching. They're sipping iced tea.
"You work for Gringotts?" Ginny asks.
"Sort of freelance for goblins, technically, for tax reasons," Natalie says, "but yeah, pretty much. I scout potential acquisitions. You really don't want to know how much of international wizarding finance is based on nepotism and intrigue."
"Confidence is value," Blaise says. "Business is just like everything else: fake it until you make it."
"The three body problem is kind of inherently chaotic," Dennis says and then, when everyone looks at him in bemusement, "Er. Go Cannons?"
Blaise reaches out and affectionately musses his hair.
It's hours later and the chatter of the train wheels makes up for the slow silence inside. It's too hot for talking. Bright greens and dark swish past, whispering like water. Ginny drifts, not asleep, not entirely awake. The carriage rocks gently around them. It feels unreal, like the real Ginny Weasley is back in the Burrow on some lazy Sunday morning, dreaming some exotic future. Somewhere, the real her is playing by all the rules, living a conventional life like any other happy house-witch, washing sheets and feeding chickens and raising a bushel of children who don't have 'no' as their favourite word. But, no. That wouldn't be her either, would it?
"I am way too young to be having a mid-life crisis," she sighs.
When she opens her eyes, it's in time to see Dennis flushing a little, ducking his head, smiling shyly. Blaise doesn't bother looking away, like he watches people sleep all the time, and they should be happy with that. Maybe he does. Maybe they are.
"You're only as old as you feel," Blaise says.
"So that's why you keep us around," Natalie says, smiling without opening her eyes.
Ginny smiles back at Dennis and closes her own again.
It's hours later and she wakes, not because of the soft conversation around her in some foreign tongue, but because a warm drop of water splashes against her cheeks. She blinks sleep away in confusion. There are light taps on the roof and another drop hits her, but it still takes her almost a minute to connect the two together, to connect them both to the still open windows. It's grown darker outside, but not all of that's the growing lateness of the hour.
"Hey!" Dennis beams. "I think it's raining."
Natalie leans back, holds a hand out of the window. "Seems like."
"Shame we can't go out in it," Dennis says.
"Why not?" Blaise asks. "There's always the roof."
"The roof," Ginny repeats sceptically.
"The roof!" Dennis beams.
"Did I wake up in a vaudeville routine?" Natalie asks, but she gets up anyway, moving to the door that connects their carriage to the next along. She leans out and looks up. "Seems doable."
"Sweet!" Dennis pulls all the papers together into a hasty pile and bounces to his feet, bounding across to join her. He brushes a kiss against her cheek before looking back at Blaise, almost, Ginny thinks, as if asking permission. When Ginny turns, though, Blaise is looking at her, not the doorway. The rain taps an arrhythmic beat on the roof, slow and gentle. He slow smiles, and pushes himself to his feet.
Ginny can't help following. It's like being stuck in a pensieve. You go where the action is. The track rushes past under their feet, but the carriages are steady. There's no real feel of speed, little of motion. They could be anywhere.
There's no ladder, per se, but there are frames and eaves and pipes enough to make one. Dennis scrambles ungainly up, feet flailing until he finds a hold. Natalie follows with an amused smile and lithe grace. Blaise moves with no less ease but, Ginny thinks, with much more conscious control. It's too deliberate, the loping, the smooth turns, the oh-so-casual look back.
"Coming?" he asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. A challenge, not an invitation.
He goes up, and she's right behind him, has climbed enough trees behind the Burrow that this, too, is child's play. There's a little fence around the edge of the roof, which curves slightly, rising in the centre. It's barely enough to reach her back if she were sat down, but it somehow makes it feel safer than opening on nothing but the drop. To her surprise, they're not the only people up there; both of the immediate carriages have passengers on the roofs, and she can see others down the train.
The rain starts coming down harder, and Dennis laughs, wandering out to the middle of the roof, arms spread wide, head thrown back. Ginny can't help doing the same. It's cool and clear and sweet on her lips. She pushes wet hair back from her forehead, shakes it out, grins when she realises everyone is watching her.
Dennis shakes himself like a dog, water droplets flying every which way, and laughs. "It's like that movie, you know--" He hums something Ginny doesn't recognise, jiggling a little on the spot, something like a dance. There are laughs and catcalls from the other roofs.
Natalie holds her hand out to Blaise, a challenge in the curl of her lips, the glitter of her eyes. Ginny feels him look her way, looks back in time to see him slow smile, half-amused, half-predatory. He's still looking at her when he takes Natalie's hand, and then the two of them are spinning away, Natalie laughing as someone starts drumming a simple tango beat on the roof.
The rain starts coming down harder. They move together, stepping into and out of each other's spaces in ways that really should end up with them tripping but somehow don't. Their timing is perfect. Natalie cups a hand against the back of Blaise's neck. Blaise loops an arm around her waist. They turn together, step in, out, turn again, and then Blaise is somehow dipping her even as they spin, Natalie laughing, falling back, her hair spilling down almost to the roof. It whips around her as she's straightened back up, sending droplets flying.
Her dress and Blaise's shirt, soaked, are all but translucent, clinging obscenely. Ginny hears Dennis make appreciative noises beside her, clapping along. There are whistles, sharp in the rain. Blaise catches Natalie's wrist and spins her out, pulls her in. Her back to him, she loops an arm around his neck, and they shimmy together. Ginny wonders why the rain doesn't steam. It's practically vertical sex.
Blaise spins Natalie out again, her dress swirling out around her, water splashing, sliding under foot, and the carriage jerks all of sudden under them, and Natalie's feet come down on nothing but rain, Blaise's lunging hand barely grazing hers, and Ginny's breath catches in her throat as Natalie goes out over empty space and out and down and before Ginny even registers the flash of movement Natalie's somehow floating, sliding back on a curve that brings her right into Blaise's waiting arms, and they twirl together, arms tight clutched around each other, laughing giddily. Ginny blinks the rain out of her eyes, reminds herself to breathe, and looks sideways in time to see Dennis nonchalantly tuck his wand back under his belt.
"It's all in the reflexes," he says in an atrocious American accent, grinning at her.
She stares, but he's already gotten distracted again by the dancing, and none of the people on the other roofs seem to have taken it as anything more than a really showy move. Ginny tries to watch herself, but instead finds herself thinking about caverns and brooms and falling in slow motion and--
"I'll make us a nice pudding," Molly says. "A big steamed fruit cake with hot toffee sauce, just like you like it."
Ginny digs out her bags, finds a towel. She can hear the rain on the roof, and their footsteps, and the drumming, still. She expects to be alone but, when she turns around, it's to see Dennis drop into the doorway, grabbing at the frame to keep himself upright.
"Uh," he manages, pushing wet hair back from his forehead. It's gone dark in the rain, from his usual mouse to a matt brown. Water drips off him. She sighs and tosses him her towel, turning back to dig another out, stealing it from Blaise's case.
"Thanks," Dennis says from behind the towel, scrubbing at his face, and then his hair. "Are you okay? Natalie's fine -- I mean, Blaise would have caught her, even if I hadn't, or she would have caught herself, because she has her wand on her and she's brilliant at magic, honest!"
"Something you practice a lot, then?" Ginny asks flatly. "Catching people?"
"Personal levitation charms are a simple extension of mobicorp-- Ohhh," Dennis says, frowning a little. "You're not talking about the roof, are you? You mean at the pitch."
"It was you," Ginny says, expecting excuses.
Dennis just nods. "Yep."
"And the door?"
"That was Natalie's idea," Dennis says and then, anticipating the next question, "She lead you to Blaise."
"This-- The whole thing was a set-up?"
"Yes? Not in a bad way!" Dennis quickly adds. "Just in, you know, a planned sort of way. Blaise wanted to see you. Properly, I mean, not just whizzing around." He eyes her carefully. "You're mad, aren't you?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"You shouldn't be. Well," Dennis corrects himself, "you can be mad, if you want, because there's nothing wrong with feeling things; you can't really control your emotions, only what you do with them which, uh, i-isn't the point. The point is, um. Please don't be mad? It wasn't a prank or anything, just, ugh." He pulls a face and tugs at his wet T-shirt. "Hang on!"
He strips it off unselfconsciously and pulls the towel around his shoulders like a shawl.
"So, um, yes." Dennis frowns. "Wait, what was I talking about?"
Before Ginny can answer, there's another clatter, and first Natalie and then Blaise drop down into the doorway. Natalie promptly pins Blaise against the doorframe and kisses him thoroughly. He laughs against her, pushes her away, and then go dancing across the floor between Dennis and Ginny, leaving trails of wet footprints and Blaise's discarded shirt behind them. Natalie ducks through the curtains that divide the beds from the rest of the room and, with a searing grin at the both of them, Blaise follows after.
Ginny sighs and rubs her forehead. Dennis sighs and picks Blaise's shirt up off the floor, shaking it out a little and then gives up and hangs it on one of coat-hooks along with his t-shirt.
"It's like being stuck at home for summer all over again," Dennis says. "You don't realise how much you rely on magic for simple comforts until you're not supposed to use it." Ginny stares at him. He looks back, confused. "What?"
A moaning giggle escapes the curtains. Ginny moves away, taking the seat on the far side of the room, only to find it gives her a view through the gap in half-closed curtains. Dennis is still watching her curiously, although now he's doing it while taking his shoes and socks off. Ginny looks at the line of footprints and wonders what happened to Blaise's boots, Natalie's high heels.
"Don't you get jealous?" she asks.
Dennis shrugs, a little. "Sure, sometimes." Ginny, expecting a denial, is thrown. Dennis just smiles. "I bet you and Harry fight all the time."
"Not really," Ginny says. Weirdly, it's true. Sure, they argue over meals and places to go and how much either of them work and, lately, over James (Harry insists it's just a phase, but what does he know?) but they never really fight. Not the way Hermione and Ron do, or Bill and Fleur, or George and Angelina who had managed to get themselves arrested twice in the same day.
There's a whump as it hits the curtains, and then Natalie's dress falls out. Blaise's trousers follow after. Ginny smothers the laughter that suddenly wells up inside and looks back to find Dennis smiling with annoyed affection.
"He's just going to complain later that they're all wrinkled," Dennis says. He comes to sit by Ginny, absently folding the towel to place under him. Ginny watches a bead of water drip down his neck. "He really does like you, you know."
"He said."
"He doesn't lie. Well, no, Blaise lies all the time -- it's scandalous! -- but he doesn't lie about stuff like that."
"You love him." It wasn't a question, but Dennis nodded anyway. "And you love her." Dennis nodded again. "And now you're sat out here while they fuck like rabbits."
"I've never actually seen bunnies have sex," Dennis says.
He doesn't seem to be trying to be funny. Ginny stares at him anyway.
"It's okay. I mean, I know they don't love me the same way I love them. But then that's always the way, isn't it?" Dennis smiles. "People are different. That's what makes it interesting!"
"Yeah," says Ginny dubiously.
"...is it true?" Dennis asks. "What you said about to Blaise about Draco Malfoy and Harry?"
"Yeah," Ginny repeats. She wants a drink, remembers there's nothing stopping her having one, and starts to get up because there's wine in the cooler.
Dennis catches the look and bounces to his feet. "I'll get it! You still love Harry, right?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "See? It's like that."
"It's not quite the same," Ginny says. It's less mutual for one thing. These days, Malfoy never manages to instil in her much more than indifference. He's Harry's toy, not hers.
"I said: people are different." Dennis struggles with the corkscrew for a moment, then gives up and snags his wand and with a quick, sheepish, "No-one will see!", opens the bottle with a whisper and a twirl of his wrist. He pours two glasses, and brings them back. "But, the thing is."
"Is--?" Ginny prompts.
Dennis frowns, considering, and then suddenly beams, holding the glass out to her. "All love is true, I think."
It's a nice thought, and Ginny says as much as she takes the wine, but she can't help adding, "I don't think it's enough, though."
"Of course not," Dennis says indignantly. "Love is just part of it. So is sex. I mean, relationships are things you work at, not that just happen -- or, well, they can just happen to start with, I guess, but you have to work to keep them, but that's okay, you know? Because that, that's what makes it satisfying. If it was completely easy, it wouldn't be worth anything!"
She can't help smiling at his enthusiasm, raises her glass in toast, and takes a sip. It's good, cold and dry, with a lingering fruity after-taste. Dennis takes a gulp of his, pulls a face, and then, to her amusement, takes another gulp.
They sit for a moment in something like silence, except it's hard to think of it as that when you're listening to people have noisy, enthusiastic sex right there. Through the gap in the curtains, Ginny can see Natalie's bronze thigh, bright against Blaise's darkness even as it was dark against her own paleness, against Dennis's before. She tries to think of something else, sees the papers still on the table and almost asks what he's working on when Blaise makes a guttural noise that wipes all thought from her head. Natalie's moan follows like thunder after lightning.
Dennis is watching her. She looks away, takes a sip from her glass, looks back. She was a Gryffindor, after all. Brave and reckless to a fault. Dennis is still watching.
"Colin really liked you."
"I know."
"I like you too," Dennis says. "I- I mean, you're pretty, and you're smart, and kind, and funny, sometimes, and you're brilliant on a broom! That match against the Bats when you guys knocked them off the top of the league? That was awesome. And that interview you gave after, where you basically cut their plays to shreds, that was brilliant too. Blaise kept quoting that to us for, like, months after. You should do more of that."
"Quote Blaise?" Ginny asks, sipping at her wine.
"No! Quidditch commentary! Oh, well, I guess you can't while you're playing, because it would be a bit distracting, but maybe you could commentate on other people's games; that'd be cool too." Dennis frowns. "Wait, I lost my point. Um."
Ginny finishes off her glass. The bed creak, creak, creaks. Dennis puts his own glass down, biting his lip. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, moves a little closer.
"What I mean, is," he says, "is that I'd quite like to kiss you. And it's totally okay if you don't want to, because I know it's really Blaise, and Harry, of course, and it might be weird for you or. I mean, if you don't want to, you don't, you know? And I won't ask again, honest. But I would. Like to kiss you. Please?"
Ginny considers her glass for a moment, and then sets it down next to Dennis's.
"Um," says Dennis and then, "Oh," when she leans forward, and closes the rest of the way. His mouth parts against hers. He tastes oddly of chocolate. "Mm."
When she moves back, he comes with her, until they're sprawled together on the seat, and he has one hand on her neck, thumb rubbing slow circles, and her fingers draw slow lines down his still rain-damp back.
Natalie jokes and laughs with the guards, her Spanish and Portuguese fluent, unaccented. Dennis's is pure London, half-garbled, English mixed; it also seems to require him waving his hands a lot, though Ginny can't work out what half the gestures are supposed to mean. She knows only a few stilted, polite phrases, but the guards pay little attention to her and none at all to Blaise, who crosses the border with far too much quiet calm for an internationally wanted fugitive.
"There's a room," Blaise is telling her.
They're alone in the dining cart. Blaise has somehow wrangled candles, lots of them, glittering all around them. Something cool and jazzy plays softly in the background. Their food is served by waiters so silent and discrete they might as well have been House Elves.
"Should you be telling me this?" she asks.
He laughs. "I'm already wanted. But not too much, of course. They like me where I am. We try not to bother each other, and Dennis sends a report in every couple of weeks telling them he's on my trail."
"Why did you do it?" she asks, holding her glass out. There are waiters, but she likes making him do it. Maybe she'll become an alcoholic. That would pass the days.
"I was telling you," Blaise insists, topping it up.
"You set fire to the Department of Mystery's records and blew up the Hall of Prophecy because they have a room full of love," she says sceptically. They're drinking red now. It goes with the melt in the mouth beef.
"A room that they say is full of love," Blaise corrects. "There's a fountain, not of water, but of Amortentia."
Ginny almost chokes on her wine. "The Unspeakables have their own fountain of love potion? Why would you ever leave?"
He actually looks hurt for a second, but it quickly becomes a wry smile. "You're hardly the poster-child for conventional relationships, yourself."
"I'm having a very odd few days," Ginny admits, and adds, "I blame you entirely."
Blaise chuckles.
There's a hill, thick with deep green trees. There's a slow curve of a white gravel path. There's a thick stone wall of blue-black stone, impregnated with glittering quartz. There's a complex of interlocked white stone buildings with gently sloping brick-orange tiled roofs, a broad spread of a patio, a large twist of pools.
"Show off," Ginny says.
Blaise smirks, just a little, and offers her his arm. Dennis bounds ahead of them to pull the doorbell, though Ginny is pretty sure the elves that opened the main gates for their carriage have already announced their arrival. She lets Blaise guide her up. Natalie falls behind for a moment to, so far as Ginny can tell, pay the horses, but both she and Dennis are back at their side by the time Blaise presses his hand to the main doors. The white somehow gets brighter for a moment before they swing inwards, perfectly silently.
The Burrow would probably fit in the entrance hall. Ginny reminds herself that Harry has a fortune and that she's made more than enough from her Quidditch so far that she could probably retire right now and live off the interest for the rest of her life. They too could have a ridiculously huge house in the middle of nowhere to call their summer place, if they wanted, which they don't. She tries to imagine Hermione's reaction to this and has to stifle a laugh. Blaise throws her a questioning look, which she ignores, in favour of staring at the woman coming down the stairs.
The woman is tall, and built for it, all strength and elegance, bedecked in simple but elegant gold robes that make it seem as if she is gliding to meet them. She has Blaise's mouth, his eyes. Diamond loops cross her throat and dangle from her ears, glittering expensively against the thick black curls of her hair. Ginny is seized with a sudden urge to bury her fingers in them, to see if they are as soft, as luxurious as they look, and is unexpectedly thankful for Blaise's hand tightening on hers. The woman favours them all with an appraising look. Ginny stands up straighter.
"Mother," Blaise says.
"Hello, Mrs Zabini," Dennis says, cheerfully.
"I see you've brought your little friends." She smiles and her eyes take it, make a mockery of it. "I suppose you better come in then."
"That's when I understood it," Blaise says.
"I looked at that fountain, that was supposed to teach them about love and would, at best, confuse them with infatuation, and I realised it was symbol of absolutely everything wrong with the ministry. There had been a war, a massive clash of ideologies, and good had supposedly triumphed, but nothing had really changed. The idea of the thing and thing itself weren't even close to each. We'd been lied to. We were still being lied to. I looked at that fountain and I realised none of it mattered, not one thing I had ever done, neither past nor future. After that, it was easy."
Blaise smiles softly, taking her hand in his.
"I did it for love, you see. Doesn't everybody?"
Ginny wakes to gauzy sunshine and a cool breeze and, after her shower, a table handily laden with coffee, fresh fruit, toast and cereals. The house is a maze. She eats impossibly fresh oranges while wandering long halls with high ceilings and a hundred openings from which to view the scenery sprawling away to the blue streak of a horizon. In one round room, she discovers a portrait gallery, Blaise on one side in an empty wall, Ms. Antonia Zabini on the other, flanked by men, young and old.
"My mother likes to collect," portrait!Blaise says. He's younger than the real Blaise, dressed like a king in rich purple robes. He looks at her with undisguised attraction. The other portraits remain silent, though one -- the man who looks the most like Blaise, cast older and darker but no less stunning -- winks at her as she passes.
Whenever she thinks she's getting somewhere, the house suddenly twists back on itself. She finds herself entering the entrance hall six times, each from a different entrance, despite being sure every time that she'd not taken enough turns to loop back on herself. Laughter draws her on, and she follows the echoes as best she can, but when she can finally see the others, it's from a high balcony only, one from which she can find no ready way down to where Dennis, Natalie and Blaise are frolicking in the pool, laughing and splashing at each other.
"He talks about you."
Ginny startles, spins to see Antonia gliding towards her, and only just stops herself drawing her wand. Antonia smiles wryly.
"You never quite lose them, do you? Those dire instincts. After the Bastille riots of sixty-eight, I couldn't stand the smell of pork for years. Oh," she adds, waving an airy hand, "we say we move on, we make all the appropriate gestures and actions, but it never goes away, not really. It just sinks down into the dark depths of our thoughts, submerged under brighter memories; and we live in the hope that nothing will disturb it."
Her accent is smooth, rolling, international. It has something of Fleur in there, something of Blaise's plummy British vowels, something of Spanish and Portuguese. It is, Ginny thinks, the sort of accent someone uses when they want to be just a little bit of a stranger wherever they go.
"Good morning," Ginny says, for something to say.
It earns that cool smile again, an ironic edge to the returned "Good morning." Antonia moves to the balcony edge, looking down at the three in the pool. Dennis disappears under the water as Natalie jumps on him; seconds later, Blaise yelps as he goes under, and all three resurface, spluttering and laughing. Their conversation is too quiet to hear, but Ginny gets the import when Natalie and Dennis start backing off and Blaise dodges towards them, grinning ominously. Dennis gets nabbed first, receiving a slow kiss and a fast dunking for his troubles; Blaise crows triumphantly and turns on Natalie who squeals, splashing at him.
Antonia's lips curl up in a wry smile. "My son. You have a child of your own, I believe."
"James," Ginny supplies. "He's in England, with Harry. He's too young to travel."
Also, he cries when I pick him up, and everyone tells me it's just a phase, as if this should help, as if he won't grow up and forget it when I never will.
"You miss them when you're apart," Antonia says, an oddly wistful note in her voice. "You miss them even when, perhaps most when, you're the reason they're not with you."
"It's just while the games are on," Ginny says, a little defensively.
"Games are always on," Antonia admonishes her. "If you're going to take up with my son, you should remember that. Blaise never has just one reason for anything. Take those two. A half-blood and a mud-blood -- Muggleborn, then," she says, off Ginny's expression, "though the word separates us just as specifically. One as bright and flighty as a butterfly, the other like flint wrapped in wool, all sharp edges and unexpected strength. Do you know what they are to each other?"
"Lovers?" Ginny offers. Antonia's gaze is steady. Ginny shrugs easily. "It's complicated." Thinking of Dennis, she adds, "People are."
"We so rarely want what we actually need," Antonia says, as if this should follow from that, leaving Ginny momentarily floundering. "And here is my son, without even a by your leave; and he will be gone soon, just as easily. How much of what he does is to hurt me... But he is my son, and I love him, and I will give him what I can regardless."
Her eyes sweep Ginny, critically. Ginny looks steadily back. She's had detentions with McGonagall; this is nothing.
"You understand this, I think," Antonia says. "Blaise talks about you, and about that Potter of yours."
"I didn't do it to be nice," Ginny surprises herself saying. Antonia looks at her curiously. "Letting Harry have Malfoy. I wasn't being open, or kind, or even making the best of things. I was doing it to be mean, because I knew Harry would always come back to me, no matter what Malfoy said, or did."
For the first time, Antonia's smile seems genuine. "Want and need have never been gentle masters."
They watch the trio for a moment. Blaise catches Dennis from behind, presses close; Natalie matches him from Dennis's front, her arms around both their necks as she kisses Blaise over Dennis's shoulder.
"Beautiful, isn't he?" Antonia asks.
"Yes," Ginny says without hesitation, and then, more thoughtfully, "They all are."
"I loved my husbands. All of them." Antonia smiles thinly. "Some days, I think my son knows that; on others, I only hope it. Is that too much to ask for him too?"
"He does love them, I think," Ginny says. She can't help adding, "In his own way."
Swimming costumes bob gently up and down on the water's surface.
"I'm going to have to have the pool cleaned," Antonia sighs.
Blaise isn't there when Ginny comes down, but a spread has been left out, all of Ginny's favourites piled together in a mouth-watering display.
"Stalkerish tendencies aren't cute," she mutters to herself, but the fruit is fresh and improbably ripe, the toast is stacked high and there's butter, jams, and honeys aplenty. With a sigh and a smile, she fills a plate to bursting, resorting to a flick of her wand to get the juice and coffee to follow her as she winds her way through this lounge and that until she comes out on the patio. Natalie waves Ginny over from where she's sat next to Dennis in the shade of an angled white umbrella.
The remains of their own food is neatly stacked, in the middle of the table, and Dennis has his papers out over one corner. Ginny takes the next so she can fit in the shade, putting her plates down and waving her drinks to follow. She glances across the sheets as she butters her toast, recognising bits and pieces of arithmancy in the midst of Dennis's scrawl. One part seems to be a distribution system, probability trees and returns. The Quidditch stats are the most familiar, although she can't make head nor tail of what they're being used for.
Natalie keeps stealing Dennis's quill and making notes in the margins, and then making pointed comments when he snatches it back and scribbles equations down one handed while waving the other to illustrate his ideas. They aren't speaking English, but it takes Ginny a moment to realise it's not Spanish, either, nor any of the local creole. Still, it is familiar, something she has heard snatches of in the deep places under London, travelling on rails to goblin sealed doors. "Is that Gobbledegook?"
"It's called Urkesh," Natalie corrects.
Off Ginny's bemused look, Dennis explains, "Gobbledegook is just what wizards call the goblin language to be insulting. It's actually lots of different languages, used for different purposes, like Stoll, and Gripna, and Urkesh!"
"Ah," says Ginny, for lack of something better. She knows that sort of opening. It's like the ones Hermione uses before she goes off on a rant about her latest cause. Something of this must show on her face, because Dennis grins and Natalie giggles. "Do you talk -- Urkesh, was it? You speak it a lot?"
"It has an interestingly unambiguous syntax, simultaneously minimising obligatory categorisation -- like disconnecting tense from verbs -- while forcing rigorous sentence construction using predicates," Dennis says with enthusiasm. "Did you do metalinguistics at Hogwarts? You have Arithmancy and Runes NEWTs, right? See, Urkesh is actually a--"
"It makes talking about money easier," Natalie cuts in, smiling at him. "It's the formal trading language between international goblin--" She says a word that's somehow all consonants and then, off Ginny's look, adds, "Clan? Maybe? The social structures don't really translate into English."
Dennis beams. "Goblin societies are really interesting! Much of the similarities between goblin nations is actually a result of wizard interference, you know; internal cultures are quite often totally different! Except for the part where they all pretty much want more freedom from wizards."
"Goblins run our banks," Ginny objects. "They could just take all our money."
"There's alllll sorts of magical reasons why they can't do that," Dennis says. "That's why goblins like bets, you know."
"It's one of the few ways they can get money that's just theirs," Natalie adds. "No strings attached. Didn't you ever wonder why they insist anything they build still belongs to them? It's because pretty much everything else they have, they only have because wizards let them."
"They're very oppressed," Dennis continues. "They end up fighting each other a lot because of wizards. It's really sad!"
Ginny pauses with mango half-way to her mouth, suddenly remembering a mention of game-fixing, and frowns at them in suspicion. "Wait. You're talking about betting on Quidditch games. Actual bets on actual games, not just theoretical maths things."
"Yes?" Dennis says, looking a little confused.
Ginny looks at the papers, and then back at the two of them. "Are you using Quidditch bets to launder money for the goblins?"
"I like to think of it as an alternate funding revenue stream," Natalie says.
"It's for a good cause?" Dennis offers. "No, really!"
Ginny stares at them both for a moment, then goes back to her mango. "I've just decided this is none of my business."
"Er, okay?" Dennis blinks at her in confusion, then shrugs it off, and goes back to writing.
Natalie watches her steadily for a moment, then says, "We only do it on the international circuit. Every game you've won, you've done it on your own merits."
"And the team's," Dennis adds without looking up.
Natalie smiles. "And your team's." She nabs the quill back to make a correction.
"I wasn't going to ask," Ginny says, truthfully enough. She pours a little honey over her cut fruit, and then sucks her fingers clean, only noticing afterwards that they both stopped to watch. She arches an eyebrow at them, but can't help the amused smile.
"Goblin languages aren't just good for maths," Natalie says. "Gripna is the language of poetry, the great epics and the simple legends. It contains subtleties in single words it would take entire paragraphs of English to accurately represent. Nimukerfagri; strength in beauty, crowned with fire, daughter of the sun. Goblins write the best love poetry, you know."
She recites something, a long roll of warm, liquid syllables, and Ginny finds herself fascinated by the way Natalie's tongue slips against her lips, by the shape of her mouth.
"I love it when you talk foreign," Dennis sighs.
"'Talk foreign'," Natalie repeats, gently mocking.
"I know a dirty limerick in Spanish?" Dennis offers, grinning.
"I know a much better use for your mouth," Natalie says, leaning towards him. Dennis leans in expectantly and gets a mouthful of honeyed mango instead of the expected kiss. He blinks at her in surprise while Natalie just grins, sucking juice from her fingers and then stealing another piece from Ginny's plate.
Ginny raps Natalie's knuckles lightly with her spoon. "Hey!"
"Did you want some too?" Natalie asks innocently, lifting her hand to Ginny's mouth. Ginny gives her a reproving look, but takes the fruit anyway, nipping at Natalie's fingers. Natalie just smiles wider.
Later, Ginny can't quite remember how they get from fruit to her grinding herself against Dennis's tongue while Natalie pegs him with a vibrating, double-ended strap-on, only that it seems perfectly straight-forward at the time, as rational and inevitable as dominoes falling, all in a row.
"We're not like you, or Harry," Blaise says over dessert, the two of them sharing a bowl, idly fighting with spoons. "We're not heroes. People don't remember us."
"Is that so bad?"
"We're outside, now. When you're inside, you can't see it; all that history, pressing down on you. Do you know why they made Harry an auror so quickly? Because it makes him part of the structure. It chains his every move. He can slap a new coat of paint on the walls, but they're still there."
"Have you ever considered that maybe you're just paranoid?" Ginny offers.
Blaise doesn't smile. "When I was a kid, I thought working for the Department of Mysteries would be the best thing in the world. But all they do is hide the mystery away. In the end, it doesn't matter whose faces they wear, light masks or Dark. All that matters is control -- and they have it."
[ Full Headers and Mix | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Read on DW ]