FIC: "the abc's of fate" for redpiratemel
Happy witchwinter, redpiratemel!
Title: the abc's of fate
Author: ?
Recipient: redpiratemel
Pairing: Ginny/Tonks, Tonks/various men, Harry/Ginny, other peripheral pairings
Rating: nc-17
Word Count: ~5200
Warnings: het, mild implied twincest, character death (not the two main charas)
Summary: She was always last, but sometimes being last doesn't have to be a bad thing.
A/N: Thank you so much to A for the beta and encouragement, and to Pea for being so patient with me when this story took on a life of its own and went on forfrickingever. redpiratemel, I hope this is plotty and character-developpy enough for you!
acquaintance.
The first time Ginny meets Tonks, she's fourteen, and completely fascinated. Having six elder brothers, the idea of a woman of an age comparable to Bill's or Charlie's, but female, is a fascinating and exciting one. It isn't like she hadn't met girls the right age to be her elder sister - Bill and Charlie have brought loads of them home, after all, and even if she was too young to avail herself of the wealth of information they had to offer, she had still been able to watch them, and study them, and figure out what being a woman is all about. It isn't that she doesn't admire her mum, because she does, but learning how to be an incredible mother and wife isn't going to help her much when it comes to being a teenage girl.
And Tonks is different. She isn't classy and gorgeous, like the girls Bill preferred and Ginny would never be, and she isn't foreign and exotic, like Charlie's girlfriends. She's just a regular girl, silly, playful, a complete klutz, and all in all, refreshingly ordinary. Except, of course, for the fact that she's a Metamorph. Ginny's particular interest in her stems from the fact that Tonks can be absolutely anything she wants, can assume any face, any body, can make herself as stunning as she wishes, and yet she chooses to just be herself. Coming from the third year girls' dorms, this is a refreshingly unique concept.
Ginny assumes this is why she's so fascinated with watching Tonks' face shift between fantasy and reality.
bill.
Christmas. Ginny is worried about her father - they all are, even though he insists he's going to be fine. Tensions are high, her mother won't stop fretting, and Sirius' over-exuberance only seems to wind things tighter. Regardless, Ginny can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else, despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, and sitting around the fire with her brothers and Harry and Hermione and the adults who have started to feel more and more like family is heaven. The advantage of having such a huge family is that integrating new people into it requires very little effort. Some of them, most notably Professor Lupin, Sirius, and Harry, are still surprised with the easy comfort of the atmosphere; Ginny wonders what sort of lives they must have led for the idea of family to be such a shocking one.
The others take it more easily, and Ginny watches in amusement as Hermione attempts to strike a balance between sisterly affection and clumsy flirtation, as Moody grumpily turns away any attempt at Christmas cheer while indulging rather heavily in the mulled wine, as Tonks flits about from person to person, cheerfully delivering crackers and trying not to inadvertently pull them when she inevitably trips over her own feet. It's comfortable, it's satisfying, and even the sobering evidence of what Bellatrix Lestrange is capable of hasn't been enough to fully dampen her spirits.
Nighttime rolls around, and people start to drift off to bed in pairs. Sirius and Professor Lupin go first, and Ginny wonders if the faint blush on Professor Lupin's cheeks is a trick of the light. Fred and George are next, undoubtedly plotting mischief, followed by her mum and Moody, arguing over which of them should stay up in case there is more news from St Mungo's. Ron and Harry get up to leave and Hermione stands too; when Ginny follows after them, she bids good night to Bill and Tonks, though neither of them seems to be paying particular attention.
It is for this reason that she steals downstairs later, once Hermione has fallen asleep. She tells herself it's because she needs water, but she bypasses the kitchen completely, feet leading her straight to the parlour. The lights are out, save the candles burned nearly to the quick on the branches of the tree, and it is by that dim light that Ginny can see well enough to watch her brother's head moving between Tonks' legs. She's unsurprised; even if they hadn't both had rather a lot of wine, Tonks has been stealing looks at Bill all evening, and she knows her brother too well to think he was anywhere near as oblivious as he was pretending. Bill and Charlie always explained it to her as a way to connect with someone, nothing to be ashamed of, something mutually pleasurable for both parties involved. This had, of course, always been followed by a cracking of knuckles and a suggestion that anyone who touched their little sister would be dealing with rather a lot of pain, but the lesson still stood. She's not naive enough to think this has anything to do with love, but the look on Tonks' face as she buries her hands in Bill's hair and rocks her hips against his face makes her wonder.
As she turns to go, she wonders if Tonks' pubic hair has turned the same silver-blonde as the hair on her head.
charlie.
The following Christmas, the dynamic is completely different. Bill has that French tart now, and Ginny watches her put on airs and flaunt her perfect figure and beautiful face and wishes that Tonks was here again. Tonks at least felt like she could be a sister; Fleur is so foreign to Ginny that she almost makes Bill foreign by association. Tonks isn't here at all, and Ginny thinks that if Hermione weren't around, she'd go mad. It feels like a bit of the family is missing, even though she's only known Tonks a little over a year, and then not even that well.
It is perhaps that reason that the letter from Charlie her first week back at school seems somehow fitting. I'm sorry I couldn't come home, Ginnybean, he writes, that tiny scrawly script that's nearly impossible to read unless you want to badly enough. Romania's awfully cold, and the dragons make for poor company, all things considered. If Tonks hadn't been here, I don't know what I would've done.
Another year, another brother, and if Ginny's angry, it's that Tonks and Bill never worked out, that she couldn't have Tonks as a real sister instead of just a tentatively adopted one. Family is everything to Ginny, and it's a subtle difference perhaps between something tenuous and something official, but it's enough.
She wonders if maybe Charlie...
Well, but Charlie's not the marrying type. He's said so countless times, especially whenever he'd bring a girl home and Dad caught them at it, in his bedroom or the bathroom or the sitting room or the backyard or even once the kitchen after Mum had gone to bed and Dad was feeling peckish in the middle of the night. Ginny's a light sleeper, and she was always the first to hear, to sneak out of her room and secret herself away so she could watch them at it, the moonlight reflecting off Charlie's broad, freckled back, the way the Girl Of The Moment moved as fluid and sinuous as a serpent - appropriate, since Charlie seemed to like Slytherin girls, earning him much teasing from Ginny's elder brothers.
Truth be told, almost every trick Ginny knows, she's learnt from watching one of Charlie's girls. The Slytherins are more uninhibited, wickeder, less willing to accept the conventional female role, and on more than one occasion she's watched a girl grab Charlie by the hair to drag his head between her legs and hold it there with her thighs, or flip him over and pin him so she could ride him at her own pace, or lick herself off his fingers or his dick with such enthusiasm that Ginny wondered whether Charlie needed to be there at all.
She reads the letter again, and wonders if Tonks is as aggressive as Charlie's other girls have been. Bill likes his girls feminine - not submissive, but gentle. Tonks isn't, but Ginny remembers how languidly she moved, over a year ago now though as clear as if it were yesterday, But that's not Charlie's style at all, and Ginny wonders what else Tonks might be able to change on a whim in order to suit her purposes.
She falls asleep with the letter crumpled in one hand and the other twisted between her legs.
dichotomy.
Ginny is preoccupied with thoughts of Harry, of the impending war, of her family fragmenting into a dozen pieces, but Bill's wedding and having almost all her family there is enough to keep her from losing it altogether. Fleur looks radiant, and Ginny has begun at last to understand why Bill chose her out of everyone he could have had. It's not the femininity he likes, it's the dichotomy, the pretty package concealing an unexpectedly fierce will. He craves the unpredictable, how someone can be so at odds with herself and yet still work perfectly, and Ginny sees it in his eyes now, their expressiveness making up for everything his face has lost.
Ginny looks over at Tonks then, dressed in a blue frock that matches today's eyes and with black hair to her shoulders, clutching at Remus' hand, much to his apparent chagrin, and wonders if she feels like that. She's the most herself than anyone Ginny has ever known, but you wouldn't know it to look at her, the face that changes as often as any other girl changes her mind. Ginny wonders who she sees when she looks in the mirror, and whether she's ever able to find a face to really match the image she has of herself.
empathy.
The day Percy comes home, everyone cries. Even Bill, who's grown so hard over the past months that he barely even smiles anymore, has tears in his eyes, and he claps Percy on the shoulder and calls him a fucking idiot, much to Mum's horror.
Dinner that evening is a lavish event, raucous conversation interrupted only by the squalls of Bill and Fleur's new baby. Percy is the centre of attention, and it's clear that's exactly where he wants to be. Everyone has forgiven him; in times like these, holding grudges is nothing if not counterproductive, and besides, everyone has heard of Percy's role in uncovering the corruption permeating the Ministry. He still claims he only did it to get ahead, but Ginny knows her brother better than that.
'So, Perce,' George says eventually around a mouthful of peas, 'what made you decide to come back now? I mean, that stuff with Scrimgeour happened months ago, so why...?'
Percy smiles faintly, nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose. 'A...friend of mine convinced me that I was being, in her words, a "gigantic gitface" and I needed to get over my pride and go home to my family.'
Her mum's sudden admonitions to Percy for not bringing the brilliant girl home with him fade into the background as Ginny recognises the phrase. Looking around the table, she sees that Bill and Charlie do as well, and as she watches, the three of them exchange a Look. She knows that Look; she saw it on Dean and Michael's faces, a few weeks into her sixth year, as they struggled to drill for DA without Harry around. Neville had made for a surprisingly strong leader, and Ginny had been a bit taken with him as a result; she'd caught the Look after Neville had come over to congratulate her on her shielding charm. It was that Look that meant I know exactly what you're thinking because I'm thinking it too that only seemed, in her experience, to come from people with shared exes. As she knows quite well that Percy has never been anywhere near Fleur, nervous as always that she would succeed in shattering his impassive façade, her mind turns immediately in another direction.
She remembers the tentatively aggressive way in which Percy used to kiss Penny, all those years ago when he would rather have died than confessed he was interested in anything other that his NEWT scores, and wonders how much he's changed since then. Does he still hover his fingers at the edge of a girl's blouse as if waiting for permission to touch her even when tacit permission is given? Does he still kiss as if she will break, and freeze up if she takes the lead, and come in his pants if she touches him just so? Bill and Charlie both like the aggressive girls, but Percy, the Percy she remembers, is so different from that that she wonders if he's changed to fit the Weasley mould, as it were, or if Tonks has changed her version of the Weasley mould to fit him.
fred & george.
Bill cried the day that Percy came home, and now he's crying again, pained sobs that rack his rapidly-emaciating frame as the lid on Percy's coffin slides shut. Their mum is in hysterics; Dad and Charlie have taken her inside, and even Ron is hovering about anxiously, though Ginny knows at least some of that is projected from his anxiousness about Harry. As Ginny watches, Fleur leads Bill away, their tiny daughter clinging to her arm as they walk, and when she looks around, the only people left are herself, the twins, and Tonks.
'Ginny,' says a voice at her shoulder, and she turns to see Hermione, looking as if she'd let herself cry only for a moment before dashing the tears from her eyes; they embrace, and then Hermione slips a letter into Ginny's hand. It's from Harry, and she's so astonished and pleased that she stares at it blankly for a long moment, long enough for Hermione to take her leave without Ginny's notice. When she finally looks up, she is alone.
Whipping her head around, she only just catches a glimpse of two matching shocks of red hair, and a bright halo of pink between them, heading in the opposite direction from Bill. As she watches, the twins slip their arms around Tonks' waist, perfect mirror images of each other, and she crumples the letter in her hand as the three of them disappear out of sight.
Harry's words are brief, awkward and hesitant and fumbly, just like him, and she smiles as she reads how he thinks of her often, and misses her, and hopes this will all be over soon, and then her cheeks heat as he goes on to tell her exactly what he intends to do when that happens. It excites her in a way little else can, as it always has when Harry talks about the future, their future, instead of adhering to his usual attitude of uncertainty and carelessness about whether he will survive this at all, and by the time she's finished reading, she's flushed, fingers of her free hand clenched in the fabric of her frock and breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The ache between her legs is unbearable, and she half considers bringing herself off just sitting here, where anyone can see her, with Percy's coffin only a few metres away. This is far from the first funeral she's been to, and Harry knows as well as she the need to feel wholly alive in the wake of Death's caress. She wonders how much of his letter was in earnest, and how much was exaggeration for her sake, because he knew what she would need.
After a moment, she finds that it doesn't matter either way, as her gaze slips from the letter and off into the distance, where she can almost catch a glimpse of three brilliant swathes of colour smeared amidst the drab grey-and-brown of the late autumn trees.
She looks at the letter, and then stands, slipping it into her pocket as she walks without hesitation across the grounds and into the trees.
harry.
Ginny feels numb. She thought that if - when - if this day ever came, she would be a weeping wreck, like Fleur the day that Bill died, or a stoic sufferer, like Angelina at Fred's funeral, but instead, she just feels numb. She twists the band around and around her finger, half wishing Harry had never sent it to her, never let her hope that things might someday turn out all right, but half grateful for the comfort of its presence, and the knowledge that his lips had touched it, had put a little bit of his soul into the metal. Not a Horcrux, and not any sort of metallurgy, but simply...will, a magic maybe more powerful than anything one could accomplish by waving a wand.
She accepts apologies in stupefied silence, a smile plastered across her face as friends she hasn't seen in months touch her shoulder and kiss her cheek and offer their condolences to Harry Potter's not-widow (and why there's not a term for a woman whose fiancé died before the wedding, Ginny doesn't know). Everything melts together into a blur of brilliant colours, the celebratory cheer surrounding Voldemort's defeat turned bitter and sombre on the day of their saviour's funeral.
The only thing that stands out, in fact, is her family, or rather the lack thereof. Where there had once been six brothers, now there is only one; Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, all casualties of war, as the Ministry had put it, and George too, though his casualty is in his mind, and she can still see him if she goes on tiptoe and puts her face up to the glass of his small room at St Mungo's. But he's as dead as the rest of them; he died with the same curse that killed Fred, and she knows he'll never be George again.
Now it's only her, and Ron. Ron, who's so pale that his freckles almost look white. Ron, who's been standing there, stock still, since the moment they brought Harry's body out, one hand shoved deep into his pocket and the other clenched at his side where it would have held Hermione's. Ginny's family is dwindling, her adopted siblings disappearing as quickly as her real ones, and she stares at him fiercely as if burning the memory of him onto her mind will keep him from leaving her as well.
The funeral-goers trickle off back to the castle, some still weeping, others in a daze, and soon only Ginny and Ron remain, staring at the coffin instead of each other. Ginny wonders if Ron even realises she's there.
When a familiar woman approaches and Ron turns to her with a sob, folding himself almost double to hide his face against her shoulder, Ginny knows he doesn't, that neither of them do, and she takes the opportunity to watch, silently, as Tonks curves her hands around his face and pulls him into a kiss. It's not sealing a deal, like with Bill or Charlie, it's not tentative like Percy, nor is it playful and just a bit naughty, like the twins. Instead, it's a promise, and Ron accepts that promise, sliding his hands into her hair as it darkens to brown, and then to black, falling around her face in a wild, untamed mess.
Ginny turns her back.
i.
The war is supposed to be over. It is over, technically, but what people failed to mention was the fallout. Those people who went slowly mad with post-traumatic stress disorder, or survivor's guilt; those people who became dysfunctional, unable to rejoin society after so many months of trench warfare and watching their friends drop dead around them, corpses charred and sizzling; those people who became so paranoid they locked themselves forever in their houses, ever afraid a Death Eater in hiding was going to come after them at any moment.
Those people like her brother, who killed themselves because they could no longer live with those memories no Obliviate would ever wipe clean.
Ginny allows herself to be subjected to her mother's clinging and her father's weeping. She's all they have left now, after all, the only one of seven, and the only girl, so their name will stop, with her. She and little Claudette, Bill's daughter, are all the family has left of its legacy.
When they finally retreat, the motley little crew that is all that remains of their family, Ginny stays behind. Someone else does as well, and without looking up, she knows exactly who it is.
'Did you love him?'
Tonks stepped forward to stand at Ginny's elbow, looking up into her face. Ginny is tall now, like Bill, and the twins, and Ron, and Tonks has always been petite and compact. Ginny wonders if she ever makes herself taller, leggier, bustier, and finds that despite Tonks' multiple faces, she can't imagine her in a different body.
'I loved all of them,' Tonks replies softly.
Ginny turns to look down at Tonks, and she sees something there, something knowing, and almost smug, such that Ginny suddenly feels irrational anger. Grabbing Tonks by the shoulder, she shakes her, glaring down into her face as months and years of repressed hurt and pain and fury and jealousy and loneliness come bubbling to the surface, lashing out at this one constant that has been there for all of it.
'Why?' she growls, eyes flashing as she leans down close. 'Why them? Why us? You went through them all like you were reading a grocery list. Am I last then, hm? Am I the ice cream you leave for last so it won't melt on your way to the checkout? Everyone else is dead, guess that means it's little Ginny's turn.'
Tonks gazes up at her impassively. The years have changed her; she's no longer the klutzy, awkward, child-like adult that Ginny met so long ago. There's something very old and almost wise buried in the depths of her gaze, and Ginny wonders, in a flight of fancy, if every time Tonks becomes someone else, she ages for two instead of just herself.
'You're nothing alike,' Tonks says finally, calmly, as if Ginny isn't glaring daggers at her. 'You all have the Weasley hair and the Weasley name, but you're nothing alike. I think that's what the appeal was. They all wanted something different, but something familiar, and they needed a way to connect with each other, their roots, though they all spoke different languages. Bill was...Bill - I fancied him back when I was still at Hogwarts - but then, everyone after that...I was intriguing, because I could give them what they wanted. A piece of home, flavoured to fit their particular tastes.'
Ginny feels her chest tighten as Tonks talks, and this time it's not anger, or envy, or wistfulness. This time it's understanding. Their family, so intimately connected, and yet she knows, looking up at Tonks, that Tonks knew all of her brothers better than she ever did. There's something lost in translation when you assume you all speak the same language but none of you really do, and Tonks has figured out how to crack that code, and insert herself into their family in a way none of them ever had managed to accomplish.
'Why?' she asks again, her voice catching in her throat.
Tonks smiles, reaches up to touch Ginny's cheek. 'Because I wanted to connect too. I never had...a family, not like yours, and after Sirius...I just wanted to feel like a part of it. Of you.'
Ginny stares at her, then reaches up to cover Tonks' hand with her own. 'You already were,' she murmurs.
Tonks looks surprised, her hand flexing beneath Ginny's, and Ginny wonders what Tonks must have been thinking to want to fuck her way into the family. At the same time, she knows exactly the feeling. There's an intimacy that comes from sex that can't be achieved anywhere else, and Fred and George's proclivities aside, intra-familial fucking wasn't something that Ginny imagines ever crossed any of her brothers' minds. And yet at the same time, Tonks had been the pivot point, the one thing that connected them all that went beyond family, and Ginny can't help thinking that maybe she hasn't given Tonks enough credit.
She leans down until her face is mere inches from Tonks', and then smiles, a girlish grin she hasn't worn in years, pitching her voice higher and chewing the inside of her lip. 'Do the face for me,' she pleads, childishly, like she had when she was a girl. Tonks' face relaxes and she takes a step back, carefully holding Ginny's gaze. As Ginny watches, her face begins to shift, slender and pointy and elegant with a fall of silvery hair, unrecognisable at first and then gradually shifting to match Fleur's face; it hovers for a moment, and then continues on, a squarer face topped with long dark hair and aristocratically arched brows, a round face, the hair lightening and springing into half-formed curls, and tightening still further as her skin darkens to the colour of cocoa, before reversing, the hair frizzing out around her head like a familiar halo of bushy brown; Ginny's chest aches with the need to tell Tonks to stop, but her lips won't move, and she watches in mute horror as the mess of hair shortens, turns black, the jaw sharpening and the nose straightening and the warm brown eyes turning a brilliant avada kedavra green. For one agonising moment, she finds herself staring straight into Harry's face, knowing that it is not for her benefit, but was in fact for Ron's, and then Tonks' face is back again, topped with that familiar shock of bright pink hair. Tonks looks at her, the question evident in her eyes, and Ginny shivers as she closes the distance between them and cups Tonks' face in her hands.
'I like this one best,' she murmurs, and presses their mouths together with barely concealed desperation.
She doesn't know anymore, as her freckled fingers pull at Tonks' clothes, whether she wants this because she wants to feel closer to her brothers or because she wants to feel closer to Tonks, but it doesn't seem to matter, not when Tonks' arms go around her and the distinct shrinking feeling of Apparition is proceeded by a swift tumble onto a soft, springy mattress.
Oddly, any nervousness Ginny might have about this is both compounded and dispelled by the knowledge that all of her brothers have been in exactly this situation before. She clings to that thought, letting it comfort her as Tonks' mouth wanders down the bared expanse of her throat and her small hands tug at the zip on Ginny's dress. Ginny's only done this once, and not like this, and without the tiles of the bathroom wall pressing against her back and her knickers down around her ankles as she watches a dark head disappear beneath her pleated skirt, she's at a loss.
But Tonks doesn't ask her what she wants. Maybe she's learned to read Weasley fluently by now, despite the fact that Ginny has her own dialect of it, or maybe she just knows what to do with a woman's body. Ginny can't tell. And moreover, after a few moments, she doesn't really care. Her hips arch up of their own accord as a smiling mouth closes around one bared nipple and a pair of fingers slip beneath the elastic of her knickers like they belong there, and maybe they do, Ginny thinks, tugging futilely at Tonks' clothes. Maybe this is fate, and all those years of watching her brothers at it was just...practice, preparation for both of them, for when this moment came. Tonks wants to be a Weasley, after all, and Ginny is the last of her generation, the one who must carry the family name until it dies with her. Maybe this is how it was always meant to be, from that first time they met, she a girl of fourteen and Tonks barely the woman she pretended to be.
She wraps that thought up tightly in her hands, holds it close to her heart like a trapped sunbeam. She is every Weasley now, all of her brothers who have died, all of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren that will never be, and as she moves into Tonks' touches, she takes her place in the family legacy, picking up where her brothers left off, sliding as smoothly into the role as Tonks' fingers slide into her body.
When she looks up, Tonks is watching her, brown eyes filled with warmth and fascination, looking so real that Ginny knows somehow that this is what Tonks sees when she looks at herself in the mirror.
'You're so beautiful,' Tonks whispers, trailing her fingertips down Ginny's naked flank, and how it's meant matters as little as the reason for being here in the first place. Ginny smiles too, easily, feeling free, empowered, whole, and then gasps as Tonks twists her hand, filling her with three fingers now, or maybe it's four, half her hand fucking into Ginny's body as her own hips press against Ginny's thigh, the pink (and it is pink) of her curls slightly scratchy against Ginny's hip.
Ginny moans in response, hands grasping feebly at Tonks' arms, and cries out when Tonks seemingly reads her mind, shifting so their hips fit flush and rocking against her with deliberate intent. It feels everything and nothing like fucking anyone else - Tonks' body is compact enough that it could almost be a boy's, and what she lacks in protruding genitalia she makes up for in dexterity, but it's Tonks, and so it's different, and better, right in a way that it hadn't even been with Harry. Harry's life always revolved around playing a role he never wanted in the first place; Tonks' revolves around knowing how to slip between roles, but without losing the ability to divest herself of her costume and just be herself.
Tonks' mouth finds hers, and they kiss, slow slide of tongues and soft press of lips contrasting the increasing desperation of their bodies as they thrust against each other. Ginny's chest still feels tight, but she's flushed, warm, exultant, and every breath is expelled on a moan against Tonks' mouth as she winds one leg around Tonks' back, canting her hips so Tonks' fingers ease deeper still. Tonks groans, twisting her hand, and Ginny feels her thumb moving, flexing against her own clit in time with her speeding thrusts. The pressure building in her chest is unbearable, and Ginny gasps for breath, clutching at Tonks, twisting her hips, flashes of red sparkling across her vision and blurred memories of her brothers superimposing in her mind until she's every one of them all at once, fucking six different girls, all of whom are wearing Tonks' face.
'I love you,' Ginny whispers, all of a sudden, and it's pronouncement and revelation and catharsis all at once; the pressure in her chest abates, and she ohs as she comes, face contorted into an exact match with her brothers' and the look of surprise in her eyes matched only by that in Tonks', Ginny's name on her lips as she arches into her and stills as well.
Maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with both of them that they would do this in the first place, with the shadows of six dead brothers crowding the bed. Maybe this was all simply an inevitability, stemming from being the seventh in a line of attractive siblings. Maybe Ginny simply was the last item on a list, now to be crossed off.
Or maybe there's something to this fate business after all.
Title: the abc's of fate
Author: ?
Recipient: redpiratemel
Pairing: Ginny/Tonks, Tonks/various men, Harry/Ginny, other peripheral pairings
Rating: nc-17
Word Count: ~5200
Warnings: het, mild implied twincest, character death (not the two main charas)
Summary: She was always last, but sometimes being last doesn't have to be a bad thing.
A/N: Thank you so much to A for the beta and encouragement, and to Pea for being so patient with me when this story took on a life of its own and went on forfrickingever. redpiratemel, I hope this is plotty and character-developpy enough for you!
acquaintance.
The first time Ginny meets Tonks, she's fourteen, and completely fascinated. Having six elder brothers, the idea of a woman of an age comparable to Bill's or Charlie's, but female, is a fascinating and exciting one. It isn't like she hadn't met girls the right age to be her elder sister - Bill and Charlie have brought loads of them home, after all, and even if she was too young to avail herself of the wealth of information they had to offer, she had still been able to watch them, and study them, and figure out what being a woman is all about. It isn't that she doesn't admire her mum, because she does, but learning how to be an incredible mother and wife isn't going to help her much when it comes to being a teenage girl.
And Tonks is different. She isn't classy and gorgeous, like the girls Bill preferred and Ginny would never be, and she isn't foreign and exotic, like Charlie's girlfriends. She's just a regular girl, silly, playful, a complete klutz, and all in all, refreshingly ordinary. Except, of course, for the fact that she's a Metamorph. Ginny's particular interest in her stems from the fact that Tonks can be absolutely anything she wants, can assume any face, any body, can make herself as stunning as she wishes, and yet she chooses to just be herself. Coming from the third year girls' dorms, this is a refreshingly unique concept.
Ginny assumes this is why she's so fascinated with watching Tonks' face shift between fantasy and reality.
bill.
Christmas. Ginny is worried about her father - they all are, even though he insists he's going to be fine. Tensions are high, her mother won't stop fretting, and Sirius' over-exuberance only seems to wind things tighter. Regardless, Ginny can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else, despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, and sitting around the fire with her brothers and Harry and Hermione and the adults who have started to feel more and more like family is heaven. The advantage of having such a huge family is that integrating new people into it requires very little effort. Some of them, most notably Professor Lupin, Sirius, and Harry, are still surprised with the easy comfort of the atmosphere; Ginny wonders what sort of lives they must have led for the idea of family to be such a shocking one.
The others take it more easily, and Ginny watches in amusement as Hermione attempts to strike a balance between sisterly affection and clumsy flirtation, as Moody grumpily turns away any attempt at Christmas cheer while indulging rather heavily in the mulled wine, as Tonks flits about from person to person, cheerfully delivering crackers and trying not to inadvertently pull them when she inevitably trips over her own feet. It's comfortable, it's satisfying, and even the sobering evidence of what Bellatrix Lestrange is capable of hasn't been enough to fully dampen her spirits.
Nighttime rolls around, and people start to drift off to bed in pairs. Sirius and Professor Lupin go first, and Ginny wonders if the faint blush on Professor Lupin's cheeks is a trick of the light. Fred and George are next, undoubtedly plotting mischief, followed by her mum and Moody, arguing over which of them should stay up in case there is more news from St Mungo's. Ron and Harry get up to leave and Hermione stands too; when Ginny follows after them, she bids good night to Bill and Tonks, though neither of them seems to be paying particular attention.
It is for this reason that she steals downstairs later, once Hermione has fallen asleep. She tells herself it's because she needs water, but she bypasses the kitchen completely, feet leading her straight to the parlour. The lights are out, save the candles burned nearly to the quick on the branches of the tree, and it is by that dim light that Ginny can see well enough to watch her brother's head moving between Tonks' legs. She's unsurprised; even if they hadn't both had rather a lot of wine, Tonks has been stealing looks at Bill all evening, and she knows her brother too well to think he was anywhere near as oblivious as he was pretending. Bill and Charlie always explained it to her as a way to connect with someone, nothing to be ashamed of, something mutually pleasurable for both parties involved. This had, of course, always been followed by a cracking of knuckles and a suggestion that anyone who touched their little sister would be dealing with rather a lot of pain, but the lesson still stood. She's not naive enough to think this has anything to do with love, but the look on Tonks' face as she buries her hands in Bill's hair and rocks her hips against his face makes her wonder.
As she turns to go, she wonders if Tonks' pubic hair has turned the same silver-blonde as the hair on her head.
charlie.
The following Christmas, the dynamic is completely different. Bill has that French tart now, and Ginny watches her put on airs and flaunt her perfect figure and beautiful face and wishes that Tonks was here again. Tonks at least felt like she could be a sister; Fleur is so foreign to Ginny that she almost makes Bill foreign by association. Tonks isn't here at all, and Ginny thinks that if Hermione weren't around, she'd go mad. It feels like a bit of the family is missing, even though she's only known Tonks a little over a year, and then not even that well.
It is perhaps that reason that the letter from Charlie her first week back at school seems somehow fitting. I'm sorry I couldn't come home, Ginnybean, he writes, that tiny scrawly script that's nearly impossible to read unless you want to badly enough. Romania's awfully cold, and the dragons make for poor company, all things considered. If Tonks hadn't been here, I don't know what I would've done.
Another year, another brother, and if Ginny's angry, it's that Tonks and Bill never worked out, that she couldn't have Tonks as a real sister instead of just a tentatively adopted one. Family is everything to Ginny, and it's a subtle difference perhaps between something tenuous and something official, but it's enough.
She wonders if maybe Charlie...
Well, but Charlie's not the marrying type. He's said so countless times, especially whenever he'd bring a girl home and Dad caught them at it, in his bedroom or the bathroom or the sitting room or the backyard or even once the kitchen after Mum had gone to bed and Dad was feeling peckish in the middle of the night. Ginny's a light sleeper, and she was always the first to hear, to sneak out of her room and secret herself away so she could watch them at it, the moonlight reflecting off Charlie's broad, freckled back, the way the Girl Of The Moment moved as fluid and sinuous as a serpent - appropriate, since Charlie seemed to like Slytherin girls, earning him much teasing from Ginny's elder brothers.
Truth be told, almost every trick Ginny knows, she's learnt from watching one of Charlie's girls. The Slytherins are more uninhibited, wickeder, less willing to accept the conventional female role, and on more than one occasion she's watched a girl grab Charlie by the hair to drag his head between her legs and hold it there with her thighs, or flip him over and pin him so she could ride him at her own pace, or lick herself off his fingers or his dick with such enthusiasm that Ginny wondered whether Charlie needed to be there at all.
She reads the letter again, and wonders if Tonks is as aggressive as Charlie's other girls have been. Bill likes his girls feminine - not submissive, but gentle. Tonks isn't, but Ginny remembers how languidly she moved, over a year ago now though as clear as if it were yesterday, But that's not Charlie's style at all, and Ginny wonders what else Tonks might be able to change on a whim in order to suit her purposes.
She falls asleep with the letter crumpled in one hand and the other twisted between her legs.
dichotomy.
Ginny is preoccupied with thoughts of Harry, of the impending war, of her family fragmenting into a dozen pieces, but Bill's wedding and having almost all her family there is enough to keep her from losing it altogether. Fleur looks radiant, and Ginny has begun at last to understand why Bill chose her out of everyone he could have had. It's not the femininity he likes, it's the dichotomy, the pretty package concealing an unexpectedly fierce will. He craves the unpredictable, how someone can be so at odds with herself and yet still work perfectly, and Ginny sees it in his eyes now, their expressiveness making up for everything his face has lost.
Ginny looks over at Tonks then, dressed in a blue frock that matches today's eyes and with black hair to her shoulders, clutching at Remus' hand, much to his apparent chagrin, and wonders if she feels like that. She's the most herself than anyone Ginny has ever known, but you wouldn't know it to look at her, the face that changes as often as any other girl changes her mind. Ginny wonders who she sees when she looks in the mirror, and whether she's ever able to find a face to really match the image she has of herself.
empathy.
The day Percy comes home, everyone cries. Even Bill, who's grown so hard over the past months that he barely even smiles anymore, has tears in his eyes, and he claps Percy on the shoulder and calls him a fucking idiot, much to Mum's horror.
Dinner that evening is a lavish event, raucous conversation interrupted only by the squalls of Bill and Fleur's new baby. Percy is the centre of attention, and it's clear that's exactly where he wants to be. Everyone has forgiven him; in times like these, holding grudges is nothing if not counterproductive, and besides, everyone has heard of Percy's role in uncovering the corruption permeating the Ministry. He still claims he only did it to get ahead, but Ginny knows her brother better than that.
'So, Perce,' George says eventually around a mouthful of peas, 'what made you decide to come back now? I mean, that stuff with Scrimgeour happened months ago, so why...?'
Percy smiles faintly, nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose. 'A...friend of mine convinced me that I was being, in her words, a "gigantic gitface" and I needed to get over my pride and go home to my family.'
Her mum's sudden admonitions to Percy for not bringing the brilliant girl home with him fade into the background as Ginny recognises the phrase. Looking around the table, she sees that Bill and Charlie do as well, and as she watches, the three of them exchange a Look. She knows that Look; she saw it on Dean and Michael's faces, a few weeks into her sixth year, as they struggled to drill for DA without Harry around. Neville had made for a surprisingly strong leader, and Ginny had been a bit taken with him as a result; she'd caught the Look after Neville had come over to congratulate her on her shielding charm. It was that Look that meant I know exactly what you're thinking because I'm thinking it too that only seemed, in her experience, to come from people with shared exes. As she knows quite well that Percy has never been anywhere near Fleur, nervous as always that she would succeed in shattering his impassive façade, her mind turns immediately in another direction.
She remembers the tentatively aggressive way in which Percy used to kiss Penny, all those years ago when he would rather have died than confessed he was interested in anything other that his NEWT scores, and wonders how much he's changed since then. Does he still hover his fingers at the edge of a girl's blouse as if waiting for permission to touch her even when tacit permission is given? Does he still kiss as if she will break, and freeze up if she takes the lead, and come in his pants if she touches him just so? Bill and Charlie both like the aggressive girls, but Percy, the Percy she remembers, is so different from that that she wonders if he's changed to fit the Weasley mould, as it were, or if Tonks has changed her version of the Weasley mould to fit him.
fred & george.
Bill cried the day that Percy came home, and now he's crying again, pained sobs that rack his rapidly-emaciating frame as the lid on Percy's coffin slides shut. Their mum is in hysterics; Dad and Charlie have taken her inside, and even Ron is hovering about anxiously, though Ginny knows at least some of that is projected from his anxiousness about Harry. As Ginny watches, Fleur leads Bill away, their tiny daughter clinging to her arm as they walk, and when she looks around, the only people left are herself, the twins, and Tonks.
'Ginny,' says a voice at her shoulder, and she turns to see Hermione, looking as if she'd let herself cry only for a moment before dashing the tears from her eyes; they embrace, and then Hermione slips a letter into Ginny's hand. It's from Harry, and she's so astonished and pleased that she stares at it blankly for a long moment, long enough for Hermione to take her leave without Ginny's notice. When she finally looks up, she is alone.
Whipping her head around, she only just catches a glimpse of two matching shocks of red hair, and a bright halo of pink between them, heading in the opposite direction from Bill. As she watches, the twins slip their arms around Tonks' waist, perfect mirror images of each other, and she crumples the letter in her hand as the three of them disappear out of sight.
Harry's words are brief, awkward and hesitant and fumbly, just like him, and she smiles as she reads how he thinks of her often, and misses her, and hopes this will all be over soon, and then her cheeks heat as he goes on to tell her exactly what he intends to do when that happens. It excites her in a way little else can, as it always has when Harry talks about the future, their future, instead of adhering to his usual attitude of uncertainty and carelessness about whether he will survive this at all, and by the time she's finished reading, she's flushed, fingers of her free hand clenched in the fabric of her frock and breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The ache between her legs is unbearable, and she half considers bringing herself off just sitting here, where anyone can see her, with Percy's coffin only a few metres away. This is far from the first funeral she's been to, and Harry knows as well as she the need to feel wholly alive in the wake of Death's caress. She wonders how much of his letter was in earnest, and how much was exaggeration for her sake, because he knew what she would need.
After a moment, she finds that it doesn't matter either way, as her gaze slips from the letter and off into the distance, where she can almost catch a glimpse of three brilliant swathes of colour smeared amidst the drab grey-and-brown of the late autumn trees.
She looks at the letter, and then stands, slipping it into her pocket as she walks without hesitation across the grounds and into the trees.
harry.
Ginny feels numb. She thought that if - when - if this day ever came, she would be a weeping wreck, like Fleur the day that Bill died, or a stoic sufferer, like Angelina at Fred's funeral, but instead, she just feels numb. She twists the band around and around her finger, half wishing Harry had never sent it to her, never let her hope that things might someday turn out all right, but half grateful for the comfort of its presence, and the knowledge that his lips had touched it, had put a little bit of his soul into the metal. Not a Horcrux, and not any sort of metallurgy, but simply...will, a magic maybe more powerful than anything one could accomplish by waving a wand.
She accepts apologies in stupefied silence, a smile plastered across her face as friends she hasn't seen in months touch her shoulder and kiss her cheek and offer their condolences to Harry Potter's not-widow (and why there's not a term for a woman whose fiancé died before the wedding, Ginny doesn't know). Everything melts together into a blur of brilliant colours, the celebratory cheer surrounding Voldemort's defeat turned bitter and sombre on the day of their saviour's funeral.
The only thing that stands out, in fact, is her family, or rather the lack thereof. Where there had once been six brothers, now there is only one; Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, all casualties of war, as the Ministry had put it, and George too, though his casualty is in his mind, and she can still see him if she goes on tiptoe and puts her face up to the glass of his small room at St Mungo's. But he's as dead as the rest of them; he died with the same curse that killed Fred, and she knows he'll never be George again.
Now it's only her, and Ron. Ron, who's so pale that his freckles almost look white. Ron, who's been standing there, stock still, since the moment they brought Harry's body out, one hand shoved deep into his pocket and the other clenched at his side where it would have held Hermione's. Ginny's family is dwindling, her adopted siblings disappearing as quickly as her real ones, and she stares at him fiercely as if burning the memory of him onto her mind will keep him from leaving her as well.
The funeral-goers trickle off back to the castle, some still weeping, others in a daze, and soon only Ginny and Ron remain, staring at the coffin instead of each other. Ginny wonders if Ron even realises she's there.
When a familiar woman approaches and Ron turns to her with a sob, folding himself almost double to hide his face against her shoulder, Ginny knows he doesn't, that neither of them do, and she takes the opportunity to watch, silently, as Tonks curves her hands around his face and pulls him into a kiss. It's not sealing a deal, like with Bill or Charlie, it's not tentative like Percy, nor is it playful and just a bit naughty, like the twins. Instead, it's a promise, and Ron accepts that promise, sliding his hands into her hair as it darkens to brown, and then to black, falling around her face in a wild, untamed mess.
Ginny turns her back.
i.
The war is supposed to be over. It is over, technically, but what people failed to mention was the fallout. Those people who went slowly mad with post-traumatic stress disorder, or survivor's guilt; those people who became dysfunctional, unable to rejoin society after so many months of trench warfare and watching their friends drop dead around them, corpses charred and sizzling; those people who became so paranoid they locked themselves forever in their houses, ever afraid a Death Eater in hiding was going to come after them at any moment.
Those people like her brother, who killed themselves because they could no longer live with those memories no Obliviate would ever wipe clean.
Ginny allows herself to be subjected to her mother's clinging and her father's weeping. She's all they have left now, after all, the only one of seven, and the only girl, so their name will stop, with her. She and little Claudette, Bill's daughter, are all the family has left of its legacy.
When they finally retreat, the motley little crew that is all that remains of their family, Ginny stays behind. Someone else does as well, and without looking up, she knows exactly who it is.
'Did you love him?'
Tonks stepped forward to stand at Ginny's elbow, looking up into her face. Ginny is tall now, like Bill, and the twins, and Ron, and Tonks has always been petite and compact. Ginny wonders if she ever makes herself taller, leggier, bustier, and finds that despite Tonks' multiple faces, she can't imagine her in a different body.
'I loved all of them,' Tonks replies softly.
Ginny turns to look down at Tonks, and she sees something there, something knowing, and almost smug, such that Ginny suddenly feels irrational anger. Grabbing Tonks by the shoulder, she shakes her, glaring down into her face as months and years of repressed hurt and pain and fury and jealousy and loneliness come bubbling to the surface, lashing out at this one constant that has been there for all of it.
'Why?' she growls, eyes flashing as she leans down close. 'Why them? Why us? You went through them all like you were reading a grocery list. Am I last then, hm? Am I the ice cream you leave for last so it won't melt on your way to the checkout? Everyone else is dead, guess that means it's little Ginny's turn.'
Tonks gazes up at her impassively. The years have changed her; she's no longer the klutzy, awkward, child-like adult that Ginny met so long ago. There's something very old and almost wise buried in the depths of her gaze, and Ginny wonders, in a flight of fancy, if every time Tonks becomes someone else, she ages for two instead of just herself.
'You're nothing alike,' Tonks says finally, calmly, as if Ginny isn't glaring daggers at her. 'You all have the Weasley hair and the Weasley name, but you're nothing alike. I think that's what the appeal was. They all wanted something different, but something familiar, and they needed a way to connect with each other, their roots, though they all spoke different languages. Bill was...Bill - I fancied him back when I was still at Hogwarts - but then, everyone after that...I was intriguing, because I could give them what they wanted. A piece of home, flavoured to fit their particular tastes.'
Ginny feels her chest tighten as Tonks talks, and this time it's not anger, or envy, or wistfulness. This time it's understanding. Their family, so intimately connected, and yet she knows, looking up at Tonks, that Tonks knew all of her brothers better than she ever did. There's something lost in translation when you assume you all speak the same language but none of you really do, and Tonks has figured out how to crack that code, and insert herself into their family in a way none of them ever had managed to accomplish.
'Why?' she asks again, her voice catching in her throat.
Tonks smiles, reaches up to touch Ginny's cheek. 'Because I wanted to connect too. I never had...a family, not like yours, and after Sirius...I just wanted to feel like a part of it. Of you.'
Ginny stares at her, then reaches up to cover Tonks' hand with her own. 'You already were,' she murmurs.
Tonks looks surprised, her hand flexing beneath Ginny's, and Ginny wonders what Tonks must have been thinking to want to fuck her way into the family. At the same time, she knows exactly the feeling. There's an intimacy that comes from sex that can't be achieved anywhere else, and Fred and George's proclivities aside, intra-familial fucking wasn't something that Ginny imagines ever crossed any of her brothers' minds. And yet at the same time, Tonks had been the pivot point, the one thing that connected them all that went beyond family, and Ginny can't help thinking that maybe she hasn't given Tonks enough credit.
She leans down until her face is mere inches from Tonks', and then smiles, a girlish grin she hasn't worn in years, pitching her voice higher and chewing the inside of her lip. 'Do the face for me,' she pleads, childishly, like she had when she was a girl. Tonks' face relaxes and she takes a step back, carefully holding Ginny's gaze. As Ginny watches, her face begins to shift, slender and pointy and elegant with a fall of silvery hair, unrecognisable at first and then gradually shifting to match Fleur's face; it hovers for a moment, and then continues on, a squarer face topped with long dark hair and aristocratically arched brows, a round face, the hair lightening and springing into half-formed curls, and tightening still further as her skin darkens to the colour of cocoa, before reversing, the hair frizzing out around her head like a familiar halo of bushy brown; Ginny's chest aches with the need to tell Tonks to stop, but her lips won't move, and she watches in mute horror as the mess of hair shortens, turns black, the jaw sharpening and the nose straightening and the warm brown eyes turning a brilliant avada kedavra green. For one agonising moment, she finds herself staring straight into Harry's face, knowing that it is not for her benefit, but was in fact for Ron's, and then Tonks' face is back again, topped with that familiar shock of bright pink hair. Tonks looks at her, the question evident in her eyes, and Ginny shivers as she closes the distance between them and cups Tonks' face in her hands.
'I like this one best,' she murmurs, and presses their mouths together with barely concealed desperation.
She doesn't know anymore, as her freckled fingers pull at Tonks' clothes, whether she wants this because she wants to feel closer to her brothers or because she wants to feel closer to Tonks, but it doesn't seem to matter, not when Tonks' arms go around her and the distinct shrinking feeling of Apparition is proceeded by a swift tumble onto a soft, springy mattress.
Oddly, any nervousness Ginny might have about this is both compounded and dispelled by the knowledge that all of her brothers have been in exactly this situation before. She clings to that thought, letting it comfort her as Tonks' mouth wanders down the bared expanse of her throat and her small hands tug at the zip on Ginny's dress. Ginny's only done this once, and not like this, and without the tiles of the bathroom wall pressing against her back and her knickers down around her ankles as she watches a dark head disappear beneath her pleated skirt, she's at a loss.
But Tonks doesn't ask her what she wants. Maybe she's learned to read Weasley fluently by now, despite the fact that Ginny has her own dialect of it, or maybe she just knows what to do with a woman's body. Ginny can't tell. And moreover, after a few moments, she doesn't really care. Her hips arch up of their own accord as a smiling mouth closes around one bared nipple and a pair of fingers slip beneath the elastic of her knickers like they belong there, and maybe they do, Ginny thinks, tugging futilely at Tonks' clothes. Maybe this is fate, and all those years of watching her brothers at it was just...practice, preparation for both of them, for when this moment came. Tonks wants to be a Weasley, after all, and Ginny is the last of her generation, the one who must carry the family name until it dies with her. Maybe this is how it was always meant to be, from that first time they met, she a girl of fourteen and Tonks barely the woman she pretended to be.
She wraps that thought up tightly in her hands, holds it close to her heart like a trapped sunbeam. She is every Weasley now, all of her brothers who have died, all of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren that will never be, and as she moves into Tonks' touches, she takes her place in the family legacy, picking up where her brothers left off, sliding as smoothly into the role as Tonks' fingers slide into her body.
When she looks up, Tonks is watching her, brown eyes filled with warmth and fascination, looking so real that Ginny knows somehow that this is what Tonks sees when she looks at herself in the mirror.
'You're so beautiful,' Tonks whispers, trailing her fingertips down Ginny's naked flank, and how it's meant matters as little as the reason for being here in the first place. Ginny smiles too, easily, feeling free, empowered, whole, and then gasps as Tonks twists her hand, filling her with three fingers now, or maybe it's four, half her hand fucking into Ginny's body as her own hips press against Ginny's thigh, the pink (and it is pink) of her curls slightly scratchy against Ginny's hip.
Ginny moans in response, hands grasping feebly at Tonks' arms, and cries out when Tonks seemingly reads her mind, shifting so their hips fit flush and rocking against her with deliberate intent. It feels everything and nothing like fucking anyone else - Tonks' body is compact enough that it could almost be a boy's, and what she lacks in protruding genitalia she makes up for in dexterity, but it's Tonks, and so it's different, and better, right in a way that it hadn't even been with Harry. Harry's life always revolved around playing a role he never wanted in the first place; Tonks' revolves around knowing how to slip between roles, but without losing the ability to divest herself of her costume and just be herself.
Tonks' mouth finds hers, and they kiss, slow slide of tongues and soft press of lips contrasting the increasing desperation of their bodies as they thrust against each other. Ginny's chest still feels tight, but she's flushed, warm, exultant, and every breath is expelled on a moan against Tonks' mouth as she winds one leg around Tonks' back, canting her hips so Tonks' fingers ease deeper still. Tonks groans, twisting her hand, and Ginny feels her thumb moving, flexing against her own clit in time with her speeding thrusts. The pressure building in her chest is unbearable, and Ginny gasps for breath, clutching at Tonks, twisting her hips, flashes of red sparkling across her vision and blurred memories of her brothers superimposing in her mind until she's every one of them all at once, fucking six different girls, all of whom are wearing Tonks' face.
'I love you,' Ginny whispers, all of a sudden, and it's pronouncement and revelation and catharsis all at once; the pressure in her chest abates, and she ohs as she comes, face contorted into an exact match with her brothers' and the look of surprise in her eyes matched only by that in Tonks', Ginny's name on her lips as she arches into her and stills as well.
Maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with both of them that they would do this in the first place, with the shadows of six dead brothers crowding the bed. Maybe this was all simply an inevitability, stemming from being the seventh in a line of attractive siblings. Maybe Ginny simply was the last item on a list, now to be crossed off.
Or maybe there's something to this fate business after all.