Chapter Six: Bookends

Author’s Note: So it all gets a bit angsty in this chapter but would our Harry be Harry without a bit of angst???

Harry carried his little godson over the grate, into the lounge and quickly scanned the room, mentally patting himself on the back for tidying up a bit the previous night. Ginny stepped into the little home after them, feeling a bit nervous at the time alone that stretched ahead of her and Harry.

“What do you feel like eating, Gin?” Harry asked, plonking Teddy into his high chair.

“Just food!” Ginny laughed. “I’ve been battling it out with Mandrakes all morning. It’s taken me almost a week to get them re-potted. Mucking around with them is enough to stir up an appetite in anyone!”

“How do bacon sandwiches sound?”

“Perfect,” she sighed contentedly.

Within minutes, Harry had prepared a bottle for Teddy and the two of them were carrying plates of sandwiches, bottles of butterbeer and the little metamorphagus through to the sunroom where they collapsed onto the couch and ate ravenously.

It truly was a beautiful room to sit in. Glass doors took the place of the two external walls and Harry was in the practise of vanishing the glass in good weather so that the fresh air streamed in. The pair relaxed as they ate, each occupying half of Harry’s comfortable sofa and chattering away about the perfection of the weather and the excellent design of the room.

After devouring all her sandwiches before Harry had managed to eat one half, Ginny offered to feed Teddy.

“There you go, little man,” Harry spoke softly to reassure his godson as he was handed into Ginny’s less familiar arms.

Teddy gurgled and nestled into her as Harry passed her the bottle. “What do you think he really looks like?” Ginny asked as she fed him, internally congratulating the little boy on his determination to mimic the appearance of his handsome godfather.

“I guess he looks a bit like Remus and a bit like Tonks, but that’s pretty hard to imagine,” Harry smiled sadly. “Hot pink hair isn’t particularly socially acceptable on blokes.”

Ginny laughed quietly, “Teddy may be the one man who can pull it off though, should he ever decide not to look exactly like you!”

“I guess we’ll see,” Harry chuckled.

“So,” Ginny said, “Have you heard from Ron or Hermione? He’s been gone a while now.”

“Nope,” Harry replied smiling. “I’m hoping the next time I hear from them, they’ll be standing in the same room as me. Has your Mum suspected anything yet?”

Ginny’s smile faded, “She still assumes he’s staying here with you, five days isn’t too much of a stretch of her credibility. I hope they get back soon! I don’t like lying to her while she’s so fragile but I guess we don’t really have any other choice.”

“Are things getting any easier for her?” Harry asked tentatively.

Ginny was silent for a moment. “You know, I don’t think it’s the Unforgivable that’s the problem, though I know that’s what Hermione was worried about. If anything, I think that was a real moment of triumph for Mum. Her first opportunity, after keeping her head down and being protected for so long, to actually contribute to the cause. She’s a formidable witch, my mum!” Ginny stated proudly but then trailed off. “It’s just that, right now, she’s so vulnerable.”

Harry smiled sadly. “It’s just like when Percy was off being a git, isn’t it? Only she can’t even hold onto the hope that one day Fred will come to his senses and come home.”

Ginny contemplated Harry for a moment, leaning back into the cushions of the squishy lounge and cuddling Teddy closer to her. “I think you’re right, Harry.”

“I told you about finding her with that Boggart at Grimmauld Place, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

Harry’s face drained of any remaining humour and Ginny noticed him clenching his fists. “This is the thing she’s been dreading ever since Voldemort showed up to kill me in my first year at Hogwarts.”

Ginny gave him a sharp look and carefully got to her feet, taking the now sleeping Teddy and placing him down gently in a bassinet in the corner.

“Harry,” Ginny turned back to face him looking stern. “You’d better not be about to launch into some spiel about how we’d all be better off if we’d never gotten involved with you.”

Harry looked down, clearly guilty.

“Yeah, let’s think that scenario through shall we?” Harry was surprised by Ginny’s harsh sarcastic tone.

“Didn’t Dumbledore tell you a number of times that it was love that you had and Voldemort lacked?”

Harry didn’t reply.

“Think about Ron, I know he’s an idiot a lot of the time but he loves you more than his own brothers. You’re the brother he’s chosen. Look how easy it was for him, for all of us, to choose you over Percy, Harry.

“My parents, my brothers and I would have been involved in fighting the Death Eaters anyway, whether we knew you or not. The Order of the Phoenix wasn’t a Harry Potter fan club. It was a group of witches and wizards committed to defeating Voldemort. You were the enemy that he created for himself when he couldn’t stand up against your mum’s love for you. You didn’t choose the role you had to play in all this.”

She paused for breath. “But Harry, we chose you.”

He could only stare at her.

“What have you got from my family if not the love you needed, Harry? The way I see it, you couldn’t have come anywhere close to defeating Voldemort without us.”

Harry’s voice cracked. “I know. I couldn’t have.”

“Of course you couldn’t. So stop thinking that it’s a bad thing that we love you, Harry, and just live with it. We made our choices, my family, Sirius, Mad-Eye, Remus, Tonks, Snape, Dumbledore, Dobby, Colin, Fred. We each made a choice… We chose you and you didn’t disappoint us.”

She was crying now, but she charged on, silvery streaks lining her face.

“You didn’t run away to protect yourself. You didn’t ever shrink back.”

Harry dropped his head into his hands and immediately felt Ginny resume her place on the couch and wind her arms around him. As she continued to speak he could feel her warm breath on his neck.

“Didn’t you hear Kingsley at The Burrow after Voldemort attacked you leaving the Dursleys?”

Harry shook his head but didn’t look up.

Ginny’s voice was thick with emotion as she recalled the night they lost Mad-Eye. “Kingsley had pulled out his wand and aimed it at Remus’ chest, ready to hex him into oblivion should he be anyone other than who he appeared to be. He asked Remus what the last words were that Dumbledore spoke to the pair of them.” She paused to brush the tears from her face. “ Dumbledore said, ‘Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.’”

Harry’s shoulders were shaking as the impact of Ginny’s words penetrated his mind and his heart. She rubbed his back comfortingly, he could feel her fingernails raking gently across the thin material of his t-shirt.

He wanted to tell her just how much her choice to love him and the ease with which he found himself loving her had contributed to his success. He wanted to tell her everything that was in his heart but the strength of his emotions rendered him completely unable to speak.

***

On the other side of the world, Ron clung to his seatbelt in terror as he tried to get his head around the fact that he had willingly climbed onto one of the enormous winged metal tubes he had seen out of the airport window.

It hadn’t been an easy morning. On top of all of the packing and fussing of Hermione and her parents, and the confusion with passports, tickets and other fiddly little bits of paper, Ron hadn’t realised that the security guards would want him to run his knapsack through something called an x-ray machine.

Hermione had ended up having to confound the guards and several onlookers as she realised that he’d taken a leaf out of her book and used an Undetectable Extension Charm on his very economically sized rucksack. The x-ray screen had showed up not only Ron’s clothes, but also his broomstick, his enormous school trunk, a pair of gumboots, a quaffle, his wizard chess set and the fifty-six inch plasma screen Muggle television that he’d bought duty-free for the shop at George’s request.

He tried to concentrate as hard as possible on the instructions the neatly dressed women up the front of the plane was giving him about tags and whistles and the like but he found the whole thing unpleasantly reminiscent of a Potions class where he could never hope to follow the directions correctly.

“What I wouldn’t give for the Half-Blood Prince’s version of her instructions,” Ron muttered to Hermione under his breath.

She took his hand and squeezed it reassuringly, helping to give Ron hope that he might just survive this airborne ordeal after all.

“Think of it as just like flying in the Ford Anglia,” Hermione whispered in an attempt to be encouraging.

Ron looked at her in horror. “We fell out of the sky in that car! We landed in the Whomping Willow! I ended up getting a howler in front of the whole school! My dad nearly lost his job! Of all the memories to dredge up just as this tin can tries to take off!” he hissed back in panicked tones.

“Ok, ok, sorry! Bad example – think of it as being one hundred times safer than flying in the Ford Anglia then.” She couldn’t help but laugh at poor Ron’s stricken expression.

Half-an-hour later, Hermione was amused and gratified to hear Ron say, almost to himself, “Blimey, Dad would do his nut up here! These Muggles really are amazing!”

***

Ginny and Harry had sat in companionable silence until the sun began to set, her fingers still comfortingly tracing circles across his back. Though he felt completely drained, it was as if with her help, another large piece of the now unnecessary burden had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Thanks Gin,” he croaked, and then managed to laugh at his unexpectedly raspy voice, wrung out by the emotion of the last few hours. “If only I’d had you with me to give me that speech while we were away. I needed a kick up the bum more than a few times in the last several months.”

“You know I would have gone with you if I’d had half a chance, right?”

“Yeah, that’s why we were determined not to give you half a chance. Your mum would have eaten us all for breakfast if we’d stolen away with her under-age daughter. It was bad enough with Ron, Hermione and I, and only one of the three of us is related to her by blood. Besides,” Harry murmured, “I’d already told you that I couldn’t have handled it if something happened to you.”

“Harry.”

“What?”

“Nothing did happen to me.”

He looked up at her in confusion. “I know.”

She grinned at him cheekily, “What are you going to do about it?”

Harry gaped at her for a moment before his cheeks flushed with the realisation that she was about to open up the conversation that he had been looking forward to starting. He turned his body towards her and reached around to gently take hold of her hands, putting a stop to the mesmerising patterns she’d been scrawling luxuriously across his back.

“H-hang on, Gin, wait a sec.” He saw the hurt spring into her eyes and realised that this was no time for procrastination. He had to talk fast and get straight to the point.

“Remember my seventeenth birthday? Friday a year ago?”

Gin smiled at him shyly and nodded.

“Well, the summer holidays usually tend to herald something pretty significant for me, and I’ve become a boy who believes in book ends,” he stated philosophically. “So I was wondering if whatever you were planning to say or do just now might be able to be saved up for my birthday?”

Her expression revealed that she wasn’t quite convinced by this idea.

“Look, Gin, it’s been a horrific year. I don’t want or expect people to make a big fuss of me on Friday, but I have kind of been daydreaming that we might be able to have a repeat performance of last year’s birthday present. I want you to kiss me for my birthday and not just because it’s portable.”

She giggled. “You’re pretty bizarre, oh Saviour of the World.”

Harry grinned back. “I’m prepared to wear that for now, but in two days I want to start making up for all of the time we’ve been apart. I have heaps of things I need to say to you and I want to have a chance to think a bit before I say them.”

“I’m picking up your real present tomorrow, you know,” Ginny said pointedly. “So perhaps I could just have a practice kiss now?”

Harry was clearly tempted. She found his hesitation highly amusing if a little frustrating.

“Ok, ok, I’ll back off!” she laughed, getting up and preparing to leave. She ran her fingertips underneath her red-rimmed eyes. “At least we’ll each be a little less damp by Friday!”

“That’s right,” Harry chuckled, also standing. “I don’t want my big reunion kiss with the love of my life to be hampered by sogginess.”

Ginny was struck by his turn of phrase and looked up searchingly into his eyes, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. Harry knew he’d just revealed something enormous in a stupidly casual way, but he meant it, so he smiled and gazed back at her, letting his words resound in the fading light. He’d have plenty of opportunities to provide supporting details.

Ginny walked almost backwards towards the fireplace in Harry’s lounge room, reluctant to tear her brown eyes away from his startling green ones.

She somehow made it to the grate, grabbed a handful of Floo powder, called “The Burrow” and stepped out of there before she contravened Harry’s very clear and very exciting wishes.

***

Ginny had managed to keep her Mum distracted from the absence of Ron for most of the week. Molly had been happy enough to accept the story that he was staying at Harry’s place for a few days.

Her acceptance came to an end when she had run into Andromeda in Flourish and Blotts two days before Harry’s birthday.

Ginny knew there was trouble as soon as she stepped out of the grate into the lounge room.

“GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY! COME HERE THIS INSTANT!”

Ginny sighed. All three names at once, that never boded well. She contemplated her level of elation, wondering if it was enough to sustain her through the inevitable clash with her mum, and concluded that nothing could put the slightest dent in her joyful anticipation of the days to come. Taking a deep breath, she followed her mother’s voice, steeling herself for the lecture that was brewing in the kitchen.

Molly Weasley was practically breathing fire which contrasted rather amusingly with the faded floral apron in which she was pottering around.

“WHERE IS YOUR BROTHER?” she screeched, sounding like she was teetering precariously on the brink of insanity.

“Ron?” Ginny asked innocently, trying to buy herself some time to think.

“Ginny,” Molly’s voice was now quiet and dangerous. “You know as well as I do that Ronald is not staying with Harry. I ran into Andromeda in Diagon Alley this morning and she hasn’t seen Ron at all. You will tell me where he is right this second!”

Ginny’s attempts at pretence collapsed in the face of her mother’s clear desperation.

“Alright, Mum,” Ginny sighed. “I know where he is. He’s gone to fetch Hermione and her parents from Australia.”

“He’s done WHAT?” Molly shrieked.

“It’s ok, Mum,” Ginny made a valiant effort to calm her mother down. “Kingsley knows where he is, he even organised his Portkey.”

Ginny’s fast talking soon soothed Molly into a dull rage, especially when she assured her that Ron had intended to return with Hermione and her parents in time for Harry’s birthday.

The arrival of a harrowed owl at the window interrupted Ginny’s assurances that all would be ok and Molly took the thick magazine from it’s outstretched claws as Ginny searched for a coin in her pocket and placed it in the owl’s little pouch.

Welcoming the interruption, Ginny steered her mother through to the lounge and gently pushed her backwards onto the couch. “Mum, it’s been a hard day for you I know,” she said soothingly. “Why don’t you let me make you a cup of tea, and you can just sit back and read your magazine. I can worry about dinner.”

Molly started to protest, but Ginny knew she was on to a good thing. The arrival of each month’s Witch Weekly was about the only event that caused her mum to put aside the concerns of others and take some time to herself.

Ginny smiled to herself as she moved around the kitchen gathering the tea things. She could have kissed that harassed little owl.

***

Harry lay sprawled across the full length of his couch in the sunroom, his arms folded behind his head, grinning stupidly out into the dark garden as Teddy slept soundly in the corner.

He was amazed at himself. What on earth had prompted him to be all disciplined about “bookends”? Yet this sudden adherence to the principles of landmark occasions afforded him a number of advantages. Firstly, he knew with certainty that as of his birthday, he and Ginny would finally be together – that allowed him a couple of days of blissful anticipation. Secondly, he had ages to think carefully about all of the things he wanted to say to her.