Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through Goblet
Classification: Post-Hogwarts H/G
Summary: Ginny Weasley has tried for years to
bring to an end to her feelings for Harry Potter… she's even uprooted her life…
but what happens when it's time to come face to face with him again? A
post-Hogwarts tale revolving around Ginny's discovery of herself…while coming
to terms with her feelings for Harry.…
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters
and situations created and owned by JK Rowling,
various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic
Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no
copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
A/N: This
chapter has been revised as of October 2005
Chapter Four
The
evening was warmer than a typical spring night in Paris. Ginny stood with her
shoulder leaning against a tall lamppost, her sweater hanging over one arm, and
her eyes roaming over the many people out on the street tonight. Children with
no cloaks on ran around and called out to each other as they played their
games; adults sat in front of houses, shops and restaurants, talking or yelling
out to the little ones; and people her own age, mostly couples, walked down the
pathway hand in hand. Ginny watched them
stroll at a pace that was unhurried… as if they had all the time in the world.
She
wondered what it was like to feel that way.
Over
the past few days, her life had seemed like a very fast hourglass with the
minutes, hours and days trickling away quickly, with no intentions of stopping
or even slowing down. Anticipating Monday morning when she would finally speak
to Professor Andel had seemed to cause time to speed up, and just when she had
planned it all out, just when she had become used to the idea of throwing
herself at her professor's mercy, Harry's offer had arrived, sending everything
into disarray again.
The
night she'd received Harry's letter, Ginny had prolonged making a decision for
hours and in the end, she'd decided ambiguousness was the best course of
action. She'd written a letter to him,
stating that it was unbelievably kind for him to offer, but there was a chance
that the interview would be published in the university newspaper and she knew
how he felt about publicity. However, she'd phrased the letter in such a way
that it forced him to write back to give her a final answer.
She
didn’t want to have to take his help. She didn't want to bank on Harry's
obligation towards her and her family. She wanted him to want to help
her out—or at least repeat the offer. And to her great surprise and surprising
relief he did.
Ginny,
It's
no problem, really. Even if your interview does get published, I trust that you
won’t have made a mockery of it, like some journalists would. I'm happy to help
you out. I insist. Just let me know when it's good for you. Like I said, I'm
available most evenings.
Harry
After reading the letter twice, Ginny had decided
that it was probably the right thing to do. She knew that she hadn't put up
much of a fight and had virtually let Harry make the decision for her, but it
wasn't something that she minded right now.
Sometimes, it was necessary to put pride aside and take help… and Ginny
was too relieved that things were going to work out to be ashamed that she
couldn't do it on her own.
Trying
to hide a smile, Ginny'd approached Andel after his lesson next day and
proceeded to weave a tale about having contacted Madame's secretary to arrange
the interview—only to find out that Madame herself would be on holiday for the
next six months. Trying to look
crestfallen, Ginny had managed a straight face through Andel's
outrage at this and threat to write a not-so-friendly owl to the secretary.
She'd hastened to explain (with a look of great humbleness) that there was no
need to be angry now, what was done was done and she did have another candidate
who had offered if Professor would be so kind to approve.
To
say that Andel had been impressed by the mention of Harry was a bit of an
understatement—his bug-like eyes bugged out even more, his grunt-like voice
grunted frantically and he repeated Harry's name so many times in his loud,
booming voice, that Ginny was sure the entire university was listening.
"YES…
YES, OF COURSE, MISS WEASLEY." He drew himself up proudly. "A student of mine… interviewing…"
he mumbled in a somewhat softer voice that echoed nonetheless.
Ginny
smiled prettily.
"WELL,
OFF YOU GO THEN! I EXPECT YOU'LL NEED TO PREPARE FOR YOUR BIG INTERVIEW. IF YOU
NEED SOME EXTRA TIME, DON’T HESITATE TO ASK… THAT'S WHAT I'M HERE FOR."
But
all Ginny had heard were the words ' yes, of course' and when she closed the
classroom door behind her, she let out an excited squeal of victory. Grinning
back at the scattered students who had looked her way, she practically skipped
out of the building.
She
owled Harry immediately and received a response
rather quickly, agreeing with her suggestion for meeting on Thursday evening at
the off-campus library. Clutching the
letter to her chest, Ginny flopped onto her bed and, after bouncing a few
times, stared up at her ceiling, unable to hide her to excitement. She was fully confident that everything would
work out now. She was going to finish university this term, dammit, or she would go mad trying.
Thursday rolled around like it was nobody's
business and Ginny became so increasingly panicked as the day progressed, that
she hadn't looked over the list of questions she had prepared for Madame
Hag. She needed to alter them a bit to
suit Harry and though she had started to do it a few times over the past few
days, she had been repeatedly interrupted by trivial things like customers at
her job or professors in her other lessons. During the day on Thursday was her
last chance, but as irony would have it, time just wasn't on her side. Her
lessons had all run quite late that day; she'd spent the two hours before her
shift working with several other students on a group assignment, an appointment
that had already been arranged; and later, the café had been unusually busy for
a weekday afternoon, which left her without any break at all, much less the
dinner hour she'd planned to use. Before
she knew it, she was standing in front of the library, waiting for him, feeling
as though she had Apparated through time, starting
the moment she had arranged the interview and instantly winding up here,
minutes before she was supposed to meet him.
"Ginny?"
She jumped. Harry. Her brain seemed to stop working so hard. He
was standing in front of her looking tall in a pair of loose jeans and a dark
sweater that pulled slightly over his shoulders… shoulder that were… much
broader than she'd remembered. His inky black hair was in chaos from the wind,
his eyes dark from the night and for a moment, all she could do was stare at
him, struck that he was here, in Paris.
"Hey," she said finally,
jerking herself out of her daze and folding the notes that she had been trying
to look over.
"Sorry, I'm late," he was
muttering, "I got lost."
Her brow lifted. "Oh, were the
directions I sent you confusing? I was so preoccupied when I wrote them–"
"No, no," Harry assured her,
"they were fine. I'm just used to Apparating
everywhere."
"You would be spoiled, wouldn’t
you?" she laughed. "Whenever anyone from home visits, all they do is
complain about the Apparition laws around here."
"Well, we wouldn’t complain if it
wasn't so pointless," he said dryly, following Ginny to the front doors of
the library and stepping inside after her. Grinning at his sullen comment, she
lead him to a section that was designated for group work, separated by a low
wall that was enchanted with a Muting Charm as a courtesy to the rest of the
library. The section was empty except
for a small cluster of people working quietly at a table in the corner.
"This is a big library,"
Harry commented, as they sat down at a table near the window and Ginny began to
arrange her quill and notes.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah… the university's
library is stocked strictly with linguistics material and it's a bit small, so
many of the students come here to study," Ginny said as she flipped
through her notes, looking for the correct sheet. When she finally pulled it
out from the bottom of the pile, she looked up to find Harry slowly examining
the library with the same bored, yet thoroughly engrossed expression he'd
sported at the Auror's Convention. He
had just settled his gaze on the handsome wooden ceiling beams when Ginny
spoke.
"Alright, I have this list
prepared from when I was going to interview Millicent, so I'll just have to
change a few things as we go," she explained, but her voice trailed off as
her eyes traveled down the list of complicated questions that she had
researched for an interview that would never take place.
It occurred to her that the interview
she had prepared for Millicent didn’t need to be altered to suit Harry—it
needed to be changed completely. The questions were absolutely ludicrous when
put in context with a twenty-four year old male auror. Half of them pertained to juggling motherhood
and aurorship at the same time, and the other half
were about Millicent's experience with Trolls, all very specific topics derived
from Ginny's research.
"Erm…" she
said, glancing up to now find Harry's eyes fixed on the group of students in
the corner, most of them female, who had apparently finished studying and were
giggling and gushing in throaty French. Ginny chewed on her lip and considered
telling him that her predicament was a bit more complex than she'd thought, but
realized there was no way to make it sound anything but completely
irresponsible.
Listen, Harry, I know you took the time from your busy, meaningful
life to help me out, it's only that I got caught up at the café I call work so
I couldn't really prepare for the interview that the entire wizarding
world has craved since the end of the war.
Right.
"Okay," she said loudly,
snapping him out of the staring coma he was falling into. Ginny smiled brightly
at him. "Listen, I… I've been so pressed for time, that I didn’t really
get the chance to look at this, but … it appears that we'll have to change a
bit more than I thought to make the questions pertain to you," she said,
looking at him apologetically. "Just… if you can just bear with me, I'll
be able to make them up as I go along."
"Er…okay,"
Harry said, looking a bit unsure.
"Right." Ginny plowed on.
"So the first two questions ask for your name and date of birth, but I
already know the answers to those," she said, sending him a grin before
returning to the list. "And then… well, I know where you attended wizarding school,
don’t I, so that one is done…."
Ginny found herself eliminating the
next question… and the next one… and the two after that, as they all pertained
to Millicent's childhood in London. Not
wanting to pry into his life at the Durselys, which
Ginny knew was not a subject that he liked to talk about, she kept reading the
list, mentally skipping over many questions on the first page.
"Ah, here's one," she said,
almost excitedly. "Can you talk about your strengths as a young witch—wizard, sorry—in training? At
Hogwarts?"
He cleared his throat and thought about
it for a few seconds… then a few more. "Well," he said at last,
"Defense Against the Dark Arts was my strongest
subject, wasn't it?"
"Right. Anything else?"
"Er…flying?"
he asked uncertainly.
"Flying." The smile came
automatically. She met his eyes. "D'you still fly, Harry?"
The corner of his mouth turned up. "No… Apparating's
faster."
Ginny shook her head. "Not even
for fun?"
"No, no time," was his
sheepish reply.
"Neither do I. It's actually a bit
strange. Everyone flies in France because of the Apparition laws, but I've
taken to walking everywhere."
"The laws are stupid," he
said again and Ginny shook her head.
"Right, any other strengths?"
"Er… not
really… I was a pretty average student, wasn't I?"
She had bite back a smile. "Average" was certainly not a word
any journalist would dare to use in an article about Harry… then again, she
wasn't a journalist.
"Did you… particularly enjoy a
subject… something that you weren't great at, but took pleasure in?"
"Er…"
He screwed up his face. "Not really."
Ginny nodded, watching him, and trying
to think of something she could ask him about Hogwarts that wouldn't seem as
though she were prying. Then she wanted to roll her eyes at herself. This was a
bloody interview, prying was inevitable!
"Can you talk about what it was
like, being at Hogwarts your first year?"
Harry furrowed his brow. "What …
do you mean?"
"Well, for me, I had grown up
hearing all about the place. It was built up in my mind, as it is for most
children from wizarding families… but for you…well,
only because you hadn't known anything about the wizarding
world before then, it would be as though you were Muggleborn,
wouldn’t it… but different, because your parents had gone there, and … well,
everyone knew who you were…."
"Yeah… right… you can say it
better than I could," he grinned uncomfortably.
"Harry, it's your interview!"
she exclaimed, almost laughing, and then she looked over her shoulder hastily
in case she had been too loud. "Go
on, then. Talk about Hogwarts, what was it like, being there for the first time
and all that?"
"Well… I mean it
was…new…and…scary. It was a bit scary, I suppose…." He trailed off,
looking pained and Ginny hesitated, unsure if she should press him for more.
Hogwarts was a huge part of Harry and if he didn’t want to talk about it, her
interview would be missing one of the most important aspects of him.
After a moment, Ginny realized that she
was staring at Harry, who was practically squirming under her close stare. Offering him a smile, she broke her gaze and
shuffled some parchment.
She didn’t want to offend him… he had
offered to help her out, and if she couldn’t focus on the more personal aspects
of his character, like growing up at Hogwarts, in her essay, then she would
just have to make do with what he did want talk about.
Heaving, a dramatic sigh, she said,
"Fine, you don’t have to talk about Hogwarts. Really, what am I going to
do with you, Harry?"
He grinned, seemingly relieved.
"Right," she said, studying
the lists and resolving herself to look for personal questions before asking
him from now on. The problem was that
she was so limited already. Luckily, the
very next one on the list not only fit Harry, but it left plenty of room for
him to expand.
"Did you have any great role
models as a child?" She knew it was a bit
personal, but she didn’t think he would mind talking about it – it would almost
be like reminiscing, right?
Wrong.
He shifted in his chair. "Er… yeah, I suppose."
Ginny paused. "Can - can you name
them?"
"Well… Albus
Dumbledore."
"Of course," she said,
catching his eye and smiling.
His mouth turned up.
"Is that all then?"
"Er…Arthur
Weasley?"
"Dad?" she laughed. "You
say that with full confidence?"
At this, Harry's shoulders jerked and he gave a
helpless smile. "Yeah, you know… he
was the first real… normal adult
wizard that I ever met…."
"Normal? Are you mad?" she grinned,
missing her dad insanely. "He had a plug
collection, Harry, do you remember this at all?"
Harry was grinning. "Yeah, but… that's what
made him so cool."
"Right," she rolled her eyes. She was
about to ask him to expand on his other role model, but the question froze on
her tongue. Much too personal, she
decided, and looked down again.
"Does your position as auror
hold demanding hours?" she asked, finding a question at last. She hated
having to skip around like this, but there was nothing for it… the questions
had all led into one another when they had been for Madame Hag.
"Mm-hmm," Harry said, nodding. Then,
"it does."
Ginny bit her lip. "What, erm, type of hours do you keep, then?"
"Well… I mean, it depends on what
I'm working on," he said, looking uncomfortable. "Do you need to know
exact or…?"
"No, that's … fine." Then she allowed herself a bit of a grin at
the next query. "How do your friends handle the time obligations
that your position requires?" she asked, eliminating the word
"family" from the original question. Perhaps this would cue him to
talk about Ron and Hermione a bit. But—
"They understand it's
necessary."
Her eyes stilled on the parchment. The
stiffness in his tone seemed to settle around them and when she looked up,
Harry's eyes were completely blank as he studied the surface of the table.
She chewed on her lip, and forced her
eyes to move away from him. "Right… erm…the next
query is: with whom did you study or prepare for your position as Auror?"
"Alastor
Moody."
Ginny couldn't help smiling, thinking about
Mad-Eye. "You apprenticed with him, right?
For how long?"
"About three years."
"And in that time you
learned…?"
"Defense spells."
Ginny stared. "Um… can you be a
bit more specific… like, what sorts?"
"Er…Protection
Enchantments… Concealment Charms… that sort of thing."
"Anything else?"
Harry lifted a brow. "You want me
to list everything?"
"No, it's not that… can you…
" She blew out a frustrated breath. This wasn't personal. It was supposed
to be the meat and potatoes of her interview, his training, his work and if he
wasn't comfortable going into detail about that,
then she was in trouble. "Actually, can you talk about some of the things
that he did teach you?" she asked tentatively. "It's only because
this interview is really supposed to focus on your training and your work
leading up to the Troll stuff …d'you mind?"
He took a breath and thought… and
thought. "Well... some of it is not
supposed to be… revealed and all that, so…."
"Oh. Well… is there anything at
all that you would be able to talk about?"
she asked, hating herself for pressing him. But she had to have something.
Harry blew out a long breath and after
a moment, he muttered about some museum that Mad-Eye had been hired to provide security
for with which Harry had helped. Ginny practically devoured the information,
jotting down notes on the side of her parchment as her recording quill wrote
everything Harry was saying.
The interview progressed in quite the
same manner. It was apparent that Harry
wasn't really comfortable giving Ginny more than yes or no answers to any of
her questions and when she did ask him to expand, he looked as though he was
suddenly sitting on a bunch of grindylows: squirming
in his chair, furrowing his brow and looking as though even thinking about
answering was causing him pain. He was uncomfortable with questions that might
force him to talk about anything meaningful to him, and then he was quiet and
almost defensive when asked to talk about his training or work. They were both
clearly becoming frustrated by the evening—Ginny from Harry's lack of
compliance, and Harry…well, from having to actually participate in the
interview that he had offered to do.
Why, why, why was he acting like this?
"How many years have you
officially been practicing as an auror?" she
asked him. "Not including your apprenticeship and training."
"Three years."
"When did you receive acceptance
into the Dark Force Defense League?"
Pause. "In my last
months of training."
Ginny nodded. "And how long does
it normally take an auror to receive the title?"
she asked, knowing that it was impossible to get accepted before practicing at
least one year as an auror.
Harry looked at her blankly, about to
provide her with another obstacle. As if she needed any more. "What does
that matter?"
She stifled a sigh. "Because …
well, wasn't it a great honor for you to receive it so soon after
training?"
Harry shrugged. "I didn’t deserve it when they gave it
to me, so not really." He looked and sounded annoyed.
Part of her recoiled at hearing him put
himself down but a bigger part of her wanted to take her ink bottle and throw
it at his head. It was bad enough that he was being so bloody uncooperative,
but now he was perfectly willing to be rude?
"Right, perhaps we can call it a
night, then."
As though she had indeed chucked the
bottle of ink at his head, Harry looked at her with a startled expression on
his face. "You … do you have everything that you need?"
"No," she snorted, knowing
that things would probably blow up from here. That's what usually happened when
her temper caused her chest to burn the way it was doing right now. "Not
even close. But it's not working."
Harry's look of surprise fueled her
fire even more and now there was no helping it. She was bloody annoyed. She knew she was unprepared. She knew that Harry hated interviews and that
it was up to her to make this as painless as possible. But what she didn't know was the reason she
had to try her hardest to accommodate Harry
only to receive absolutely no effort at all from him.
Suddenly, staying Paris next term
didn't seem quite so detrimental to her life as it had before.
So Ginny lifted a brow and gathered her
papers. "Obviously, I should have prepared better for this. But…" A
million different retorts formed in her head. You could be a hell of a lot more helpful, was one. You're acting like a stupid prat for some reason and it's starting to really get on my
nerves, was another. But then she looked at him.
His brow was drawn as he watched her
struggle and his eyes… well, behind the confusion… were guilty. Of course. Here
he was, guilty Harry.
And here she was, sympathetic
Ginny. It was like clockwork.
They looked at each other for a moment.
"Sorry," he said, looking more uncomfortable than she'd seen him all
night—and that was quite an accomplishment. "I'm not a very good person to
interview, I probably shouldn’t have offered."
His tone of voice had Ginny's eyes
shifting to his. Guilt wasn't the only emotion present there… there was disappointment,
as well. Suddenly, Ginny felt a bit of her own guilt. She didn’t want him to be
disappointed in himself because of her.
She made a noise in the back of her
throat, somewhere between laughter and fatigue. "No… you're not a good
person to interview. But I'm a horrible journalist." She heaved a sigh.
"I should have prepared better for this, Harry, really. If I had, I could
have researched your work and had specific things to ask you and—"
"No, Ginny, why should you have to
research my work when I could just
tell you about it?" he asked in frustration.
"Yeah, but—"
"No buts," he said, rubbing
his eyes under his glasses. "I just… look, can we start over?"
Her eyes nearly fell out of her head.
Start over? They had already been there for almost two hours. "I… I don't
think we need to start over," she said finally, looking back at her
notes. "Let's just continue, then.
Can you talk about your troll work, that's really what this is supposed to be
about and I can just… fill in the blanks with what we already have."
Harry raised his hand in a defeated
gesture. "Only if you're sure that's fine… here, why don’t we go back and
I can expand a bit on some of the other questions? Just for a little
while?"
She hesitated. "It's going to take
longer if we do that and I don’t want to keep you here all night, Harry—"
"So?" Then, with an
apologetic grin, "I've nothing better to do anyway."
She blew out a breath, not feeling
quite so good about getting her way. He hated talking about himself, which was
probably the entire problem… and now, because he had offered to help her out in
the first place, he was stuck.
However, as they began going back to
the other questions, Harry didn’t act as though it was a chore. He took it upon
himself to look at her list of questions and expanded on the subject matter,
even going so far as to suggest other topics that might be useful. And because
all Ginny wanted was a good interview, she found it easy to switch into
journalist mode, not holding back on asking him whatever came to mind and just
letting him deal with answering.
"You trained Mountain Trolls for
security positions?" she asked incredulously after a while, absently
chewing on the end of her quill and stopping abruptly when a little feather
stuck to her tongue. It didn’t even seem like an interview anymore. They were
old friends, conversing back and forth about Harry's work—how she had
originally thought the interview would go in the first place. "I thought
Mountain Trolls were on the Ministry's list of Untrainables,"
she said, daintily picking the piece of feather off her tongue.
"They are—er,
they were. We… figured out a way to train them."
Her mouth dropped. "Really?
How?"
"Well, it's sort of complicated…
the thing about Mountain Trolls is their brain—it's sort of a… a selfish brain,
it won’t accept any knowledge that it's taught, it only learns from it's
own experiences."
Ginny knew most of this from a beginners course she'd taken second term at l'Academie and
she also knew that the Mountain Troll was a very sought after species for use
on Security matters. But they were just so vicious, that it was virtually
impossible for the Ministry to use them. Obviously, history had changed.
Harry continued, "The team I was
studying with figured out that it wasn't the Mountain Troll's entire brain that
was the problem… it was a certain part of it—" He gestured with his hands,
holding his left one in a fist and placing his flattened right hand over
it. "There's a shield on the brain
like this, which blocks certain knowledge from coming in. The team figured out
a way to transfigure the shield."
She looked at him, baffled. "What
sort of transfiguration spell does that?"
Harry's lips quirked. "The one
they made up."
Ginny sighed and sat back in her chair,
feeling suddenly quite relieved at how well this was going. "Well. You've
certainly been busy," she said, her voice tinged with laughter. "Creating Transfiguration spells…"
"I didn’t really have anything to
do with that—I was involved in keeping the Trolls, er,
calm while they transfigured their brains."
She gaped at him. "Calm?"
He shrugged. "Calmer."
She slapped a hand over her mouth.
"Good lord, Harry…"
Much later, Ginny reached the end of
her list. "That appears to be all I
need."
Harry lifted a brow. "Are you
sure?"
"Yes, I think I have enough. It's really mostly about the Troll stuff and
you gave me lots of information about all of that, so…" She allowed
herself a sigh. "I can’t wait to write it out and turn it in and be done with it—ugh." For she had glanced down to find that the
quill, which had been recording their conversation all evening, had just
scrawled I can’t wait to write it all out
and hand it in and be done with it – ugh.
"Finite," she commanded and the quill spun once before flopping
to the table with a tired whistle. She
looked at him with a tired grin. "I
can’t thank you enough, Harry."
He waved his hand. "It was no problem." He didn’t quite meet her eyes. "If you
need anything else, just owl me at the Ministry… or … make it up," he shrugged.
Ginny shook her head on a laugh.
"It wasn't nothing, I'm sure you had to take time out your busy schedule
to do this," she said, gathering her notes and pushing them into her bag.
"So, thanks again."
Harry leaned back in his chair,
stretching a little. "My schedule isn't as busy as you think. I actually
have a lot of free time here, so it was good to get out for a bit and have
normal company." He sent her a sideways smile as they stood and walked
out. "All of my co-workers are so
bloody old."
Ginny laughed but suddenly, the mystery
of why he'd offered to help her became quite clear. He was bored.
A vision of him at the Auror's Convention rose in her mind, standing
there and staring around and around that blasted room as though trying to make
it interesting.
The beginnings of guilt crept up on
her. She knew she shouldn't feel badly since she had extended him an
invitation to her café and it wasn't exactly as though she and Harry were good
friends anymore. But as she pictured him with nobody for company besides those
ancient people at the Convention, she couldn’t help but feel guilty that the
only reason she'd gotten together with him at all was for her own purposes.
They stepped out into the night, which
was still warm and walked down the large steps to the pathway. Once they
reached the walk, Ginny tied her sweater around her waist and turned to him, an
idea forming.
"Do you have to get back any time
soon?"
His brow went up. "Er… no, why?"
"There's an ice cream seller a short
way down. Would you like to walk for a bit?
We haven’t really gotten the chance to catch up since you've been
here."
"Er… are
you sure you don’t have anything else to do?" he asked doubtfully.
"It sounds as though you have quite a workload."
She did, of course. There were three
essays due in two weeks, which she hadn't even started. But she waved that
aside. "Look, we've been cooped up
in a library for three hours, I'm not doing anything else tonight. I finally
have the blasted interview finished," she said dramatically, throwing her
arms out and he grinned.
"If you say so. Where is it
then?"
"This way." They turned down
the pathway and walked against the wind; Ginny reached up and twisted her
blowing hair into a haphazard knot at the back of her neck.
"So, I've been meaning to ask you
something," she said as they walked down the lantern lit street. "Why
didn’t I recognize anyone else the other night?
I mean surely you're not the only Auror from
England's Ministry here?"
"Not everyone has to attend these
things, most are too busy with their assignments and research," Harry
explained. "These annual conventions aren't very… er,
necessary. Normally the only Auror's who
aren't on assignment are the ones who aren’t really… assigned much work."
At once she understood. "Ahhh… in other words, Auror's who are too old to handle the
complicated jobs, then?" she asked with a smirk.
"I never said that," Harry
said mildly.
Ginny laughed. "If that's the case, why are you stuck here and not on some dodgy
mission? In between assignments? Or did you just want the excuse to visit
Paris?"
"Eh," Harry shrugged and dug
his hands into his pockets. "Something like that." There was a short silence, then, "So, how does it feel to be going home
soon?"
Ginny sighed. "Oh, well, I'm
really happy about it. But I'm also terribly sad. Paris has become home to me."
"You must miss everyone,
though?"
"Like mad. Although I won’t be saying that when I get
back, that's for sure. All Mum needs to do is wake me up one time like she used
to." Ginny did a very high, very
good impression of her mother calling her name in the morning. "And I'll
be running for the hills."
Harry turned to her, looking amazed.
"Bloody hell. That brings me back. I remember hearing her call your name
about ten times before you actually woke up. Bit annoying."
"Tell me about it."
But he smiled knowingly. "You'll
probably be so happy to finally see her, you'll want to wake up early just to
have breakfast with her."
She was about to reply with a joke, but
the thought made her smile. "Probably."
"Are you going to live at the
Burrow?"
"Yes. Until I find a job and can afford
to live on my own."
"What sort of jobs will you apply
for? The Ministry?"
At this Ginny made a face. "It's
what everyone expects—and there are tons of jobs within the Ministry for
linguists, most of my friends already have positions lined up. I just… I dunno
what I want to do yet. Oh, here we
are."
They turned the corner and a bright red
cart came into view. There was a short queue of people standing in front of the
seller who was spooning out large scoops of various flavors onto cones. Ginny's mouth began to water – she hadn't
stopped to eat all day.
"So have you seen all the sights
of Lacasse, yet?" she asked him as they stood at
the end of the queue.
"What sights?" he asked
curiously and Ginny looked surprised.
"What do you mean, what
sights? The city is full of them."
"What sorts of things?" he
asked her. "Besides the Eiffel Tower?"
"Well, that's Muggle
Paris, but there are some fantastic things to do here, too."
They were suddenly next to order, so
they told the seller what they wanted. Just when Ginny had reached inside her
pocket for some coins, she sighed when Harry reached his arm across her and
paid for both.
"I see you haven't changed,"
she remarked dryly as they stepped away, carrying cones piled high with
chocolate and hazelnut ice cream.
"Hmm?" he asked, as if
nothing had happened, licking the side of his scoop.
"That's okay, I won’t protest now
– I'll just pay next time."
From the corner of her eye, she saw his
eyes dart towards her.
"I mean to say, obviously you need
a tour guide or something, Harry, because you can’t leave Lacasse
without seeing at least some of the tourist spots. How long will you be
here?"
"Er…
another week or two, I think. But, you're really busy, Ginny, I don't—"
"Yes, and that's why I'll take a
much needed break from all my work
and show you around the city."
He sent her a sideways look. "I'm
sure you have other things to do with your free time."
"Will you stop?" she scolded.
"If I didn’t want to I wouldn't." Then she had a thought while she
ran her tongue along the side of her ice cream. "I mean, unless … you
won’t be able to get away."
"No, it's not that," he was
quick to assure. "I suppose if you are insisting." He gave her a
sideways smile.
Ginny smiled back. "I am."
"All right then. When is it good
for you because my evening schedule is completely open."
She looked at him curiously. It was the
second time he'd said that, but it was now occurring to Ginny that she'd
certainly heard him talk before this about how busy he was here – and then she
remembered. It was when she'd invited him to her café at the Ministry. Smiling to herself, Ginny chose not to voice
this and pretended to think over her schedule. "Well, I'm working all
weekend—except for Sunday. Sunday
night?"
"That's fine. What'll we see? The Eiffel Tower?"
Ginny found herself smiling. "We
can go into Muggle Paris if you like."
"What sort of things are there to
see here?"
"Hmmm, let's see… there's merpeople rock – that's always fun at night. It's a huge
rock—more like an island–in the middle of the lake where the merpeople always lounge around—mostly at night. You can
rent these charmed glasses that allow you to see it, since it's really far
away, and you get to watch them having parties and playing games."
"I hate merpeople."
Ginny heaved a sigh. "Well, these
merpeople are really beautiful—they have green
hair."
"Beautiful," he echoed.
"You'll see," she said
firmly. "There's also Jaques the Jaunty's tomb—it's on
this huge hill surrounded by a really pretty trellis."
"Wasn't there a tapestry of him at
Hogwarts? The poltergeist who's trapped inside his own tomb?"
"That's right, Transfiguration
corridor. And he is trapped, you can hear him laughing in there if you listen
at the right angle."
"Really?" Harry seemed much more impressed by Jaques the Jaunty's tomb than merpeople's rock, so Ginny told him they would go there.
They walked for a few more minutes, talking about the other sights in Lacasse and it wasn't until Ginny found herself yawning
widely that she decided to call it a night.
They'd walked so far that it was legal
Apparition to the flat and once she and Harry agreed on a place to meet Sunday
night, Ginny raised her wand and next second, her bedroom was materializing
around her.
She'd Apparated
right in front of her wall mirror and the first thing she saw was herself. With a weary sigh she walked forward to get a
better look, although she wished she hadn't.
Her hair was a mess from the wind, her eyes looked very worn and –
something she didn't understand at first—her cheeks were bright red. It took
her running a finger along the skin between her nose and cheek and feeling a
burning sensation to realize that she had sunburn. She stood, confused, staring into the mirror
and trying to figure out if it had been that sunny walking from place to place
today, when there was a swift knock on her bedroom door.
"Eh? I mean, come in."
The door creaked open by itself and
Ginny turned to see Brian leaning against the frame, regarding her with a
raised brow.
"Well."
She turned away from the mirror at last
and tossed her bag onto her desk chair, flopped onto her bed and flipped off
her sandals. "Well, what?"
He heaved a long, slow sigh and took
his time answering. "Oh… I dunno…. I haven’t seen you in nearly
five days and here you are, coming in at one in the morning. I think we're
growing apart, Gin."
"One in the morning?" she
exclaimed, staring at him before looking at her watch. It read 12:57 am. She groaned.
"I can’t believe I lost track of time. This is terrible. I have to
be at l'Acadamiè tomorrow at seven." She pouted.
"Will I ever get my ten hours of sleep?"
At this Brian rolled his eyes.
"Nobody gets ten hours of sleep, love, there's a bit of real life for you.
Anyway, where were you?"
"I was getting my interview,"
she said absently, pushing past him and walking into the living room to see if
she'd had any post.
"Interview?" he asked in
surprise. Ginny froze in the motion of
flipping through the two letters that she'd found on the sideboard. "Millicent?
At one in the morning?"
"No," she said carefully,
pretending to study an envelope and thinking very fast. She hadn’t told Brian
about Harry—at all. The truth was that Harry had most definitely been a sore
subject back when Ginny and Brian had become friends—a subject that she had
deliberately chosen not to talk about at all, with anyone and before long, the
fact that Ginny knew Harry had turned into a sort of secret that she'd had to
keep up every time Brian mentioned reading something about him.
Ginny answered Brian casually.
"Actually, I found someone else to interview."
"Really? Who?"
She bit her lip. "Harry
Potter."
Brian snorted. "Yeah, right. Who
is it then?"
"I'm serious. I ran into him at that Auror's thing and we
got to talking and he offered to let me interview him." Ginny worked hard to keep her voice neutral,
but she refused to meet Brian's eyes.
"Harry Potter doesn't give
interviews, love," he said matter-of-factly, his dimples appearing in his
cheeks. He thought she was joking. "It's a lovely wish, though."
"It's not exactly a formal
interview, Bri—it's really pretty basic without all
the Troll stuff. And he's had experience
with Trolls so it really worked out well—"
"Hang on," Brian interrupted
and now he was looking at her very carefully. "Are you trying to tell me
that you're serious?"
"Yes," she said
patiently. "I'm very serious."
"You were … just now… interviewing
Harry Potter?"
"Yeah," she hopped up onto
the window ledge and opened a letter from Sarah, trying desperately not to look
at him. "Look, I used to know Harry—I went to Hogwarts with him. He was a
friend of my brother's—what?"
For Brian's face suddenly gaped at her.
"A friend of your brother's? You
never told me that."
"So? It never came up."
"I've mentioned Harry Potter to
you—last summer, I was saying how he was involved in that Ministry bust—the one
where they caught almost fifteen Ministry members in the act of—"
"Look, Bri,
Harry isn’t someone famous to me," Ginny said, hopping off the window and
walking behind the low wall into the kitchen.
"He's just… another friend of my brother's, someone I went to
school with. So when someone mentions him to me, I suppose I don't advertise
that I know him or anything because it's really no big deal."
"Ginny," Brian said, looking
at her as if she were mad. "He's
like… the next best thing to a bloody god—"
"Oh, please, you sound like a
teenage girl."
"He saved the bloody wizarding world, I have a lot of respect for him, as do
many people."
Ginny uncapped a bottle of juice and
took a swig. "He's really a normal bloke." She almost smiled as she
said that.
"Bugger."
She rolled her eyes. "Real
eloquent." Finding that she couldn’t concentrate on anything as her
eyelids were drooping, Ginny tossed Sarah's letter aside and slid off the
ledge. "I'm going to bed. Good night."
Brian didn't answer and when Ginny
finally looked at him, she saw that he was watching her closely.
"What?" she asked, not meeting his eyes.
He shook his head after a moment. "Nothing. I'm just… I can’t believe you
never mentioned it before, that's all."
Ginny bit her lip. "I'm sorry, I…
it wasn't as if I was keeping a secret or something, it just honestly isn’t a
very big deal."
She hated lying to him. But what else
could she say?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The
sunlight poured through the high castle windows, spraying bright pools across
the dark corridors of Hogwarts. It was
June now and as Ginny walked down a particularly long corridor, the weight of
the events from the previous night slowed her steps considerably.
Her slow journey came to a halt at the entrance to
the hospital wing. She'd known that she
would come across it; she'd taken the long route back to Gryffindor Tower for a
reason and this was it. For a few long
minutes she stood in front of the closed wooden doors, wishing that she could
see through them… or make herself invisible and go inside. She took a deep
breath and the air was so shaky in her lungs, it made her shiver. There was no
way she would ever go inside. It was not her place and besides… nothing she had
to say would be of any comfort.
That's not true, snapped an angry part
of her heart. She had plenty to say, plenty to offer. She'd been through something terrible. She'd met Voldemort, too, hadn't she?
Heaving a sigh and looking up at the tall doors,
Ginny shook her head wearily. Her lack of self-confidence made her furious at
times, but it didn’t stop the fact that her hope was starting to fade. She couldn't defend her feelings anymore. It
was a losing battle and the more she fought it, the more she lost.
The horror from last night came back to her in a
flash and she closed her eyes, having to remind herself that it wasn't still
happening… that Harry was safe.
But
Cedric Diggory isn't.
Ginny squeezed her eyes
closed. She would not feel guilty for being happy that Harry was alive. It was positively crushing that a student
had… had died, but…
Ginny opened her eyes sharply as the memory of a
deadly diary appeared in her mind. She'd
spent a good part of her first year at Hogwarts thinking that Tom Riddle would
eventually kill her. He'd made sure, towards
the end, that she knew who was in power and it was terrifying, preparing to
die… thinking there was no way out… no one to save her. It still scared her.
The doors came into focus
again. They were solid barriers meant
for the sole purpose of holding her back.
If they weren't there, it would be so much easier to go in. But she couldn’t do it—she couldn’t reach out
her hand and open the door herself. It
was… too big a task. It took too much effort.
She stood in front of them,
her eyes roaming over the dark wooden panels waiting for something… anything
that might be a sign telling her it was okay to go inside… that he might
actually appreciate what she had to say. She tried to imagine what she would say— what she would like to
say, rather—and there were no words that came into her mind. It was always just
a… feeling she wanted to pass from herself to him. Comfort? No. It wasn't her place to comfort him. There
were people he already trusted for that.
Ironically, it was her own brother, her own parents, and that alone gave
her reason enough to walk through those doors and inquire how he was
feeling. Or offer him some support… or
even something more simple like… some sweets… or a funny story … anything.
But Ginny didn't want to be
polite anymore… she wanted to reach him.
She wanted to offer him something that nobody else could, and tell him
that she knew what it was like to be trapped and alone and scared. She was willing to do it, to open up her own
wounds if it would comfort him.
But it wouldn't. If she knew
anything in the world about Harry, she knew that to him, she was nothing more
than an acquaintance… someone who used to embarrass him and someone he wasn't
fully comfortable around. He'd saved her
life, sure, but … that wasn't enough for him to want her around… to allow her
in….
"Ginny?"
She jumped.
"Oh… hello,
Michael." She knew she oughtn't,
but the smile just happened. "All
right?"
"Yeah," he said,
peering at her closely. "How are
you?"
"Oh…" Ginny trailed
off and automatically looked at the doors.
The little happiness she'd felt at seeing Michael, who had been a lovely
friend all year, faded. "I'm
…okay," she said, knowing it sounded untrue.
Michael nodded, looking
concerned. "You've… probably a lot
to be going on with right now. Have you just come back from seeing Harry?"
"Hmm? Oh, no… I was… just
on my way back to Gryffindor Tower.
You?"
He shrugged. "To be honest, I… well, I was looking
for you." He said the last part with a bit more confidence and Ginny
almost thought he looked taller somehow.
Her heart skipped a beat.
"You … were?"
Michael nodded. "Mm-hmm.
I wanted to ask you, well… would you mind if … I, er,
wrote to you this summer?"
Her eyes flew to his. They were brown, just like hers, only darker…
they looked almost black… like his hair. His hair was short, though and not in
the least bit messy.
But it was still black.
Appalled, Ginny snapped
herself out of her thoughts. "Oh," she said a bit stupidly. She knew
there was more behind his question.
She'd caught him staring at her a few times during the year and the way
he was looking at her now with those dark eyes seemed to want to make her read
his thoughts… that his offer to write to her meant much more. Her heart in her throat, she felt an
automatic pull to look back at the doors of the hospital wing.
But she refused to look back.
"Of course you can write to me. I'd
love it."
His face broke out into a
grin. It made him suddenly look very… handsome.
Her heart skipped again.
"Cool," said
Michael.
"Cool," she returned,
smiling a bit.
They stood there looking
awkwardly at each other.
"Well, I've got to be at
lunch," Michael said after a minute.
"I'm meeting some friends. I'll see you?"
Ginny nodded and watched him
walk off, a lump forming in her throat. It
was then that she turned back to the doors. They were still closed. She furrowed her brow. How was it that a pair of
closed doors could make her feel so… guilty?
It was as though she'd just
betrayed him somehow.
She liked Michael Corner just
fine and felt a little thrill when she thought about what had just happened.
She was moving on. She had to start somewhere and she liked Michael and he
obviously liked her and…it was fine.
Fine.
There had been no betrayal
here.