funeral
May 10, 1998
She found him on the staircase, looking like he’d rather be anyplace else, and didn’t she know the feeling. She sat down beside him and he just budged over to make room. He didn’t seem at all surprised that she was there.
“Harry,” she said, and their knees touched, “do you want to leave?”
He stared at her. “And go where?”
“I dunno, anywhere.”
A glass shattered in the kitchen, and she could hear three different frantic voices swooping in, offering to clean it up.
“I never understood this part of the funeral,” she said, “the part where they make the bereaved throw a big bloody party.”
“It’s a reception,” he said. “But, yeah. It does seem a bit backwards.”
“Shouldn’t they be throwing us a party?”
“Reckon they should.” Harry chewed on his thumbnail. His suit coat was abandoned, draped over the stair bannister, his sleeves rolled up over his elbows. Beads of sweat forming around his hairline. Ginny thought he looked lovely.
“You know I’d never been to a funeral before Dumbledore’s?” he said abruptly, “which is funny, considering.”
“Considering what?”
He grinned, rueful, and she felt a near desperate surge of affection for him.
“Considering nearly everyone I know is bloody dead,” he said.
Something occurred to her. She felt herself smile, which was odd, because it wasn’t a party, as Harry pointed out - it was a funeral.
“Harry,” she said, “are you drunk?”
“A bit, yeah.”
“That’s okay.” She squeezed his knee, which is something old married couples did at dinner parties, when someone said something off-color and they knew they’d talk about it later. “I am too.”
And the way he looked at her, like she held some sort of power or authority - which she never had, ever, in her whole life. The youngest of seven, the only girl, and Harry Potter - who she’d read storybooks about as a kid, who’d just saved them all - thought she could provide some sort of guidance.
“Can we really leave?” he asked, and Ginny was struck by how young he sounded. A little kid in the grocery store, pulling on his mum’s coat, asking if they could please go home.
But we are home, Ginny thought. Then, an unwelcome refute, not really. I don’t think it’s there anymore - not the same old one.
She shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”
They slipped out the back door and stole across the garden, overgrown and wild. It had been blistering out when they’d buried Fred - everyone sweltering in their black funeral clothes - but now it was dark and the grass was almost cool.
Ginny pulled him behind the broomshed.
“Your mum will murder us,” Harry said, voice slurring a bit.
She realized, delighted, that she was also drunk - properly drunk now. “She won’t know.”
They sat on the grass, backs against the wood panels of the shed. She stared at Harry’s profile, outlined in moonlight, the sharp angle of his nose and jaw. Drank in the sight of him, because last week she’d honestly thought he was dead.
“You know,” she heard herself saying, “last week I honestly thought you were dead.”
Harry stared at her.
“And now you’re here,” she went on, “and we’re just sitting in my backyard.”
He swallowed. “Ginny -”
“You know you left without saying goodbye? To me?”
He looked surprisingly hurt. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” Ginny pressed, because she had to know. Everyone was always trying to hide the truth from her - they didn’t lie, just left out huge important chunks of what she ought to know. But Harry was too drunk to lie right now. Maybe she was taking advantage, but then again, she was drunk too.
A beat passed. Then he said, “I wish I could’ve taken you with me.”
“I would’ve gone instantly,” she said, and meant it.
“I - I did miss you, you know. I thought about you all the time.
“Yeah.” She dropped her head onto his shoulder and let her eyes drift shut. “Me too.”
The ground seemed to move beneath her. She really shouldn’t have had so much wine, but no one stopped her, and she did bad things when there was no one there to stop her.
“Fucking Fred,” she said to nothing in particular.
Harry squeezed her knee - that thing again, that made it seem like they’d been together a whole lifetime - and said, “I know.”
And usually she would’ve snapped and said no you don’t, you don’t know anything. But he did know. And she knew he knew she knew he knew - that’s why he’d said it.
“It doesn’t feel real, y’know?” She was hearing herself talk again without really being aware of speaking. “Like with the rest of them - Moody and Tonks and Remus - I sort of knew, when I found out. That they were gone. Like, I didn’t expect them to… I dunno.”
“You didn’t think they’d come back.”
“Yeah.”
“But you think he will. He’ll be there when you go down to breakfast, or something.”
“Yeah.”
He gets it, he gets it, thank God.
“And I’m not - I’m not delusional or anything,” she continued, though deep down she knew she didn’t have to explain - not to Harry, “it’s not like I’m forgetting. It’s all I fucking think about. But also -” she ripped out a few blades of grass and threaded them between her fingers - “I don’t know.”
“It seems too bad to be true,” he said.
“Exactly.” She stared at him. Too bad to be true - what she’d thought when she saw Hagrid carrying his limp body out of the forest, but she couldn’t say that. It was too close to I love you.
Harry, too, looked like he wanted to say something he couldn’t. Ginny rubbed the calloused pad of skin between his thumb and forefinger.
She rested her head against the boards and stared out across the meadow.
“I’m really glad we’re both alive,” she said.
“Me too.”
She looked at him. He was still watching her - he’d never looked away.
A small technicality suddenly occurred to her.
“Are we…?”
Harry smiled, and Ginny could really, truly, envision herself married to him. Not the wedding party - but the part where they woke up in the same bed, ate bowls of cereal in a bright kitchen and read the paper, every day for the rest of their lives.
“I think so,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “that’s a relief.”
//
Later - after they’d all cleared the dishes and reset the furniture in utter silence - she laid on top of her mattress, sheets bunched at the bottom, wishing she was unconscious. It was barely mid-May and she was already sweating through her blankets. The open window did nothing to help the heat - if anything it made it worse.
After nearly an hour of tossing and turning, frustrated to the point of an outburst, she fled up the stairs to the bathroom. The door was shut, yellow light leaking out underneath. Ginny knocked.
“Sorry, one second -”
A flush of relief. “Harry?”
“Ginny?”
He opened the door in nothing but a pair of boxers and one of Ron’s old Chudley Cannons t-shirts. Any other day she would’ve made a joke about stealing his boyfriend’s clothes.
“Funny seeing you here,” she said.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Thought I’d take a piss, if that’s okay with you.” She’d had no intention of actually using the bathroom - more like she’d just fancied a walk.
“Oh. Yeah - sorry.”
Harry picked up a glass of water off the counter, and Ginny got the feeling they were in the same boat.
She grabbed the back of his shirt as he left. “Harry?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“Go down to my room, okay? Don’t go back up to Ron’s.”
He smiled tiredly. “Okay. Sure.”
She shut the door and examined herself in the mirror. The overhead light was very unforgiving - it made her skin look yellow, accentuated the pimple above her limp. She took her hair out of its plait and shook it over her shoulders, ran her fingers through it. Her t-shirt and pajama pants weren’t doing any great favors for her figure, and probably she smelled like stale sweat.
Oh well. It was dark in her room.
She ran the water for effect, shut the light, and tiptoed down the stairs. Her room was on the lowest landing - more than one set of footsteps would draw unwanted attention.
Harry was laying on his back in her bed, staring at the Harpies posters taped to her ceiling. Ginny smiled ruefully and gestured to his shirt, flopping down next to him.
“You’re in enemy territory, mate.”
“What?” He looked down at his chest. “Oh, this old thing? That’s not mine.”
“Better take it off anyways.” She pulled the shirt over his head.
He laughed, wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. They laid like that for a while, Ginny listening to Harry’s slow, even breaths.
“I just wanted you here,” she mumbled into his sternum.
“That’s okay,” said Harry, “I like being here.”
She tilted her chin up to smirk at him. “Ron doesn’t cut it?”
“Not really. He doesn’t hold me while I fall asleep - he refuses.”
“What a coward.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Ron probably wouldn’t do this, either.”
A sudden swell of bravery - she pressed her lips against his, and it was exactly as she’d remembered it, like nothing had changed and she’d better get studying for OWLs.
She pulled away. “Would he?”
“Certainly not,” said Harry.
e leaned in to kiss her back, crawling over her, and her hands roamed over his chest and back, feeling the ridges of new scars she hadn’t seen yet. She supposed she must have a few, too - she hoped they didn’t bother him. Not in the sense that he’d be disturbed by them, but that he’d feel guilty, somehow.
Soon Harry’s hand was under her shirt and she couldn’t get it off fast enough, flinging it onto the floor. Hope it doesn’t go out the window. He laughed, and she realized she must’ve said it out loud.
He cupped her breasts, gentle but not unsure of himself. She desperately wanted to tug down his boxers but stopped herself. They couldn’t do that - she couldn’t lose her virginity on the night of her brother’s funeral. Though it was the sort of thing Fred would get a real kick out of.
Then Harry pulled away. He was chewing on his lip, so she knew he was nervous - she’d seen it a million times, before quidditch matches, when Snape was up his arse about something or another.
He stared at her. Ginny stared back.
“There was something I wanted to say. Earlier. When we were outside,” he said, “but I was drunk, and it's important, so I didn’t want to mess it up.”
She could feel her heart against her ribcage. “Say it.”
“I might still be a little drunk.”
“It’s okay. I think I am too.”
“I had quite a lot to drink.”
“So did I,” she said, and then, “say it.”
He took a sharp breath. “I wanted to tell you - when I was in the forest, and I really thought he was going to kill me - I thought about you. How if I died we’d never get any more time together. And - that made me not want to do it. Die. Even though I had to.”
A beat passed. She felt like a dumb little kid, called on in class without knowing the answer - she wanted to say I love you, but she thought it would scare him. He’d thought about her. And she’d thought - this whole time she’d thought maybe he’d been running away from her.
None of this was formulating itself into an intelligible thing she could articulate, so she said, “You really thought you would die?”
He blinked. “Well, yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
Her cheek pressed against cold, wet stone. Dissolving into a golden spring afternoon, and she was in her backyard, zipping around the garden on Ron’s new broomstick he never let her use. Wouldn’t even let her go near it. And her uncles - the dead ones she’d never met - were there, telling her what an excellent flyer she was.
“You’d know if you did,” she whispered.
“I know I did,” he said.
She held his gaze. “Where did you end up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where’d you go? Who met you?”
A beat passed. He stared at her, there in the darkness in her stupid sweaty bed, like he was sizing her up.
“King’s Cross,” he said at last, “Dumbledore was there. I thought it would be my parents. I dunno - I don’t know why it was him.”
“I was in the orchard,” said Ginny. “Mum’s brothers were there. I was flying - Ron never used to let me use this new broom he had.” She stared at him. “In the chamber.”
“Ah,” was all he said. There it was, that old thrumming understanding - he gets it, he gets it.
She squeezed his hand. “I wonder if it happened the first time,” she wondered idly, “when you were a baby.”
“I don’t reckon I had any idea what was going on at that age,” he said. “Brain takes quite a bit to develop.”
Ginny felt herself smile. “Well, that’s good. I imagine you’d be a fair bit more messed up if you were at full cognitive capacity.”
“Yeah. don’t reckon she’s any coming back from watching your parents be murdered and actually understanding the tragedy of the thing.”
She laughed, loud enough for him to shush her, and she remembered that they were sneaking. She tucked herself against his chest, feeling the heat radiate off both their bodies - it should’ve been stifling, but it wasn’t. It was the safest she’d felt in months.
“I forgive you, by the way,” she said.
“Oh yeah?”
“For leaving - me. I get it now.” - she shifted - “I mean, I get why you did it. But you were wrong. I could’ve handled it.”
“I knew you could’ve handled it,” Harry said instantly. “I didn’t want you to, though.”
“I did,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Shut up.” she kissed him firmly on the lips, grinning, because they were here, together, and they had a whole summer with nothing to do but feel better. “You’re already forgiven, yeah?”