TEN
Molly Weasley isn’t pleased when she hears the news that Ginny will be moving into Grimmauld Place with Harry, despite the fact that she was the one who told Ginny to find a more suitable living arrangement to begin with. The proof that Harry and Ginny have had sex is visible even while Ginny’s wearing clothes by the time they’re able to coordinate the move, but Molly still insists as often as she can reach her daughter that it’s improper for an unmarried couple to live together.
“I don’t understand what she’s so upset about. We’re already having a baby,” Ginny vents from her spot on the sitting room couch, as Ron and George help Harry with unshrinking her boxes and sending them to their correct rooms for unpacking. While she’d normally insist that she’s only pregnant and not invalid, she admits that when it comes to moving, she’s happy to play the pregnancy card and let the boys handle it. Hermione, having coordinated the whole operation, is now preoccupied with Kreacher, making sure everything is unpacked. “And you lot live with your girlfriends,” she adds pointedly to her brothers.
“We’re not—”
“Not what, George?” Ginny seethes, challenging her older brother. “Witches? Because the girlfriends who live with you are.”
“Mum isn’t worried about Angelina or Hermione’s maidenhood,” Ron jokes. Harry snorts in response, despite himself, resisting the urge to tell Ginny’s brothers that their baby sister saw that he took care of that before they’d even returned to the Burrow following the final battle.
“See again, I’m already pregnant,” Ginny huffs, placing her hand prominently on her stomach. Harry’s face lights up, as it always does every time she draws attention to the still-small-but-definitely-growing bump that houses their son; she beams under his attention.
“Oi, must you two do that in front of me?” Ron asks, catching them in the act of staring at one another meaningfully.
“Get a room,” George agrees. “Ginny just said she’s already pregnant, we don’t need you to demonstrate how it happened.”
“See, we already have a house,” Harry quips. “This place is full of rooms we’ve got.”
Ron makes a rude gesture in Harry’s direction as Hermione enters the room. “Honestly, Ron,” she sighs in exasperation.
“All right, Hermione?” Harry asks, tapping his wand on a box of Ginny’s clothes to return it to full size and send it upstairs to the wardrobe she’d selected.
Hermione nods. “Harry, I want your thoughts on how I’m organizing your bookshelf before I do it.” She offers no room for him to brush her off, so he nods and stands to follow her.
She leads him up to his study and closes the door behind them, locking it and casting a silencing charm. “Er, Hermione? What’s this about?” If it were Ron casting those charms, Harry would make a joke about how he doesn’t really think of his friend that way, but that’s not really a joke Hermione would find funny.
“Staging an intervention,” Hermione hisses. “This is getting ridiculous, Harry,” she tells him plainly. “I know I helped. I know I organized this move and am helping you unpack, but I have to stop supporting this — I don’t know — insane little game the two of you are playing.”
Harry averts his gaze from his friend’s, having the good sense to be embarrassed. Hermione hasn’t said what the game is, but Harry doesn’t need her to. He knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“At this point, do you and Ginny even believe this is fake? Because from where I’m sitting, it certainly looks real, Harry,” Hermione continues. “You’re moving in together, but you still haven’t told her you have feelings for her? She’s sharing your room, but you’re still pretending this isn’t a real relationship?”
“It’s complicated,” Harry deflects, looking longingly toward the door.
“Well, Harry, I’ve got your entire bookshelf to organize, so that’s plenty of time to explain.” She turns her back to him and turns her focus to her bookshelf. Hermione knows Harry well, so she knows that keeping her facial reactions from his view will be an effective way of getting him to talk.
“I dunno where to begin,” Harry admits, sinking into his desk chair.
“Usually the beginning is a good place.”
“Oh sod off, you already know the beginning.” The beginning is, really, sixth year when he got a few blissful weeks with Ginny and was hooked for life; Hermione was a primary witness to all of that. “The problem is, er, that it’s really not just about me and Ginny anymore, is it?” Harry’s been telling himself that the baby is the reason he is reluctant to have the conversation — because if it all blows up, Ginny might try to keep the baby away from him, or something else equally devastating.
“All the more reason to sort it out,” Hermione counters. “Do you really want to bring your son into whatever mess you have going on right now, Harry?”
“Well, things are actually really nice right now,” Harry corrects. He feels closer to Ginny than he has in years. They’re actually saying things to each other that aren’t harder or right there or fuck, that’s good. She’s finally letting him touch her when they aren’t having sex, the casually intimate gestures he’s craved, like holding hands and kissing hello and cuddling in the mornings. “And who says it even has to be a big conversation? Why can’t it just…happen naturally?”
“For someone who makes a habit of facing death, you really can be a coward sometimes,” Hermione responds in a bored tone. “You can’t just go from faking a relationship to being in love without talking about it, can you?”
“I’m already in love with her.” That’s what got Hermione involved in the first place, wasn’t it? “And it would hurt — a lot — if I told her that and she responded by…” He trails off, sounding hesitant.
“By what, Harry?”
“I dunno, by telling me I’m stupid and she doesn’t love me and also she wants to raise my son in Wales, far away from me?”
Hermione turns around to look at Harry, incredulity coloring her expression. “You cannot seriously think that’s a risk, Harry.”
“How do you know it isn’t?” But Harry knows it’s a silly question because Hermione is a wealth of knowledge and emotional intelligence, and Ginny confides in her, too; the sheer depth of what Hermione knows and he does not tends to astound him at the best of times.
“She hasn’t told me anything,” Hermione admits, as though reading his mind. They’ve gotten rather good at that over the years, knowing what the other is thinking (and neither of them is a legilimens). “But, Harry: do you really think things would be so nice right now if a relationship wasn’t what she wanted? Do you really think she’d be moving in with you? Not taking her own room? I know you’re used to things not staying good for long, and I know Ginny hasn’t exactly helped with that in the past. But I think the truth is that neither of you are faking it anymore, and it’s time you talked about it.”
Hermione is right, because Hermione is — rather annoyingly — always right. So Harry promises her he’ll get on with it; when she presses him to get on it tonight, he relents to that, too. He waits until Hermione, Ron, and George have left, because he doesn’t think anyone would expect him to have this conversation with Ginny’s brothers present; once they’re gone, he’s out of excuses and just left with his nerves.
He sits down next to Ginny on the couch, and she turns around to lay her head in his lap. Harry’s fingers immediately go to her hair; if nothing else, it gives his anxious energy something to do. “Ginny?” He says her name tentatively, sounding a little hoarse.
“Mmm?” Her eyes are closed, her light eyelashes fluttering against her freckled cheekbones and Harry thinks she’s so beautiful always, but especially right now.
“Remember the, er, night you told me about the baby?” His nerves are palpable and she can sense it, but can’t guess where he’s heading with this.
“Vaguely.” Ginny opens her eyes to look up at him. “I felt like I was mentally hit with a bludger around then. I was mostly shocked that you were so…calm.”
Harry nods. “You know, I’d actually come over that night to talk to you about something else.”
A lightbulb goes off in Ginny’s head. She sits up, turning to face him on the couch and crossing her legs. Without her hair to play with, Harry’s hand sits limply on his lap, and she can see that he’s trying hard to keep it still. “Bugger, I never gave you a chance to do that, did I? I’m so—”
“No, no, it’s okay,” he cuts her off, waving his hand dismissively. “Your thing was loads better anyway. I just — you’re living here now, and we’re having a baby, and I think now is a pretty good time for us to talk about it.” She looks at him, her warm brown eyes inviting him to continue. “That night...I was actually going to talk to you about us, er, trying things out again. I know there are lots of things I still need to work at, but I think it’ll be easier to work at them together than—”
“Okay,” Ginny agrees, before Harry can finish his rambling speech.
“Okay?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Ginny agrees. “Admittedly, I don’t think I was then, but — well, you’re my boyfriend in everything but how we define it now, aren’t you?”
The tension he’s carrying visibly melts. “I definitely think of you as my girlfriend.” I never really stopped, he adds just for himself. “I don’t think the way I feel about you is an appropriate way to feel about someone who isn’t actually your girlfriend.” It's not an I love you, but it's close.
Ginny nods, scooting closer to him and reaching a hand behind his neck. “I reckon we thought we were fooling everyone else, but really we were fooling ourselves, don’t you?”
The answer is yes, because of course the answer is yes. Because Hermione was right and Ginny is right, and why did Harry think this would be so difficult? This is so easy — easier than things ever are for Harry — and he pushes the lingering thought away that if something is easy, something terrible is waiting nearby to push it away. Because then Ginny’s lips are on his and it’s easy — kissing other girls has always been work, but not Ginny, never Ginny — and it’s natural and it’s right.
She flicks her wand toward the fireplace to close it off from nosy parents and brothers and meddling best friends; he flicks his so that one of the plush throw blankets on the armchairs lays itself out in front of the fireplace.
“That’s not the charm you’re supposed to cast before we do this,” she reprimands him flirtatiously before kissing him again and reaching for the hem of his shirt.
They break apart as he takes over, lifting his shirt over his head, before going to remove hers for her. “Funny, didn’t know I could get you pregnant twice,” he jokes.
“Prat,” she giggles fondly as she reaches behind herself to undo her bra and Harry goes for his pants. “It protects against diseases, too.” She knows that’s nothing to worry about, but she needs him to say it, too, for some reason.
Harry laughs, though he supposes he shouldn’t. It’s a serious subject, but he can’t help it, because he can finally speak a truth he knows they both understand: “I think you know it’s only been you for quite some time, girlfriend.” He pulls her face up to kiss her again, now that they’re mostly naked, and gently — so, so gently, because he’s hyperaware that everything that’s precious to him in this one moment is somehow part of this woman — lowers her to the floor.
For once, it feels like they have all the time in the world, and they intend to take it.
Merlin, he missed this. He missed the way she tastes, the way she presses herself against his face and pulls his hair as he flicks his tongue against her, and the breathy, mewling noises she makes when she’s close but he teases her out instead of speeding his work up. He missed how she gasps that she needs him now, after she’s come, and pulls her up to him, crashing her lips to his, tasting herself on him. And while they’ve been shagging this whole time, he missed doing it this way: unrushed, holding contact between their eyes clouded over with lust and — he’s not imagining it, he can’t be — love . He commits every sensation to memory, from the warmth of her skin on his to the way he feels completely consumed by her with each thrust. He doesn’t want to forget a second of this, both because he’s scared he could lose it at any moment and because it feels like a new beginning of something too wonderful for words.
It’s only after that Ginny admits her surprise that he’s still comfortable with being on top, what with the baby’s claim of the space between them only growing and Harry being afraid of literally anything that might hurt the two of them, Ginny and the baby. “I’m trying very hard not to treat you like such a fragile thing anymore,” he confesses to her, voice holding that reverence he reserves only for her. “I think that was probably a problem last time we did this.” It goes unspoken that the this in question is being in a relationship.
“You sure you’re ready to stop treating me like I’m about to break?”
“You’re precious, not fragile.” And the difference between those two things is so difficult for him to articulate, but the best part is that he doesn’t need to. Ginny has always just understood that which Harry cannot explain, and that’s what makes her perfect.
He’s going to try to be better and show it.