TWELVE
Love you.
Ginny first said those words to Harry the day following the conclusion of the war. She never felt like they had to get back together; as far as Ginny was concerned, they’d never been broken up. They were simply reunited after a terrible, deadly separation, and it was a reunion they weren’t guaranteed. The evening after the final battle — after Harry’d showered and slept and eaten as much as he could physically handle — Ginny had curled up next to him in his bed in Gryffindor Tower. It felt like coming home, and home, to Ginny, meant love. The words had rolled off her tongue before she could help it. Harry found he couldn’t say it in return — he was seventeen and terribly stunted where love was concerned, deprived of it for so long; he’d pressed a kiss to her hairline, and she was more than content to know that was as close as he could get to saying it for the time being. She never doubted that he felt the same.
There was a week or so after the battle where they’d all stayed at Hogwarts. This was, partly, because McGonagall had put strict limitations on who was allowed within Hogwarts and who could access Gryffindor Tower, giving Harry the opportunity to rest and recuperate away from the press (while still allowing Kingsley and other important figures access when needed). It was also largely because the Burrow wasn’t fit for anyone to live there, and it had taken Bill Weasley days to untangle the web of curses surrounding the place; a few additional days were then spent cleaning it up.
During that time, Ginny secured for herself near-constant access to Harry. Ron and Hermione were the only people within the Weasleys’ inner circle with knowledge of the relationship Ginny and Harry had at the end of the previous year, which meant she could volunteer to make sure Harry was eating and taking his potions and her grieving — and, therefore, temporarily inattentive — parents didn’t question it. She spent those days (or, at least, the parts of them when Harry was left to rest) curled in Harry’s bed with him, having food brought up by elves, and hearing him recount his year on the run. They snogged when things got difficult for him to talk about, because Ginny was his favorite source of comfort. After he told her about the last Horcrux — the one that lived inside of him — Ginny had never felt closer to him than she did then. What ensued was a hurricane of emotions paired with an insatiable need to prove everything was over, ultimately culminating in Harry and Ginny having sex for the first time.
Especially in hindsight, Ginny could make no mistakes about it: it was very much a first time. They were clumsy and unpracticed; though they’d touched each other a few times during their short relationship, that had been nearly a year before and everything they learned had faded in that time. Harry was flustered and not quite sure where, exactly, he was supposed to put his erection, so Ginny had helped; even then, it took a few tries before he was in. They’d laughed a lot, and that was when Ginny realized that sex is, actually, kind of absurd and funny when you’re doing it, instead of being all serious or romantic like it is when you imagine it. But she was happy and with Harry and the laughing relaxed her — it hadn’t even hurt like other girls told her it would, though it certainly wasn’t amazing. Amazing would come later that summer. He was still weak from the battle, from his months on the run, from his lack of nourishment, and he’d scarcely had a wank for most of it, so it was fast. Still, neither of them would have changed it for anything. It was the perfect way to consummate their reunion.
Afterwards, Harry pulled Ginny to his chest. “I was so afraid we’d never get to do that,” she confessed against the scar he’d just told her about — though it wasn’t much of a scar then, was it? It was more of a bruise, far more black than blue.
“Me too,” he’d revealed, voice barely above a whisper, fingers stroking the hair he’d spent so many nights visualizing as he tried to recall its scent. “You were — when I died, you were the last thing I thought about. I never thought I’d — well, I didn’t think I’d get to kiss you again.” He punctuated this statement with a kiss to her head. “What we just did — I was afraid to even let myself imagine that.”
But it was all Ginny thought about all year. If she ever saw him again or had the opportunity again, she didn’t want to wait or be tentative or shy like they’d been the year before. She wanted to share everything with him, and she wanted for all of him to be hers. She’d never again settle for just a piece.
They had a rather idyllic summer that year, all things considered. There was never a moment where they announced they were a couple, really. They simply showed up to the funerals with their fingers interlaced and no one questioned it. The press reported it, of course, announcing Ginny Weasley as The Chosen One’s ‘chosen one’, but the two of them somehow managed to spend most of the summer away from the press. They flew around the orchard and paused among the trees to fool around, Harry using the same wards he and Ron and Hermione had used on the run to ensure their privacy; Harry snuck into Ginny’s room every night and woke up early to sneak out every morning; they swam in the pond, or in the ocean when they visited her brother near Cornwall; they visited with Teddy and — ironically, in hindsight — decided they needed to be extremely careful about birth control, because they definitely couldn’t handle a Teddy all their own. And then, on Ginny’s seventeenth birthday, she and Harry went for a fly and he said he loved her for the first time.
She’d flown there on the professional grade broom he’d gifted her for her birthday, but being trusted with those words was the greatest gift of all. She can’t be totally sure, but she still thinks it might have been the first time Harry said those words to anyone, romantically or otherwise, which was simultaneously devastatingly sad and a point of immense pride. Though she’d known he loved her since they were reunited, she knew that saying it out loud was incredibly difficult for him. Many things came easily for Harry Potter — like flying a broomstick or sacrificing himself for the greater good — but expressing his feelings was never one of them.
So Harry unconsciously mumbling that he loves her and not remembering it the next morning? That is quite an interesting development.
She supposes she doesn’t know for a fact that Harry doesn’t remember, but what she knows is as good as. That there’s no awkwardness between them even once Teddy goes home with his grandmother is what confirms it, because if Harry had any awareness of what he’d said to her, he’d certainly be embarrassed about it. He’d try to avoid talking about it, until it bubbled over in an unintelligible mess of words. He might try to deny it, but then would ask follow up questions to gauge whether she felt the same; if she did, he’d come clean and admit it was true.
Ginny has no doubt that it is. Because sleepy words are much like drunk ones, those truths that your otherwise conscious self would hold back from admitting, but which are nevertheless factual. He loves her, again or maybe still; if she looks back on the last three years, her interactions with him all look different if she is watching through the lens that he never stopped loving her in the first place. Every time she told herself he was acting on his stupid, noble instincts and trying to alleviate the guilt of using her — those had been out of genuine care, hadn’t they? And she was so fixated on not trusting in him, in them, that she refused to allow herself to see it. It had been easier, better, and less complicated if she believed he just wanted sex, because if she believed that’s what he wanted, she could believe that’s what she wanted, too. But sex with Harry was never just sex, even if that had been all she said she wanted: it was a way of confirming for herself that they both made it out alive.
She isn’t just questioning what about Harry she’s misinterpreted over the past few years; she’s also questioning what she’s hidden from herself. And that? That’s a box she locked so long ago she can hardly remember where she put the key. It’s while she’s trying to uncover it that Ginny realizes some friends are better suited to particular conversations than others. Hermione, for example, had been the right person to tell about the baby after all, because Hermione is logical and action-oriented while still being emotionally intelligent; it didn’t hurt that she also knows the baby’s father better than pretty much anyone else. But when it comes to unlocking feelings long-buried, Hermione is the wrong friend, because she’d try to force out the feelings through sheer power of will and almost-academic focus. No, the friend Ginny needs for this is Luna, who happens to conveniently be back in the country.
Ginny had hoped to meet Luna for lunch in muggle London, but Harry had (very, very apologetically, knowing he promised he wouldn’t do this) insisted she temporarily keep to various trusted residences, Healer Harris’ office, and the Harpies facility, where she trained with a prenatal trainer a few times a week, unless she’s with him. In the aftermath of their statement confirming her pregnancy, Harry hadn’t been able to go anywhere — not even work or the muggle coffee shop where he and Hermione sometimes met Ron for lunch — without getting approached by the magical press or some well-meaning witch or wizard trying to congratulate him or ask for more details. For him, these encounters are more of an intrusive nuisance than anything else, but he’s distinctly terrified of what might happen if Ginny experiences one. As the one who is visibly carrying their child, he worries her encounters might border on dangerous in addition to being uncomfortable. Not only is there a potential for people to, uninvited, reach for her stomach (a habit Ginny’s own mother refuses to break, much to Ginny’s chagrin) or use the upsetting language that seems reserved only for the women who got pregnant out of wedlock and not the men who impregnated them, but there are also plenty of people who still want to hurt Harry as much as possible. Harming his girlfriend and their unborn son would, quite obviously, be a way for them to accomplish that.
Of course, Ginny thinks she’d be able to handle it if someone tried to speak down to her or throw a curse her way. This, in fact, is high on the list of what Harry still needs to work on, the saving people thing that seems to be present even when he has no real proof that anyone needs saving. It’s the prospect of strangers touching her — what is it about pregnant women that makes people think they have the right to grope your stomach without even asking? — that convinces her to stay home and invite Luna over instead.
Luna arrives more than an hour and a half later than they’d agreed she would, and Ginny has dozed off on the sitting room sofa, Hermione’s magical pregnancy book laying open across her chest and the wireless playing softly in the background. Luna doesn’t bother waking Ginny; instead she lifts the book off of Ginny’s chest and sinks into an armchair to begin reading it herself.
When Ginny wakes nearly an hour later, she’s disoriented, sitting up and squinting to see Luna peering at her curiously. “You must have been tired,” she comments serenely. Holding up the book, she deduces: “The baby must be very powerful if he’s making you so tired already.”
“My working theory is that the book is actually what’s making me tired,” Ginny yawns. “It’s less interesting than Binns. I fall asleep nearly every time I try to read it.”
Luna just smiles dreamily. “Life’s too short to read things you don’t enjoy.”
Ginny snorts. “Hermione gave it to me.”
“Ah,” her friend nods in understanding, a pair of strange earrings made from horns of unknown origin bobbing with her. “Yes, she does like reading things that don’t make her happy, doesn’t she?”
“The problem is really that everything she reads makes her happy for some reason.”
“That’s why Hermione wasn’t in Ravenclaw, you know.”
“Because she likes everything she reads?”
Luna shakes her head. “Hermione wants to know everything, but it’s not the journey of learning that excites her; it’s the certainty of knowing that if someone has a question, she’ll have an answer. That's why she likes books like this.”
The corners of Ginny’s mouth quirk upward and she stands to give her friend a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here, Luna.”
The blonde returns the hug lightly. “You’ve had a rather eventful few months, haven’t you?”
“You could say that,” Ginny concedes. Like most things Luna says, it’s a bit of an understatement.
“Did you and Harry admit you were together before or after you found out about the baby?”
Ginny cocks her head to the side curiously, as always stunned by the mere depth of what Luna understands without being told. “After,” she admits, a little anxious. “And we pretended we were in a relationship for a while.”
“Oh, Ginny, don’t be ridiculous,” Luna smiles absently. “You never really stopped being in a relationship, did you?”
“Whatever we did before doesn’t count. It was just sex. We barely talked about anything important for three years.”
“A sexual relationship is still a relationship,” Luna shrugs. “And you never stopped having sexual intercourse with him, did you?”
“Uh, there were a few months after the break up,” Ginny wrinkles her nose. It sounds pathetic, really, when you put it that way, and strangely formal.
“But you never had sex with anyone else.”
Which is true. Ginny had tried, of course. She had been determined that she’d shag anyone but Harry Potter after they’d broken up. But Ginny knew she couldn’t pass as a muggle for long enough to shag a muggle, and as for wizards, she found that most of them were only interested in saying they’d slept with “Potter’s girl”. Obviously, when the entire point was to break away from her association with Harry entirely, that was not very appealing.
“And you never stopped loving him,” Luna continues.
This is more complicated. When Ginny recalls the end of her relationship with Harry, she definitely felt heartbroken that it came to this, but mostly she remembers feeling angry and bitter toward him. It was clear to her then that he was choosing to let his pain and trauma keep him from moving forward and putting it between him and his relationships — namely, the relationship he had with her. Harry was taking her for granted and she felt a bit petty, to be honest, and wanted to teach him a lesson. She was barely 19; she hadn’t yet grasped that sometimes you get angry at someone because you love them and not because your love for them is waning.
“I might have.”
Luna’s strange horned earrings swing wildly with the motion of her shaking head. “I never saw you love him any less. And he loves you, Ginny. You must realize he never stopped. He never even tried.”
A lump forms in her throat, and she swallows to try to dislodge it. It remains painful and heavy against her vocal chords. “Luna,” Ginny whispers. “I feel so stupid for missing it. He — he said it while he was asleep last week.”
“When we sleep, we’re the truest versions of ourselves,” Luna tells her sagely. “Our dreams reveal our deepest desires and our nightmares, our greatest fears.”
“You sound like Dumbledore,” Ginny can’t help but scoff.
Luna responds by blinking at Ginny curiously. “I only meant to say that no one can hide what they’re feeling when they’re asleep. Not even Harry.” She looks away, as though she’s seeing something no one else can. “Not that Harry ever did a very good job of hiding how he felt about you, of course. It’s been obvious this whole time.”
“Has it?” Ginny still isn’t convinced. After all, if everyone else had noticed, why wouldn’t they say anything to her? Or, for that matter, why wouldn’t they tell him to do something about it?
Luna nods. “We can only observe the things we’re ready to see, Ginny.”
…
Though Harry doesn’t know that he’s already said it aloud, he’s well aware by now that he’s only falling deeper in love with Ginny and the words are on the tip of his tongue nearly constantly. He just can’t bring himself to say them, not as easily as he should. The first time he said it to her was difficult too — he spent all of May and June and July that year feeling how deeply he loved her before he was finally able to articulate it to her in August — and then once the seal had been broken, those three big words tumbled out easily until she demanded he stop expressing it.
Why is it that people call that sentence the “three little words” when they are the biggest and most monumental words one person can say to another?
It’s moments like these where Harry Potter doesn’t think he’s brave at all. Courage is, probably, the quality he’s most famous for (though he would argue, darkly, it’s more his inability to die), and he thinks that’s bollocks because he doesn’t really possess much of it right now, not where it matters. Laying down your life for the greater good? That’s easy. Telling the mother of your child that you love her, that you always loved her, that you never stopped loving her? That’s significantly more difficult.
Though Harry’s talent for obsession and rumination knows no bounds, he doesn’t have much time to obsess over the issue of The Big Three, as he’s come to think of it. He’s got a lot going on outside of Ginny, though much of it is to do with her, at least tangentially. Now that Robards knows why Harry was so eager for time off from the field, he’s roped Harry into a new-to-him role: training the newest class of Aurors. Harry hadn’t been particularly excited at the prospect of being relegated to the classroom, a role so often seen as grunt work, but after some time working with the recruits, he has to admit it suits him. It plays to his strengths and he finds teaching fulfilling in a way even being in the field isn’t; his impact feels bigger in the classroom, funny enough.
“I’m not surprised,” Hermione tells him, sitting across from him at his desk as he plans a dueling practical for his trainees. “You always had a knack for teaching.” She pauses thoughtfully as Harry doesn’t react. “You know, right after the war, I really thought you’d leave here once the last Death Eaters were caught, and go teach at Hogwarts.”
Harry snorts. “I don’t think someone who never finished Hogwarts is qualified to teach there.” He never really regretted not going back to finish his NEWTs, if you didn’t count all the times he had been particularly randy that first year after the war and wished he could sneak Ginny into the Gryffindor boys’ dorms instead of being alone with his hand and memories in London. Still, it would never occur to him that he could ever go back to Hogwarts as a teacher, given that he chose not to return as a student.
Hermione rolls her eyes good naturedly. “What you’ve got is way more valuable than NEWTs.”
“I’m sorry, can I get a recording of you saying that? Maybe you can write it and sign your name too?” It’s easy to tease her for it — in the months following the war, she’d been cross with Harry and Ron for not finishing their education, telling them the auror office would always be there but the opportunity to get their qualifications wouldn’t. “I can’t wait to tell Ron.”
“Oh fu—” She cuts herself off abruptly, because unlike the rest of them, Hermione minds her language. “Shut up, will you?”
A fond smile crosses Harry’s lips as he ducks his head and keeps writing. “I never thought I’d ever be able to tell Hermione Granger this but: I told you so.”
She shakes her head. “Incorrigible,” she mutters, but her tone is full of affection.
“They don’t call me Persistent Potter for nothing.”
“No one calls you that.”
“They should,” Harry jokes. “The Boy Who Lived slash Chosen One business is outdated.”
“Mm, yes, it’s very 1998,” Hermione agrees drily.
“Eh, maybe more 1999,” Harry muses thoughtfully. “I feel like Undesirable Number One is 1998?”
“Or is that more 1997?”
“Honestly, who can keep track?” His laughter dies out, his expression turning pensive. His thoughts go here more often lately.
Time is strange that way, isn’t it? In some ways, his life is exactly how he’d hoped it would be in the better parts of 1998: he and Ginny are together, they share a home, and they’re expecting a son. Harry was always quite sure he wanted to have a family as soon as it made sense to, and being on the cusp of it now is certainly aligned with the highest hopes he had for his future. The journey to get here, of course, has been very different than his eighteen year old self imagined it, but it’s no less sweet for it. In some ways, he thinks, knowing what he almost didn’t have has given him a better idea of the stakes, more motivation for everything he’s doing to try to be better for Ginny and Snitch; in some ways, it’s even better than his younger self could have ever imagined.
It’s only a few days until Christmas, which is another reminder of time’s many oddities. So much has changed in the last few months — enough for a lifetime, really — and yet, it feels like summer was only yesterday. Soon it will be a new year, the sixth since the end of the war, and in that year, everything will change. Again, because Harry is no stranger to life changing events. This one, though, is almost certain to be his favorite yet.
“Are we going to get going?” Hermione asks impatiently, snapping Harry out of his reverie. Right, he thinks, Hermione is here for a reason.
He holds up a finger and quickly finishes his sentence with an aggressive exclamation point. “Ready,” he agrees, standing and moving to grab his coat from its hook on the back of the door. “I know the plan is to go get their gifts in muggle London, but I have to pick up an order at Quality Quidditch Supplies first.”
Hermione stares at him curiously. “But that’s not a gift for Ginny?”
Harry shakes his head. “No. Well, kind of? It’s for Snitch.”
She fastens her coat and follows him out. The baby’s first Christmas is still a year away, but his father has certainly bought him a lot of gifts anyway. “As long as you don’t actually name him Snitch.”
“Why not? It’s a great name, one that will make him loads of friends at primary school.” They head to the lift, and exit the Ministry into Diagon Alley. Expertly, he cuts through the crowd with his head lowered, not meeting anyone’s eyes until they enter Quality Quidditch Supplies.
The store is positively bustling with last minute holiday shoppers, and Harry does the thing where he finds a corner to squirrel away in to avoid attention. He looks around until he manages to catch a shopkeeper's eye and flags him over. The man recognizes Harry right away and comes over with a wrapped package.
“Mr. Potter!” The man is beaming as he greets Harry, who appears predictably both embarrassed and bored by the attention. “When the little one arrives, we expect to see pictures of him with this.”
Harry forces a smile, but doesn’t respond directly. “Thank you. Happy Christmas!” He has no plans to linger. Hermione offers the shopkeep a kind expression before following Harry out.
“I don’t know what to get her,” Harry laments, not for the first time, as they proceed to their main shopping excursion. “Are you sure she hasn’t mentioned anything she wants?” Hermione has to get Ron’s gift, too, but Ron is easy — he’s never shy about his wants. This year, Hermione has decided to get him a Gameboy after he became infatuated with the one Harry has for Teddy.
Hermione shakes her head. “Honestly, she might like an experience,” she muses. “Ginny’s thrilled with muggle experiences, she’d probably love theatre tickets.”
Harry’s face lights up. He’s never gone to the theatre, but the Dursleys used to go without him; getting to experience those things they kept from him now, with people he loves, always seems sort of magical and therapeutic. “Hermione! You’re brilliant. Did you know that? Did you know you’re brilliant?”
She just laughs in response.
They pick up Ron’s gift and then Hermione navigates him through the West End to buy tickets to Thoroughly Modern Millie, after Hermione’s pitch for Les Mis leaves him feeling, well, miserable.
“I’ll see you on Christmas Eve at the Burrow,” she promises Harry as they hug goodbye, heading their separate ways. There’s an understanding between them, that Christmas Eve is both one of the best days of the year now and the anniversary of one of the most terrifying days of their lives.
His hand flies to his pocket, patting it to make sure the package he picked up is still comfortably shrunken and nestled in his coat pocket. He then checks on the tickets in the other. Feeling settled, he sets off in the direction of home, in the direction of Ginny.