SIXTEEN
For someone who spent a great deal of his life hiding out and keeping secrets, Harry really is shit at thinking of creative places to conceal important things. Case in point: he has an engagement ring for Ginny and instead of putting it somewhere Ginny would never look, he stashes it in his sock drawer, among piles of mismatched, loose socks that may never find their mates. The issue with this, of course, is that Ginny is a notorious sock thief; it’s been long enough since they last dated that Harry has yet to really remember that the reason he has so many socks missing their partners is because Ginny indiscriminately nicks socks as she needs them.
Ginny’s running late to meet Hermione, her mum, and Hermione’s mum for lunch and wedding dress shopping. She makes it all the way to the front door of Grimmauld Place before she realizes she’s forgotten socks for her boots. Baby brain, her mum calls it; when the subject came up at lunch, Audrey was all too happy to explain that pregnancy literally changes a witch’s brain, resulting in forgetfulness and brain fog both through gestation and the postpartum period. That did nothing, really, to ingratiate Percy’s new girlfriend to Ginny, who just wants to be able to remember things like a normal fucking person again. Understanding why it’s happening does not make the experience any less frustrating.
She runs upstairs — at least, as much as she can run in her current condition — and absentmindedly fishes around Harry’s sock drawer for any two socks she can toss on her feet. Despite all the socks she’s nicked, she doesn’t have many pairs of her own. Her fingers brush against something that does not feel like cotton; deciding she’s already late and another few minutes won’t make much of a difference, she pulls out the velvety fabric from the depths of the drawer.
It’s a nondescript pouch, one that weighs more than she’d expect, and she’s insatiably curious. She looks around, as if to confirm she’s alone (though she knows Harry is running drills with his trainees all day), and opens it into her palm.
An enormous diamond ring — elongated stone on a gold band — tumbles out of the bag; it’s been months since Ginny experienced morning sickness, but the familiar nauseated feeling associated with it swirls around her stomach and in front of her eyes. She’s seen this ring before, and the force of the deja vu she’s encountering nearly knocks her off of her feet. That time, she’d been rummaging in Harry’s sock drawer as well, but not because her feet were cold; that time, she’d been looking for proof to justify her sneaking suspicion that Harry was hiding something from her. And she had been right: in addition to hiding large chunks of what was going on inside his mind, he was concealing an engagement ring from her.
The first time she saw the ring, it filled her with dread in the pit of her stomach; ultimately, knowing she couldn’t say yes if he asked, because she needed things to change and she couldn’t trust him to change them, was what made her angry enough to break up with him. She’d been unable to believe that Harry wasn’t willing to let her in completely or trust him in the ways she needed him to, but was still intending to marry her. It drove home just how much he took her presence and support for granted, and that enraged her.
After the initial nausea passes this time, however, she’s surprised to find that she’s not angry at all. There’s no dread in the pit of her stomach, like there was last time; instead, what she feels is a rush of adrenaline she can identify as excitement. She suspects there’d even be butterflies, if her son — their son, Harry’s son — weren’t kicking her hard, likely to demand a snack. She looks over her shoulder again, and then slides the ring onto her finger. It’s just to see, she tells herself, but then it’s on and it fits perfectly. It’s like the ring was made for her — and maybe it was, she thinks absently. But then she pulls off the ring and sees the inscription inside: L+J 1978 . She gasps. It’s Harry’s mum’s ring; he wants to give her his mum’s ring. And it catches in her heart so much that she has to sit down for a few moments. Then, she glances at the clock. She’s going to miss her chance for food if she doesn’t leave now , and Snitch would not take kindly to that. So she carefully places the ring back in its pouch, returns the pouch to the drawer, and bolts down the stairs as quickly as she can, given how oddly-balanced her body is these days.
Hermione and Ron have decided on a muggle wedding, ostensibly to be able to include all of Hermione’s family with minimal need for explanation. Therefore, Ginny is meeting Hermione and both mums at a restaurant in muggle London, and they’ll be shopping at a muggle shop as well. Ginny’s mother — who had been grumbling about Ron and Hermione not at least doing a wizarding ceremony first — would surely have Ginny’s head for her lateness. As Ginny catches her breath after hastily apparating into a nearby alleyway (and, all right, she should probably consider other forms of transportation until Snitch’s birth), she decides she can’t be bothered to care about what her mum thinks, though. Instead, she breezes into the restaurant, close to 20 minutes late, smiling apologetically as she leans down to kiss her mum’s cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” she gushes. “I forgot how long it takes to get here the mu — normal — way.” It’s a lie, but a believable one; her mum has been telling her she shouldn’t apparate herself anymore, anyway. She wrinkles her nose before offering Hermione a hug and sitting down next to her mother.
“It’s no problem,” Hermione’s mother assures her kindly, since both the bride and the mother of the groom look a little tightly wound at Ginny’s tardiness to excuse her themselves. “I remember how uncomfortable I was at the end with Hermione. If I were you, I might not have left my house at all.”
Ginny can tell her mum is working very hard not to shoot Mrs. Granger a disdainful look. Molly is forever going on about how she never had the luxury of taking it easy during any of her pregnancies, and if she could raise six boys while pregnant, Ginny could certainly make it to lunch on time without any other children to look after.
“Thank you,” Ginny responds brightly, smoothing the napkin on her lap, though that’s difficult to do with her protruding stomach. Hermione looks across the table at Ginny with narrowing eyes, and at first, Ginny misinterprets this as anger. It’s only after Hermione also tilts her head to the side that Ginny realizes it’s more out of curiosity. Clever, that Hermione, always able to sniff out when someone is putting their best face forward.
“You know what you’re ordering, don’t you, Ginny?” Molly asks her abruptly. Ginny does not — she’s never been to this cafe — but her mum is asking only as a formality anyway, because seconds later, she’s calling over the waitress. Ginny’s mother very rarely goes to restaurants, and almost never in the muggle world, so Ginny can’t help but feel taken aback and a bit embarrassed by her brashness. At least Hermione chose a casual cafe rather than someplace posh.
Ginny just chooses a salad off the menu at random when it’s her turn to order, and immediately regrets it as the waitress departs. She’s ravenous and she can’t know for sure if she’ll feel full after two bites — too full of baby to make room for food — or if she'll eat every last bit and still need a second lunch in an hour. She takes a sip of her water and guesses it will be the latter, given the way her stomach feels unsettled when the liquid sloshes into it.
“We were just talking about the church ceremony,” Mrs. Granger informs Ginny cheerfully. “The church is actually the same one where Hermione’s father and I were married — we’re so touched that she and Ron decided to marry there as well.” Ginny knows enough about Hermione’s relationship with her parents — still recovering from the shock of coming to in Australia with two lives full of memories in their minds — to know that Hermione and Ron getting married in the muggle church is just as much about Hermione making peace with her parents as it is making their wedding muggle-friendly.
“So lovely,” Ginny gushes. Hermione assumes this is performative, for Ginny’s never much been one for sentimentality and effusive declarations about weddings. But Ginny’s genuine, because now she can picture what Harry’s mum’s ring will look like on the fourth finger of her left hand; she can picture Harry, waiting for her at the end of the aisle, in the garden of the Burrow perhaps, his green eyes shining happily as she practically floats in white wedding robes; and next to them, maybe in Hermione or Ron’s arms, would be their little Snitch, who is really the beginning and end of it all. A tear comes to her eyes, which forces her out of her reverie — she’s not sure how much of this is real and how much is pregnancy hormones, after all.
Lunch is filled with generic and safe topics of conversation, orchestrated expertly by Hermione. She doesn’t leave any opportunities for her future mother-in-law to voice disapproval or accidentally reveal too much about magic; similarly, there’s nothing mentioned that might make Hermione’s own mum feel left out. Ginny smiles along and politely contributes where needed, but lunch isn’t really why she’s here, is it?
No, Ginny’s real purpose on this outing is to be the person who defends Hermione’s interests at the dress shop. Hermione is too much of a people pleaser to actually express if she hates a dress that either mum loves; similarly, if one of the mums dislikes a dress she loves, Hermione won’t necessarily fight for herself. That’s where Ginny comes in: she and Hermione have spoken at length about what Hermione wants in a wedding dress, and Ginny intends to stand up for Hermione. It’s really the least she can do, all things considered.
The muggle bridal shop reminds Ginny disconcertingly of Madame Puddifoot’s in that it’s very frilly and pastel. Were it owned by wizards, she’s confident it would have cherubs flying about as well. Instead, they’re offered champagne by an eager assistant as another woman comes over and asks Hermione to describe her vision for her wedding gown.
“A-line, I think,” Hermione chirps. “Not too much of a train—”
“Trains are very bridal , Hermione,” Mrs. Granger pipes in, and Ginny didn’t expect to be needed so soon, but she imagines it would be more enjoyable if she could have a glass of champagne like everyone else.
“She’ll try one with a train, but bring the majority without,” Ginny pipes in diplomatically.
“I was thinking maybe something cap sleeved —”
“Long sleeves are more becoming of a bride,” Mrs. Weasley pipes in. Long sleeves are the wizarding fashion, typically, anyway.
“Mum, it’s her wedding,” Ginny hisses, less inclined to be diplomatic toward her own mother.
“Sister of the groom?” The shop assistant asks Hermione, jutting her chin toward Ginny.
Hermione nods. “And my maid of honor, actually.”
The consultant asks a few more questions before going off to pull the gowns, and then it’s all a blur. Ginny can’t help but enjoy the afternoon, though it wouldn’t typically be her cup of tea. The muggle wedding gowns Hermione tries on are the most beautiful garments she’s ever seen, all classic silhouettes and luxe materials; Hermione’s choices are simple, elegant, and without many embellishments, but some others — with elaborate lace or subtle beading — catch Ginny’s eye. She thinks she’d wear one of those for her wedding. She thinks maybe she’d also like a muggle wedding gown, after all.
Hermione cries when she comes out in what she declares is the dress: satin with cap sleeves and a high boat neck, fluttering outward at her hips in an a-line silhouette. Molly and Mrs. Granger cry as well, and when it comes down to it, Ginny doesn’t have to fight very hard for anything on Hermione’s behalf. The neckline is high, which satisfies Molly despite the shorter sleeves and there’s enough of a train that Mrs. Granger is excited about it. Of course everyone agrees on it: it’s the dress for Hermione, and the perfect thing for Hermione will always make everyone happy enough. Ginny doesn’t even try to hide the fat tears that plop onto her cheeks; if anyone were to comment, she’d blame it on the hormones, but really, she’s both happy for her friend — her sister — and imagining the future she now feels destined to have.
Molly tries to insist that both Hermione and Ginny should come with her to the Burrow after they leave the shop, but Ginny begs off. “I’m so exhausted, Mummy,” Ginny tells her with a dramatic whine. Using mummy has the desired effect, in that Molly believes Ginny to be much more tired than she is.
“I’ll help her get a taxi and drop her home,” Hermione volunteers, giving Molly a kiss on the cheek before going to hug her own mum. “I can just floo home from Harry and Ginny’s.”
“Give Harry my love,” Mrs. Granger comments cheerfully as Hermione hails a black cab.
Hermione slides in the backseat first, and Ginny enters after her. She’s not sure how muggles can stand getting in and out of cars for the entirety of a pregnancy, because the motion is awkward and uncomfortable with a belly. Hermione gives the driver the address of the park across from Grimmauld, and then sinks back into the seat, smiling. “I bought my wedding dress today,” she tells Ginny so quietly, it’s almost like she’s announcing it to herself.
“It’s beautiful,” Ginny tells her truthfully. “My brother has no clue how lucky he is to be marrying you.”
“I think he does, actually,” Hermione blushes. They don’t debate whether Ron will love the dress; he’d love a burlap sack if that’s what Hermione wore to their wedding and the dress isn’t for him, anyway. The dress is for Hermione.
“Well, good. He can be thick sometimes; one can never be too sure what he realizes and what he doesn’t.”
Hermione laughs. “Thank you for coming.”
“‘Course I came,” Ginny waves her off dismissively.
Hermione shakes her head. “No, I know this isn’t really your thing, but having you there — it helped me so much. I’m so — I’m so proud that we’re going to officially be sisters, Ginny.”
Ginny wasn’t expecting Hermione to get all soppy on her; given that she cries at the books Harry reads to Teddy these days, she shouldn’t be surprised that this makes her weepy as well. “I’ve always wanted a sister,” Ginny sniffs. She has Fleur, she knows, but there’s something rather more special about gaining Hermione as a sister.
“And I know you were probably late because you didn’t want to come —”
“No!” Ginny shakes her head. “No, I promise, I wanted to be there. I was just — Hermione, don’t ever get pregnant,” she warns. “Ron will try to convince you it’ll be fun, especially once Harry has a kid, but he doesn’t know. You’ll get forgetful and huge and it will take you an extra ten minutes to do any little task, even with magic — and that’s when you can summon enough energy away from your magic-sapping parasite to do magic. That’s why I was late.” She pauses. “Well, and —” She wants to tell Hermione everything, but then she doesn’t want to take away from the fact that this is Hermione’s day not hers, so she cuts herself off.
“What?”
“Nevermind. Not important.”
“So it’s very important,” Hermione comments shrewdly.
“Nope,” Ginny insists. “Not important.” But even as she says it, her face flushes, giving her away.
“Just spit it out!”
And that’s all the permission Ginny needs: “Harry has a ring! I went to nick some socks from him and I was already late and instead of socks, there was a ring in his drawer! Well, there were socks, too, but more importantly, it was his mum’s ring.”
Hermione blinks a few times, but she doesn’t look overly surprised. “He got the ring back,” she whispers.
“Back?” Ginny seizes upon this. “What do you mean back?”
Hermione turns away, looking out the window to keep from making eye contact. “Would you believe me if I said I misspoke?”
“You know I wouldn’t.” She pauses. “I saw the ring before I broke up with him the first time,” she confesses. “I didn’t realize it was his mum’s then. I just — I saw he had a ring and I freaked out and focused on all the things he needed to change. And I broke it off. I dunno, I just assumed he kind of held onto it as a...talisman of sorts.” Harry’s always been superstitious and ritualistic, even if he doesn’t realize it; holding on to an engagement ring from a failed relationship seems like the kind of thing he’d do.
Hermione shakes her head, still looking out the window. “No, he put it back in his vault after you ended things. Said you were the only girl he could ever picture wearing it. He must have gotten it back out recently. Maybe when he found the baby book,” she muses quietly
Ginny’s quiet for a few moments. “You know, I thought I was going to ask you if you think we’re ready, er, for that. But I reckon that even if he asked tomorrow, I’d say yes.”
It’s not out of the realm of possibility, really. Hermione’s known Harry for long enough to know that it only ever goes one of two ways with him: either he stresses about a decision so long as to make it seem impossible or he simply does the thing before thinking about it. She also knows Harry well enough to know that, when it comes to Ginny, there’s no predicting which way it’ll go.
“Well, you’re having a baby together,” Hermione says finally, reaching between her and Ginny to hold her hand as the car makes a turn. “If you’re ready for that…” She trails off, squeezing Ginny’s hand. “I have a really good feeling about what's to come.”
…
She isn’t going to tell Harry about what she found. That really seems counter to the purpose of the engagement ring, to bring it up. Proposals, she’s told, are meant to be surprises.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Ginny’s never cared for surprises much; she’d rather be in control of her destiny. Now that she’s thinking of it, it also seems unfair that men get all of this time to think through whether they want to be married and plan for it, when women only get a few moments after being presented with a beautiful piece of jewelry to think it through.
So that night, when Harry is laying down on his front between her legs, hands cupping her stomach as he feels Snitch’s movements, she brings it up. “I stole a pair of socks from you today,” Ginny says absently.
Harry doesn’t tense, and if Ginny didn’t know that Harry had once returned this ring to the vault, she’d assume he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh right, you do that,” he laughs, remembering. “I need to lock my sock drawer. Snitch, you are so lucky your feet will be so much littler than Mummy’s. She’ll never nick your socks,” he adds playfully to her stomach. She rolls her eyes as Snitch kicks her — hard — in response. Boys, she thinks fondly, already ganging up against me .
“Do you know you have a ring in there?” She asks him offhandedly.
He freezes and looks up at her. “I do,” he responds slowly. “It’s my mum’s. Er, was. It was my mum’s.”
“It’s beautiful,” Ginny comments. She’s trying to keep her tone even, so that he knows she’s not cross with him.
“I’m glad you think so,” he tells her. His voice quivers slightly, the way it does when he’s exerting quite a bit of effort to not give much away — a tell most people never pick up on, but she knows him better than most people. “I’d like for it to be yours one day.” He pauses to sit up a bit, so he can look at her more than he’s looking at her belly. “But just ‘cause I have it doesn’t mean that I was, er, going to do anything with it. Not without talking to you first, anyway.”
“Well, if we couldn’t talk about it, we’re probably not as ready for any of this grown up shite as we think we are,” Ginny jokes. But it’s a joke that holds a profound tone of seriousness. When Ginny was younger, she thought a lot of things about being grown up, but it never occurred to her back then just how much of being an adult is talking and learning the best ways to use your words.
“I reckon you’re right,” Harry agrees. “I had the ring the first time we were together, too. I think back then, I might’ve just sprung it on you. Might’ve just assumed we were on the same page.”
“That would have been unfair,” Ginny comments quietly.
Harry looks off to the side of the room, but still gives a jerky nod. “Er, yeah, massively unfair,” he agrees.
She’s balanced on the edge of telling him that she saw the ring then, too. She’s not angry, though, so she finds she can’t muster the brashness to just throw it in his face. They’re having a nice conversation — a mature conversation, even — so she’s just not going to bring up the incident, only the nerve it struck. “I wouldn’t have said yes, then.”
Harry gives a disbelieving chuckle. “Well, given that you broke up with me, I don’t suppose you would have, no,” he jokes.
“But not because —” She cuts herself off and pauses. Ginny Weasley loves to operate on pure nerve and gut instinct, it’s true; but one of the hard-won lessons of her relationship with Harry is that some moments are worth finding the right words for. “At the time, I told myself that being frustrated and furious with you meant that I didn’t love you anymore,” she starts. “But…I don’t know that I ever really stopped. I think — well, I was nineteen. I didn’t realize that you can be frustrated with someone because you love them. I think, deep down, I loved you so much that I was scared that if we kept going and you never worked on things and I kept feeling neglected and unappreciated and resentful — that would have been a much worse way to lose you.”
Harry doesn’t have anything to say to that, really. But she’s looking at him expectantly, like she needs a response. “I wanted to be so angry,” he tells her. “But I wasn’t. I was just sad. And I couldn’t even blame you, because everything you said was right. I needed to heal and I needed to move on. The way I was, er, operating — letting work consume me and then, I dunno, using you to cope — that wasn’t any more tenable in the long term than us breaking up ended up being, was it?”
Ginny shakes her head and reaches down to grasp his hand where it still rests atop her stomach. “Sometimes, I wonder what would have changed if we’d talked about it and worked through it together. Would it have worked? Would we have gotten married?”
A smile plays at Harry’s thin lips. “We might have done,” he admits. That chuckle is there again, the one that is filled with mild incredulity and an undertone of self-deprecation. “It’s tough to imagine things playing out any differently from how they are now, though.” He smiles up at her, his boyish, lopsided grin always such a treat for her when she can tell it’s genuine. It’s usually genuine for her. “I don’t regret any of it.”
“Me either.”
“I might have cocked it all up, blurting out that I do want us to get married one day,” Harry admits, and it’s the first time he acknowledges his outburst in January at all. “But I meant it. Every word. The way I see it — I don’t love that we lost so much time of us being this, yeah? But if that’s what we needed to do to be in a relationship that’s good for both of us, then it’s fine with me. The concept of forever — well, it’s kind of new to me, you know that — but I hear it’s a really long time.”
“We’ve got forever,” Ginny agrees. “So we’ve got time.”
“All the time in the world,” Harry agrees, removing his hand from his stomach so he can push himself up and reposition himself for a deep, lingering kiss. If they’ve got time, he’s going to take it.