TWENTY-SEVEN
Harry’s August begins in a spectacular fashion: with Ginny’s mouth wrapped tightly around his cock. He supposes August technically began at some point after they returned home from the pub, but that felt like an extension of his birthday and, therefore, July. Even if it did count, August still would have started with a literal bang: as much as he and Ginny needed to sleep, they spent most of the night tangled up with one another, too pleased at having utter privacy to waste even a few hours of it.
They’re due to pick James up from Ginny’s parents around eleven, so while a lie-in would have been nice, Ginny’s other plans for the morning are even nicer. Which is how Harry finds himself waking up to Ginny kissing her way down to his Standard Issue Morning Erection. He isn’t sure what to make of the sensation at first, but when he glances down to find the duvet kicked off the end of the bed and Ginny’s lips on the trail of hair beneath his belly button, he cottons on rather quickly. She catches his eye — the glances between them always feel supercharged when it’s just her brown eyes bearing into his emerald stare, with no glasses to serve as a barrier to the heat — and wordlessly takes the length of him in her mouth. And then, his mind is wiped blank.
Suddenly, he can barely recall his own name. The only thing in the world is her. Her warm, wet mouth envelops him completely, her tongue pressing into the underside of his shaft in the delicious way that makes him see stars; a light sucking motion pulls him deeper and deeper, toward her throat. All the while, she looks up at him coyly, never breaking eye contact. He couldn’t look away even if he wanted to, not when she’s clearly deriving great pleasure from bringing him pleasure. It’s fucking hot.
Given that he’s half-awake and embarrassingly turned on, it’s clear from the beginning that Harry’s not going to last long. And, as it turns out, this is for the best, because as soon as he spills into Ginny’s mouth — she swallows every last drop, of course, like a teenaged fantasy but better because it’s real — the sounds of urgent, frantic knocks on their bedroom door begin to fill the room.
Harry startles easily, instincts long ago sharpened to signs of impending danger, but Ginny makes no effort to speed up to find out who’s at the door. Instead, she slowly removes her mouth from Harry’s cock, swiping her tongue across the head one last time, as if to make sure he’s cleaned up; Harry lets out an involuntary, loud moan.
“You’re awake?” An unmistakable voice calls from the other side of the door. Harry freezes, clapping his hand over his mouth. They hadn’t cast silencing charms the night before; there hadn’t been a need. Without James in the house, there was no one they could wake. “Ginevra Weasley, open the door this instant! I know you’re in there!” The voice is imbued with the same urgency as the raps against the heavy door had been; it fills Harry’s stomach with dread.
Harry and Ginny share a startled glance, and it’s clear that they’re both thinking the same thing: if Molly Weasley is here early in the morning, hours before they’re due to relieve her of babysitting duty, it must mean something is wrong with James. Harry reaches for the tartan pajama bottoms that he abandoned on the floor the night before and nearly falls over himself stepping into them, pulling them up to his hips and tying the drawstring twice. Ginny finds a long enough nightshirt on the bench at the foot of the bed and doesn’t bother putting knickers on underneath it before she heads to the bedroom door.
“Mum?” Ginny answers the door breathlessly, cheeks flushed both from the activity she’d been doing just minutes before and the exertion of making herself decent for her mother. “What are you doing here? Is James all right?” Wordlessly Harry joins her standing behind her, anxiety written across his face. Without his glasses, he wears his emotions nakedly.
“James?” Molly lets out an incredulous laugh. “Of course James is all right! He’s having a bottle with your dad right now.”
Harry exhales deeply, a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding escaping through his mouth. He’s not wearing his watch, but he is positive it’s no later than eight, and they aren’t due to pick James up until eleven. “So, er, if James is all right — which, of course, is a relief —”
Ginny cuts him off, clearly too impatient for his incoherent post-orgasm rambling. “If James is all right, why are you here? You promised that you’d only interrupt us if something was wrong with the baby, Mum.”
“Well,” Molly huffs, thrusting a sheet of newsprint in Ginny’s face. She blinks twice before she realizes it’s today’s Daily Prophet, but it’s so close to her face that she can’t actually figure out what about the paper has made her mother so upset. Molly doesn’t give her a chance to find out before continuing: “This is not how I wanted to find out that my only daughter had gotten engaged, Ginevra.”
Ginny barely has time to process her mother’s words before she grabs for the paper, wondering what tiny bit of truth the Prophet managed to spin into her and Harry getting engaged; Harry’s eyes widen in alarm as he sprints back to fetch his glasses from the bedside table. He can’t respond to whatever rot the paper’s printed if he can’t see it, after all.
It’s so much worse than either of them could have imagined: it’s not as though they were overheard in the cafe with James the day before, talking about their future as a family, which would have been Harry’s guess, and it’s not like someone leaked whatever conversations Harry’s had with Hogwarts about the proposal, which would have been Ginny’s. Instead, splashed across the front page is a loop of Harry getting down on one knee at the Leaky Cauldron the night before, Ginny dramatically nodding, and them coming together in a kiss.
She turns and sees that Harry is watching over his shoulder, mouth agape and face paling. Their eyes lock and it’s nothing like the heat they shared less than fifteen minutes ago, while Ginny was going down on him. Only one thing is communicated through the glance: this is bad.
“Well?” Molly interrupts impatiently, watching her daughter and the father of her grandson staring at the paper, mouth agape. “Were you ever planning on telling us you got engaged? Hm?”
“Er,” Harry cards his hand through his hair — and, Merlin knows, it was already in a state after a night of shagging — in a dead giveaway of the anxiety he’s feeling. When he told Ginny he’d do anything for her, this certainly wasn’t in the plan. Tipsy off the alcohol and positively drunk off her, he hadn’t given a second thought to the fact that people could see into the area where their mates had congregated the previous night. No one could hear anything. And that was a grave error, clearly. Because he would have preferred Molly find out from the Prophet that he and Ginny dramatically announced their intention to have sex in a toilet than her have read the way the paper filled the gap in. “We’re not engaged.”
“That isn’t what it looks like,” Ginny confirms, hoisting the paper back toward her mother. She can’t bear to read what’s actually been written; she already feels nauseated, though that might be last night’s firewhiskey catching up with her.
“We were just a little, er, merry ,” Harry stammers awkwardly. Of course, Molly Weasley knows they’d been drinking — they were in a pub — but he doesn’t need to confirm that they were drunk.
“We were pissed,” Ginny corrects him. “And I told Harry to make our friends think he was proposing for a second because it would be a laugh.” There’s something Harry still hasn’t learned after all these years, and it’s that the key to lying to your mum is to know which parts of the truth you need to include.
Molly visibly deflates. It’s only then that Harry realizes that, yes, of course Molly would have been ticked off at them if they’d gone and gotten engaged without telling her — but a bit of anger is nothing compared to the disappointment of learning they aren’t engaged.
“So you’re not getting married?” Molly repeats, sounding every bit as let down as she looks.
Harry looks over to Ginny, but his girlfriend just stares ahead. “Mum, we will almost certainly get married in the future,” she explains slowly, with great attention paid to the clarity of her words, as though she’s speaking to Teddy or Victoire. “I’ve told you many times that we plan to get married eventually, haven’t I?” Chastened, Molly nods. “We just didn’t get engaged last night. Harry will contact his publicist and we’ll have a retraction printed tomorrow. Won’t we, Harry?”
And Harry knows he should have thought of a retraction immediately. The plan Ginny just articulated is the course of action he would typically follow. It should have been his first instinct. But then there’s the ring in his pants drawer, and the fact that it’s really only another ten days until he’s planning to give it to Ginny. Of course, Ginny doesn’t know that yet. The entire point of a proposal is that it’s meant to be a surprise. He can’t exactly tell her that maybe a retraction isn’t the best idea because then if he proposes ten days later, it makes him look like a dunce, can he?
He just nods absently, thinking on the spot. “I’ll call Morgan,” he agrees, naming his publicist. “I’ll ask her advice on handling the situation.” He can tell Morgan he’s planning to propose to Ginny. He probably should tell her, if he’s honest with himself. After all, she’s the one who will have to write a statement announcing it.
“Well, all right,” Molly sighs dramatically. “I suppose I should go back to the Burrow and tell James that his parents aren’t having a wedding after all.” Harry glances down at his feet in response, but Ginny just rolls her eyes.
“Mum, he’s four months old,” Ginny reminds her.
“He’s very clever,” Molly retorts petulantly. “He knows he wants his mummy and daddy to be married.”
“Mum! That’s enough.”
Harry snaps himself out of the trance in which he’s mentally composing the speech he’ll give Morgan on why he needs to handle this perfectly and focuses his eyes on his future mother-in-law. “Molly, we’re still hoping to have a lie in, yeah? Can we come get James around eleven, like we planned?”
Mrs. Weasley’s expression softens. “Of course, dear,” she tells him sweetly. Then, she turns to her daughter: “By the way, Ginny, you’ve got something in the corner of your mouth,” she raises an eyebrow as if to tell Ginny that she knows exactly what it is. “Might want to wipe that off before you go back to bed, hm?” Both Ginny and Harry take note of the fact that she doesn’t mention sleep.
Dumbfounded, Ginny wipes the corner of her mouth as she watches her mother apparate off; she glances down at her hand to confirm what she already knew — her mother had told her to remove a dribble of Harry’s semen from the side of her mouth. She can’t help but laugh, nearly cackling, despite the tension left in the room from their early morning visitor and, as per usual, The Daily Prophet.
“What’s so funny?” For Harry’s part, he can’t find anything to laugh about. Ginny’s mum showed up at his house literally as he was having an orgasm to tell him that his proposal plans might very well be ruined. He can’t recall a time he’d ever gone from elated to deflated so quickly.
But Ginny keeps laughing, shaking her head. “No, Harry, my mum told me to wipe spunk from the corner of my mouth.” She throws her head back, positively cackling now. “At least she knows I’m swallowing your potential babies instead of giving them a chance at their big break, yeah?”
Harry flushes, then leans down to kiss Ginny, slamming their cracked door shut to ward against any other potential visitors. Were it not for the contraceptive potion Ginny diligently took at Healer Harris’ office every month, they both know they could have made James a brother or sister at some point last night or this morning. And since there’s nothing he can do about the Prophet at 7am on a Sunday, they may as well get some more practice in.
...
Though they’d planned to linger at the Burrow that morning into the afternoon, retrieving James morphs into a quick operation. It’s never explicitly discussed but Harry and Ginny are in agreement that it’s better not to give the Weasley parents a chance to discuss their engagement — or, perhaps more accurately, their lack thereof. They stay long enough to get a recap of how James behaved the night before, and leave bitter that James evidently only woke once in the middle of the night for his grandparents.
Returning to Grimmauld, Harry is greeted by an owl from Morgan: Harry — need to discuss today’s Prophet. My floo is open, come through at your leisure. Regards, Morgan.
Harry’s publicist is a tough but cheerful woman with a no-nonsense demeanor and knack for artfully weaving the truth into a most attractive tapestry. Introduced to Harry by Bill Weasley, who was Head Boy to Morgan’s Head Girl when they were in school, Morgan had been working with Harry since the September after the war. That was when it became clear that if Harry was to be a public figure and a trainee auror all at once, he needed someone else to handle matters of the press — by and large because he wasn’t any good at it to begin with. Bill had a vested interest in keeping Harry’s public life under control at the time, because Harry was in a very visible relationship with Bill’s only sister; now that Harry has a baby with Ginny, he’s sure her brother is doubly grateful he made the connection.
Though it’s a Sunday, a publicist never really gets a day off — not when something like this happens — so Morgan is waiting for him in her office when he floos in. Her mahogany-colored hair is twisted at the nape of her neck in a neat knot and her expression is impassive as she sits on the damask sofa on the far side of her office, nowhere near her desk; though her hair is presentable, she’s dressed in a pair of running shorts, trainers, and a worn Ravenclaw sweater, which tells Harry that she hadn’t exactly planned to work today.
“Happy birthday,” she tells Harry as he steps out of her fireplace and brushes soot off his jeans. She almost sounds bored, but he knows her by now, knows she’s just trying to stay neutral until she knows the whole story.
“Thanks,” Harry agrees. “And thanks for being, er, on top of this. I was going to owl you as soon as we picked up James from Ginny’s mum.”
Morgan nods. “Of course. How is James? Getting big?”
Harry nods eagerly, almost forgetting why he’s there. “So big,” he confirms with a grin, reaching in his back pocket and pulling out a picture Molly took last week. “He loves to laugh,” he explains dumbly, since that’s what the baby is doing in the picture.
A smile plays at Morgan’s lips as she looks at the picture. It occurs to Harry that he doesn’t even really know enough about Morgan as a person to know if she even likes babies, though judging by her expression she likes them enough. “He’s gorgeous, Harry. Once we’ve sorted out this engagement business, we should talk about feeding a picture of him to the press so that they don’t send paparazzi to follow you and Ginny around when you’re with him.”
Harry wants to protest that bit — he’s determined that James will have a normal childhood, or as close to it as possible, which would mean shielding him from the public eye entirely — but he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on at the moment. And, anyway, he can’t derail the process of dealing with this.
“Yes, about the, er, engagement business,” Harry nods, sitting down in the brocade armchair across from Morgan. “So the thing is — that wasn’t what it looked like. We’re not engaged.”
Morgan nods, exhaling in a way that tells Harry the publicist is letting go of some of the anger she’d been prepared to feel toward him. “All right. So that saves me from needing to lecture you for not giving me a warning that you were planning a public proposal. Tell me what happened, then.”
“What?” Harry pushes his glasses up his nose, wondering how much Morgan has to know. She knows quite a lot about his life by professional necessity, but is it vital that she learn about Harry’s indecent proposal at the Leaky Cauldron?
“If it wasn’t what it looked like, tell me what it was, Harry. And spare no details. I need to know everything so I can protect you.”
So he takes a deep breath and recounts everything, right down to what he was actually propositioning Ginny for. When he’s finished, Morgan raises an eyebrow. “You’re sure the area was warded so no sound could come out?”
“Hermione did the wards, so…” He cards his hand through his hair. “And, also, I think the headline would have been very different if they could hear. ‘Potter and Weasley trying for second baby’, or something.”
Morgan tilts her head as though to say: you’ve got a point, Potter. “And no one who was inside the wards would talk, correct?”
Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think so. They’ve seen what Hermione does to a sneak.”
Morgan raises an eyebrow — deeply connected everywhere and a former Ravenclaw, it’s not out of the question that she might have heard what happened to Marietta Edgecomb — but doesn’t question it any further. “All right, so I think we can threaten to sue the Prophet if they don’t print a retraction, or at the very least a statement from you. We’ll say that you and Ginny were pranking your friends to make it look like a proposal, but you were actually thanking her for throwing you a party. Simple, easy, believable. We both get out of here within the hour. How’s that?” Harry hesitates ever so slightly and, unlike her client, Morgan is observant: “What objection could you possibly have to that, Harry?”
“Well, the thing is — we’re not engaged yet. But Ginny’s birthday is in ten days, and I’ve already got a ring — my mum’s — and I sort of had a plan to ask her for her birthday. I spoke to McGonagall, and she agreed to let me have the quidditch pitch, so I was going to bring Ginny up so we could fly and then I was going to ask her then.” He pauses to gauge Morgan’s expression, which is thoughtful and quizzical — she’s trying to work out where he’s going with this, but she also already kind of knows. “So I don’t want to forcefully deny it and then announce that we’re engaged only a week and a half later. But I also don’t want to give the impression that the article pressured me into proposing. I’ve had this plan for, like, at least a month.”
“Who knows about the plan?”
“Er, McGonagall, obviously. And Hermione. She’s helping me work out the details. And James, but he can’t very well talk to the press — which is good, because he loves attention and absolutely would.”
“Not Ginny’s parents?”
Harry’s brow furrows in confusion. “Why would Ginny’s parents know?”
Morgan shrugs, sighs in the way she does when he’s asking a question he really should know the answer to. You can take the girl out of Hogwarts, but you can’t take the Ravenclaw out of the girl. “It’s a bit old fashioned, but it’s traditional to ask a witch’s father for her hand before proposing. If you talked to Mr. Weasley, I’m sure Mrs. Weasley would know…”
Harry shakes his head. It would never occur to him to ask Mr. Weasley for permission, but he knows instinctively that Ginny would take offense. He can almost hear her snort: The only permission you need is mine . “Her parents know that us getting married is inevitable at this point, but Ginny would have my bollocks if I asked anyone before I asked her.”
In a rare show of blatant amusement, Morgan guffaws. “I certainly appreciate that,” she comments. “Well, okay. That makes this problem a bit more difficult.” She pauses. “You couldn’t just have made it easy for me, could you? Just once?”
Harry winces. “I’m sorry?” He’s got her birthday written down somewhere — he thinks it’s in October — and he resolves to get her a very nice gift to thank her for her trouble then.
After thinking for a few moments, Morgan decides that they don’t actually have to change much of the statement to allow Harry to make his plan work. In the end, he agrees with her on a general strategy and then leaves her to draft it, telling her he trusts her and doesn’t need to sign off on the final product.
If there’s one thing Morgan enjoys about working with Harry Potter it’s that though he drives her up the wall by just being a mess, he usually doesn’t interfere while she cleans it up for him.
…
The next morning, Harry is relaxed as he readies himself for the day — the first where he’ll be going to Hogwarts in his official capacity as a professor — but Ginny is a bit on edge. The only thing Harry told her when he returned home from his meeting with Morgan was that his publicist would be submitting a statement to be published in the Prophet and all was taken care of. However, when Ginny pressed him, wondering what, exactly, the statement said, Harry did not have an answer. He says he trusts Morgan implicitly, and while Ginny has the utmost faith in Harry’s judgment, the lack of clarity on a plan moving forward has her on edge. She’s never liked not having control over her own story and, she reckons, that’s not something she’s bound to ever let go of.
They’re at the kitchen table, where Harry is having tea, toast, and a cuddle with James while Ginny lounges in her pajamas, having a rare day off from training. Harry is talking to James, who is making vague grunts and coos in return, but Ginny can barely hear it over the sound of her own anxiety. There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that’s reminiscent of the early days after James’ birth, when she constantly felt like her life was happening to her versus something she was actually living. Theoretically, there’s a plate in front of her as well, but she can’t stomach more than slow sips of plain tea — no milk or sugar — while she waits for the post owl to drop off the paper.
It feels to her as though it’s been hours by the time the damn bird finally arrives, bringing with it the paper. And, damnit, Harry’s statement doesn’t make the front page. It’s buried on page two, which she announces to Harry with some trepidation. For his part, Harry isn’t overly concerned about that, and instead tells James that his mummy is being really very silly. Ginny tries not to resent his blasé attitude too much as she begins to read.
The headline declares: “Potter Responds to Engagement Rumors”. In some lead-in text, the paper reminds readers that she’s Harry’s longtime sweetheart and a chaser for the Holyhead Harpies; in case anyone could forget, they also mention that the couple welcomed a son, James, in March of this year. And, finally, she gets to Harry’s statement.
On Saturday night, I turned twenty-four and Ginny, the thoughtful witch that she is, took the time to arrange a babysitter for our son and invite a group of my friends to celebrate with us at the Leaky Cauldron. During the party, we decided to have a laugh and trick our friends into thinking I was proposing by getting down on one knee while I thanked her for planning such a wonderful celebration for me. That moment was captured by the photographer without our permission and published disingenuously by The Daily Prophet. Ginny and I are still very much together and very much in love — and when we get engaged, it will not be in such a public setting. Our friends and family deserve to hear the news before this publication can announce it.
Her heart catches in her throat. Harry managed to correct the paper while still telling the whole of Wizarding Britain that wedding bells were, in fact, chiming in the distance. If she knows her boyfriend — and she likes to think she knows him quite well by now — he wouldn’t give the press a reason to hover for a prolonged period of time. Now that he’s told everyone that a proposal is inevitable, Ginny can’t help but think it’s also imminent.
“How’d Morgan do?” Harry’s voice interrupts her thoughts. It’s only then that Ginny realizes she must have been silent for quite a while; Harry is strapping James into his swing, signaling that he’s going to head to work in a matter of minutes.
Ginny shrugs. “Did you, er, know she was going to say that when we get engaged, our friends and family will know first?” She hopes her tone is casual, but she’s never been good at keeping emotion out of her tone. All she can do is hope that Harry isn’t particularly observant this morning.
“That was my idea, actually,” Harry informs her, beaming as though he’s really very pleased with himself. He hadn’t intended to agitate her, but he can’t say it’s not an enjoyable side effect. After all, he knows the proposal is only a week or so away — and if the anticipation is building for him, he’d like for her to feel it as well. “You know that in general, I don’t really give a fuck what people are saying about me, yeah? But the last thing I want is for us to get engaged and then get stuck fighting off rumors that we only did it because of the fall out from that picture. So this way, we’re signaling that they’re not in control of our timeline.”
“Right,” Ginny agrees. “Should we be saying that in front of James?”
“Timeline?”
“Fuck,” Ginny winces, wondering if it’s bad that she just said it again , and also wondering why she’d even care. It’s only to change the subject, which is, after all, better than trying to analyze whether any part of Harry’s explanation was meant to indicate to her that this particular moment on their aforementioned timeline is rapidly approaching.
Harry shrugs. “Not like James can understand us, is it? And he certainly can’t repeat it. We can revisit it when he’s talking.”
“Knowing us, his first word will be fuck,” Ginny jokes, forcing a laugh. Even a fake laugh makes her feel more at ease.
“Don’t say that,” Harry admonishes her playfully. “It could be wanker.” That elicits a genuine giggle out of Ginny. Harry glances down at the battered old wrist watch her mother gave to him for his seventeenth birthday and sighs. “I really better go. I’ll be at the ministry until noon and then Hogwarts, if you need me,” he tells her, leaning over to brush his lips softly against hers.
Harry’s explanation is, of course, more than innocent enough, and yet the unease in the pit of Ginny’s stomach lingers well into the early afternoon. It’s not that she’s unhappy or even anxious at the prospect of officially becoming engaged, cementing the inevitability of their intention to spend their lives together. In fact, she’s very much looking forward to it. It’s really just that it was easier for her to wrap her head around a complete retraction of the story than it is for her to comprehend this. Harry’s never played games with the press — he’s always told them exactly where they can shove their gossip and half-truths — so why would he choose now to engage?
Luna is in town: in her typical fashion, she drifted in as the celebration at the pub wound down on Harry’s birthday, as if carried by the wind, and asked if she’d missed the party. They might have invited her back to Grimmauld for a nightcap, were it not for the fact that they were singularly focused on continuing what they started in the pub toilet. So instead, they’d suggested that Luna join them for dinner on Monday to make up for her absence at the party. Only that was before — before the article in the Prophet and Harry’s confusingly-worded response to it. Ginny almost forgets they’re going to have company until little more than an hour before her friend is set to arrive.
The situation makes her feel grateful for Harry’s inability to get rid of Kreacher. She’d never admit it — especially not to Hermione — but if there’s anything a house elf is good at, it’s throwing together a hasty dinner for guests. In less than an hour, Kreacher has a cottage pie in the oven and an artfully arranged cheeseboard waiting with a bottle of wine and three glasses near the floo. With nothing else to do, Ginny sets up a play mat for James on the floor of the sitting room, and places the infant on his stomach for tummy time while they wait.
Only around ninety seconds pass before Luna arrives, eyes protuberant as ever as she steps out of the fireplace. She calmly analyzes the scene in front of her and, in lieu of a greeting, asks: “He doesn’t cry when you do that?”
Ginny blinks twice. She’s only ever observed her own son on his stomach, but James has never cried in this position. “Is he supposed to?” She asks anxiously. Is this it? Is this the moment she finally learns just how much James is going to be held back by the circumstances of his birth?
Luna shrugs. “Rolf told me that his niece used to scream something awful whenever she had to be on her stomach,” she replies breezily. It’s a nonanswer for many reasons, not the least of which is that Ginny has absolutely no clue who Luna is referring to.
“Er,” Ginny blinks. “Right.” She debates internally whether she actually wants to ask Luna who or what Rolf is. What if her friend explains that he’s really just a friendly wrackspurt she picked up in Iceland? (After all these years, Ginny is still unclear on the nature of wrackspurts. Are they pests? Could they be pets? Do they talk?)
“Rolf is my lover,” Luna announces without preamble, as though reading Ginny’s mind. “I met him in Bavaria, oh — well, I guess it was around the time James was born, actually.” She kneels down next to the mat and reaches to lift James off of it. Although Luna has only met the baby once — at the memorial ceremony in May, when the boy was only six weeks old — she seems more than comfortable handling him. Perhaps, Ginny thinks, she learned that from her work with magical creatures. “He’s gotten big, hasn’t he?”
“Rolf?” Ginny’s out of practice when it comes to Luna’s odd speaking patterns and storytelling styles; until she readjusts, she’s bound to have a difficult time following her friend.
Luna just smiles serenely. “Well, yes, he is rather large, but actually, I was talking about James.” As if on cue, the baby’s pudgy, clumsy hands reach up and fist a large section of blonde hair. Her son’s newfound habit of pulling hair has made Ginny consider chopping hers off more than once, but her friend seems completely unbothered by it. “He’s gotten much bigger since I saw you last.”
Without thinking about it, Ginny bobs her head up and down in a nod; there’s not much to say to that aside from agreeing with it. “It has been two months.” The tone is not unkind: Luna responds well to factual declarations, so that’s what Ginny gives to her.
“It’s good to see he’s filled out. He’s much cuter now that he’s a bit fat.” As might be expected, Luna thinks nothing of the implication that James wasn’t cute before; Ginny has to remind herself not to be offended. Of course she thought James was beautiful from the moment they first met him — she’s his mum — but she can objectively agree that James is that much more delicious now that he’s gained weight and grown into his head.
“Maybe that’s what Harry has been waiting for,” Luna continues, undeterred by any visible reaction the redhead across from her might have had.
“Pardon?” Ginny’s brow knits in confusion. Now, she’s definitely lost.
Across from her, Luna’s bulbous blue eyes blink, as though she can’t understand Ginny’s puzzlement. “He was waiting for James to get a little cuter before asking you to marry him,” she tells Ginny as though it’s obvious. "For the pictures," she adds, as though assuring Ginny that it's not because Harry might decide not to marry her if James remained a wrinkled newborn.
But if Luna is correct, it’s only because James “getting cuter” has roughly coincided with the boy getting healthier, and Harry and Ginny adjusting to their role as his parents. A few months ago, when they were constantly concerned about the boy’s constitution and size, all while learning how to be his mum and dad, they were not in a place to think beyond surviving in the immediate term. Only recently have they been able to turn an eye to the future.
“I’d expect it’s coming soon.” Without releasing Luna’s hair, James proceeds to put his entire fist in his mouth; if Luna minds that a four month old is essentially sucking on her hair, though, she does not show it. In fact, she seems oblivious to the entire thing.
The words have hardly had a chance to sink in before the flames of the fireplace flicker an almost-neon green and seconds later, Harry emerges from them. His hair is standing on end and his emerald eyes are alight with something like wonder or excitement. Even without students to instruct just yet, his first day as Professor Potter looks decidedly good on him. Almost too good, if Ginny’s honest, because she still has to make it through dinner with a guest and a nighttime routine with the baby before she can act on it.
“Sorry I’m late.” Harry offers a small smile, but Ginny can tell he’s not particularly apologetic, actually. He clearly really enjoyed whatever kept him in Scotland, and likely wanted to give Ginny and Luna a chance to chat on their own as well. Striding across the room, Harry first leans down to give Ginny a soft peck on the lips, before moving to their guest. “Good to see you, Luna,” he greets cheerfully, putting his arms out in offering to James. The infant boy immediately drops Luna’s hair, as if he knows he needs to do so if he’s to be held by his father; Harry responds by taking the boy from Luna and cuddling him against his chest.
Ginny aims an apologetic smile over at Luna. “It’s really gross, to be honest, the way those boys favor each other.”
There’s nothing apologetic about the way Luna beams while she watches Harry with the baby, however. “Oh, it’s so lovely,” she claps her hand. Not one to relish the attention — even for something that fills him with as much pride as being a dad to his son — Harry’s cheeks begin to tinge pink. “I’m so glad to see that you haven’t had trouble bonding with him. I once worked with a colony of thestrals in which a number of the males had been orphaned as foals, and they all struggled to form relationships with offspring when they reproduced.”
Harry’s eyes bulge behind his glasses. He’ll never quite get used to this habit of Luna’s, where she makes deeply personal observations in a tone as unaffected as the one she’d use to discuss the weather. With a sideways glance to Ginny, he can tell his girlfriend, too, is rather taken aback. “Er, no trouble at all,” he comments tightly, uncomfortably.
“Did you want wine, Luna?” Ginny stands from where she’s kneeling near James’ playmat and makes a beeline for the table that holds the wine and cheese. “Kreacher is just putting the finishing touches on our dinner, but he put out some, er, nibbles,” she offers. The grateful smile Harry flashes her way — a sign of his gratitude — fills her with warmth. All of the weariness she’s felt since morning seems to evaporate with just one delighted look from her boyfriend. She resolves to, at least for the evening, push it all — the lack of control she feels and the questions she has — to the back of her mind. One look at Harry, who is nibbling at a slice of cheddar while James whines longingly in its direction, is all she needs to refocus herself.
Dinner passes with enjoyable conversation; Harry and Ginny share mirthful glances over their wine glasses as Luna speaks fondly of her time in Bavaria, surveying a newly discovered species of gnome. In particular, Luna’s current hypothesis — that the species evolved from the common German Garden Gnome following an infestation of invisible magical slug beetles, whose existence is as of yet unproven — is sure to amuse them for the foreseeable future.
When the conversation turns back to Harry and Ginny, Harry tells them about his first day of planning at Hogwarts. He’s clearly energized as he describes his afternoon, having lunch in the castle, followed by meeting with McGonagall and Professor Barden, who is now teaching defense through OWLs. “By the way,” Harry announces casually. “McGonagall would love it if you and James came up to the school next week. I told her maybe the Friday after your birthday, since you have the day off from training? We can have lunch on the grounds, you can see my office, we can even go for a fly on the pitch. I’m sure Hagrid or Neville would be happy to mind James for a bit. What do you think?”
Because Harry’s tone is casual and Ginny has pushed all thoughts of the ring in Harry’s drawer out of her mind for the evening, she doesn’t draw any conclusions. So she grins. “Sounds brilliant,” she agrees happily. “Maybe we could even leave James with my mum for the day.” She allows her mind to flicker to the delicious possibilities of an afternoon where no one at Hogwarts has to mind their baby; the promise of Harry’s office is particularly enticing, given that his desk at Hogwarts has become one of her favorite fantasies.
“Maybe,” Harry agrees, though she’s not sure he sounds entirely convinced by it. Ginny briefly wonders what’s going through his head, but if she starts down that rabbit hole, dinner may as well be over. So she exhales to clear her mind, thankful she can’t see Luna’s expression next to her.
As Kreacher sets out a plate of millionaire’s shortbread and a pot of tea with mugs for pudding, a whimper sounds from James’ swing, soon turning to a full-fledged meltdown. Harry and Ginny flick their eyes over to the clock simultaneously, and share a groan.
“Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself,” Ginny sighs, moving to stand from her chair to retrieve her son from his seat.
Across the table, Harry holds up a hand to stop her. “You stay,” he insists. He gets to see his very best friends often — he sees Hermione most days at the Ministry, though that is bound to change soon, and Ron at least twice a week — but Ginny sees Luna every couple of months at best. “I’ll get him ready and fed, and get him down.” He competently retrieves James and stops only to grab a bottle from the cooling cabinet and to press a kiss to the crown of Ginny’s head before bidding Luna farewell and heading to the stairs.
As Harry’s footsteps on the staircase grow further away, ever quieter, Luna begins to stir her tea deliberately. “I’m due to go back to Bavaria tomorrow,” she announces. Her tone is less dreamy than it normally is, which Ginny recognizes is her friend being apologetic. “But I do think I should try to come back for your birthday.”
“That would be so nice,” Ginny enthuses. No one livens up a birthday party quite like Luna Lovegood, after all, and in any case, Ginny would count herself lucky to see her friend twice in a single month. “Or maybe the weekend after? I doubt we’ll be doing much to celebrate the day itself.” She turns herself sideways on her chair so that she can look at Luna, curling her left leg so that the heel rests on the edge of the seat.
“Maybe not the day of,” Luna agrees, sounding wistful once more. “But I do suspect some celebrations will be in order.”
Ginny raises a single pale eyebrow suspiciously. “What do you know?”
But Luna’s expression is innocent and oddly cervine. “I don’t know anything. The energy is just there. You know?”
Ginny breathes a deep sigh, willing herself not to read too much into it. She does not know.