Days After Death

Ginny stares at the man in front of her, trying to decide if he’s stupid or under the impression that she’s stupid. That would still make him stupid, so maybe this contemplation thing isn’t working.

Merlin bless his little heart, he straightens his back as if that will do anything to help his case.

He looks all nice and proper. He’s wearing a matching pinstripe suit, a dark beige one, which wouldn’t be Ginny’s go-to choice, but it offsets his olive complexion at least. His thick hair is too oiled, the curls too defined, yet too flat from the weight of the product. His features give Ginny the distinct image of one of those Muggle cartoon characters, so being overly scathing to him would probably hurt her heart as collateral.

“So you’ll publish it?” Mr Dingy asks, hopeful, impervious to her gloom.

“No, it’s a terrible idea,” she says flatly. She watches him long enough to see his smile falter and feel the dulled sting of guilt, before recognising that someone has to give it to him straight. So she starts flipping through his manuscript. “I’m not sure what this piece really is about, for starters. Is it about the origin of the Grodzisk Goblins? Is it a political commentary on the name of Grodzisk Goblins? Or is it an opinion piece on who should’ve won the JWAFEPS in 2027?”

“Can’t it be all three?”

Ginny stares at him. Mr Dingy only smiles back, and at this point, Ginny almost admires his resoluteness on the matter.

“No,” she says. “The Josef Wronski Award for Excellent Pitch Skills is too enriched a genre in the Quidditch section that it has developed its own genre and niche of audience in the Prophet. So you either cut your entire piece on the JWAFEPS or everything else has to go–”

“I can’t do that! The whole reason why I talk about Josef Wronski’s history with the Grodzisk Goblins in the first place was to build the significance of his legacy to a wider audience. People just don’t know the importance of Quidditch nowadays, and assume it’s just some mindless sport where brainless knobs swerve around on shiny brooms–”

“Please,” Ginny raises a hand, massaging between her brows with the other, “save me the preaching.” She cannot believe it’s only the middle of the day. “Why did you have to talk about the political controversy of the Grodzisk Goblins then?”

“To acknowledge the ways things have changed and progressed, and how to classify goblins like they’re some sort of inferior animal species like the harpies or magpies or wasps, is outdated and offensive! Especially since regional Quidditch bars goblins to participate!”

“Look, it’s not like I don’t agree with what you’re saying, but your piece lacks focus. I mean,” Ginny flips to a page she had marked under a red tab, “you go on for three paragraphs about the different eras of Wronski’s Quidditch uniform. And even if this wasn’t a convoluted mess, and I did find this good enough to publish, I literally couldn’t. It’s too long.”

It seems the first time during their entire interaction that Mr. Dingy is recognising the truth in what she’s saying, the inevitability of his failure, and he looks downright heartbroken.

“Oh,” he says.

“Sorry,” Ginny says, rather pathetically considering she had just blasted his dreams across the waters. Though reading the draft yesterday gave her a massive headache, she could tell he worked hard on it. It isn’t lazy writing, just… it needed lots of editing. Lots. “Look, maybe you could publish a book or something. Or do a talk about this. There are some good ideas here.”

“Really?” he asks, quickly rejuvenated. It’s almost amusing. He looks older than her, yet he impresses upon her the image of a starry-eyed child. She almost asks him what his secret is.

“Yes, but it can’t be published by the Prophet. Not at its full length at least.”

“Where else am I supposed to publish it then?” he exclaims. “People only really read the Prophet these days, and I would like my hard work to gain some semblance of exposure.”

Ginny sighs and shoots a glance at the small round clock on her desk, its big hand having just knocked past the small gold inscription reading ‘BREAK.’ She was supposed to have gone for lunch two minutes ago.

“I’m not sure who else will publish it, that’s a question for your agent–”

“But I don’t have–”

“Then you may want to look into getting one, sourcing publishing industries yourself or self-publishing. But please, this meeting is over, Mr Dingy. I cannot publish this.”

“But–” he starts, as Ginny stands up.

He watches with wide eyes and a slack jaw as she very calmly opens her drawer, retrieving the Tupperware lunch of Harry’s rasam rice he made yesterday. She’d usually buy herself a Caesar salad from the cafeteria, but given the choice to pack Harry’s cooking, she’d take it every time. He just hadn’t made food in a while, at least not so much (sometimes she thinks Harry forgets he’s only cooking for three now, and not five).

She reaches to the bag leaning against the side of her desk, and whilst still very purposefully ignoring Mr Dingy’s stuttering rebuttals to her dismissal, fetches the plastic fork and spoon contained in a little plastic packet from a side zip, placing them beside her meal and recovering a few tissues from her tissue box.

“There’s surely something I can do,” Mr Dingy is saying. Merlin, he is persistent. He still hasn’t moved from the chair, still hasn’t seemed like he had gotten the hint whatsoever. It’s like she’s still sitting across from him, and she checks herself once more to ensure that she has really gotten up from her seat, and has really told this guy that their business was concluded. A kind little ‘fuck off.’

She had, and he is still talking.

“Janice,” Ginny calls to the younger woman seated at the side desk of the office. She jumps at Ginny’s voice, and to this day Ginny still doesn’t know if it is because Janice is naturally jumpy or if she is just particularly loud. “I’m going to go on my lunch break now.”

Janice nods curtly, sparing Mr Dingy one glance and pursing her lips. She looks back down at the spreadsheet she’s filling in and Ginny only spares a measly pang of guilt at leaving this incredibly irritable man to her assistant, who is much too nice and much too ready to adhere to everyone else’s demands when she can.

That’s why she makes such a good assistant, Ginny thinks as she briskly wishes Mr Dingy farewell, grabs her lunch and walks out of the glass-paned office. If she wants to get any higher than that, she’ll have to learn how to stand up for herself eventually.

Once she snakes past the hall of other offices, towards the main workshop in which many journalists and editors are still working away in their booths, and down the stairs to the front reception, Ginny pauses.

She doesn’t need to eat in the cafeteria today, for she isn’t buying anything. And she isn’t incredibly set on wanting to be seated next to Jon and Carol (who are always under the impression that she wants to be around them when she goes to eat by herself). Jon, who is emotionally cheating on his wife with Carol because he clearly lacks the maturity of a fifty-something-year-old to go without constant attention from others for a few hours a day. Carol, who is probably half his age and is stupid enough to believe Jon is in love with her. And Ginny, with her lousy identical salad, who third-wheels and tries not to act absolutely disgusted as the two toe the line between merely inappropriate to something they could be truly fired for. And she knows it’s only a matter of time before those two actually fuck it out. She knows one day, if she sees anything that truly warrants a red herring, something that betrays that those two are too comfortable around her, she’ll let them know very firmly that their secret wasn’t safe with her. When she stopped being a coward, that is.

So maybe eating in the cafeteria isn’t healthy for her. But the thought of taking her food up to her office, eating silently across from an assistant who’s terrified of her is even more despairing.

So she decides, for the next hour, that she can walk anywhere as long as she is back for the meeting she is supposed to have with Kharan Nahri on some sale reports or whatever. She feels the beginnings of a headache from just thinking about it.

She has to physically shake her head to switch her mind from the stresses of work to the visuals of the sunny park nearby, or the view from the bridge over the river that’s about a fifteen-minute walk. She could charm her rasam warm and obliviate anyone who saw her. It’ll be like she was the only one there, like she doesn’t even exist.

Her imaginations are cruelly cut short when someone familiar walks through the doors to the headquarters, beelining straight for her. She stops walking for the door and glowers in detest.

“I’m booked out for the day, if you want to have a meeting you can speak to reception,” she says shortly, and the man scoffs.

“I’m not going to book an appointment to see you,” Ron grumbles. “Who do you think you are?”

“I’m busy, Ron.”

“Where are you going?”

Ginny closes her eyes and inhales deeply.

“I’m going on my break–”

“Great, I’ll follow–”

“–and you’re not coming.”

She starts an aggressive pace towards the door, trying to pretend Ron is simply a figment of her overworked imagination.

“Aren’t you even curious as to why I’m here?” he asks, dashing to keep up pace with her.

“Nope.”

“You’re not curious at all–?”

She darts into one of the revolving doors, forcing Ron to go behind her. Ginny takes a deep breath and tries to enjoy her one moment of peace in the passage between the office building and the outside world. She thinks maybe she should’ve just put up with Jon and Carol today, and then guiltily crushes the thought.

As if to make up for it, she doesn’t simply Apparate as soon as she’s out of the building to a more secluded spot but waits on the side for her brother.

Ron looks the same as he’s looked for the past ten years, which quickly nullifies the remnants of her shame. Ginny feels hyper-aware that she’s probably aged more than a decade in the last six months, but Ron is still slim and lanky like he was as a boy, yet with a gait less flexible, betraying the stiffness he often complained about during get-togethers with Harry and the rest of the family. He wears a faded grey sweater, cargo pants and a wristband with different shades of pink, haphazard beads on thinning red string. He wears that everywhere. Rose made that for him when she was around seven, and Hugo made a matching one for Hermione, which Ginny knows Hermione doesn’t wear anymore. Ron doesn’t look like he’s shaven in a few days, but that doesn’t pique any particular alarm in Ginny’s mind. She knows he can get lazy.

What does pique her interest is the way he’s staring toward the London city skyline now that he has her undivided attention.

She crosses her arms. He truly has a terrible poker face.

“What do you want, Ron?”

“Can’t a man pop in to visit his little sister every once in a while?”

“I swear on Salazar’s Scanties if I have to hex an answer out of you now so I can go have my break–”

“Okay, okay! Merlin, I will never know why you always resort to violence so quickly,” Ron says gruffly. He shoots her a glare so alike how he used to when he was younger that it softens her immediately. “Hermione and Harry had a row about a week ago.”

Ginny’s brows peek up in surprise.

“What?” she blurts before she can stop herself, which only makes Ron’s face crease into something almost like concern, but Ginny doesn’t take the time to really look at him as she ought to, so it remains a mystery to her.

“So you didn’t know about it? He didn’t tell you anything about it?” he asks her, frowning deeply.

She briefly considers lying to him, telling him that Harry told her everything. Because of course he would. Why wouldn’t he? But as soon as she conceptualises that question she turns it away. She knows the answer to it, deep down, but again, she’s not one to be looking too closely at such things.

So there’s nothing more to say than, “No. He didn’t tell me anything.”

Ron’s frown only deepens. He gets these little lines across his forehead when he does that, and so do her other brothers because that’s what happened when her dad used to frown. She knows she’s probably mirroring him too, those shared little ugly engravings on their faces, prominent from age and with discomfort over people who won’t talk to them enough.

Hermione and Harry didn’t do the fighting. That was Ron’s job. Ron liked to deny it, but everyone, probably including him, knew it. Ginny, who had always been the observer looking in on their tight trio, knows it too. Which is why it’s so alarming when Harry and Hermione do get into something notable enough to get her brother Flooing into the Prophet Headquarters just to chat to her about it.

If he had come trying to pull some information on Harry’s side from her, she hasn’t got anything for him, and his disappointment shows. But that doesn’t mean Ginny doesn’t have any interest herself. She has always revolved her life around this group with no official space for her, even when she didn’t know she was doing it. Old habits die hard, she guesses. But Harry is also her husband, so she doubts her curiosity will trigger any particular warning bells to Ron.

“Hermione and Harry fought about something then?” she asks him, perhaps a bit too nonchalantly.

“Yeah,” Ron says, distant, too distracted by his own musings on the matter to give her much scrutiny. “At the Ministry too.”

“What?” Ginny doesn’t bother to hide her surprise anymore. “In front of people? In front of Lily?” Because of course her own daughter would know before she does.

But Ron shakes his head.

“No, well– It was in front of people. But only a few. One of them was Nero. The scrawny kid who works under ‘Mione and follows her around everywhere? She told me she was specifically embarrassed to have unloaded shit in front of them. Now things are awkward between–”

“Ron, I don’t care about Hermione’s assistant,” Ginny says flatly, putting a hand up.

A group of people, smiling coworkers who are most definitely genuine friends, go through the revolving doors and Ginny and Ron are forced to walk a little away to keep their privacy. Except they don’t stop walking, as if by some mutual understanding they know what they really need now is to pace.

“Tell me what happened between Harry and Hermione,” Ginny says once she can. “What got them so tizzied that you have to Floo directly to my workplace rather than to my house to ask Harry yourself?”

Ron suddenly looks nervous. The lines are back and he’s staring at the cement walkway as if it’s extremely interesting.

“Hermione is pretty pissed at him, doesn’t want me going over and talking to him, even if it’s just to work things out,” Ron says just clearly enough to be heard, but it’s bordering on mumbling rubbish. “But she never said I couldn’t visit you.” At this, he gives her a sidelong look and grins something small. Ginny reckons he’s too old to be cheeky.

“Some good that did you, I’ve got nothing to report back.”

Maybe she sounds a bit too bitter as she says it, because Ron attempts to placate her, which would be a laugh if she could somehow absolve herself from the situation. Ron trying to play peacemaker will always be humorous, but she can never not involve herself when it’s something to do with Harry. She thinks that may be her– their– downfall. She’s too proud to ever admit it aloud, though.

“Well, Hermione’s actually pretty cagey about the details too,” Ron sighs. “That's why I came to you.”

“So she didn’t tell you why they fought?”

At this, Ron is silent. And Ginny knows his wife had the decency to tell him, so Ron doesn’t know what to say now.

“I think you should hear it from him,” he says sheepishly, and Ginny reminds herself that she can’t scream at Ron about how Harry won’t tell her anything even if she did ask. She has to claw it out of him and once she gets the answer it won’t be the least bit satisfying for either of them.

He looks at the wristwatch, and the two are approaching the bridge that Ginny had planned to go to about twenty minutes ago.

“Plus, I think he’s cross with me too,” Ron admits, and now this really has sparked her attention. “So I need to know.”

“And you want me to find out for you?” Ginny grumbles, and Ron simply flashes her a smile.

“You’ve got it, Gin. Harry will listen to you better than me.” He says it like he truly believes it. “I’ll leave you to your break now. I have to oversee Roxanne clocking in at the shop or else she reckons her full payments don’t go through for the hours she works.”

“Okay,” Ginny frowns, “I’ll see you then.”

“Bye, Gin. And thanks.”

Then Ron simply Disapparates. And Ginny’s on her bridge, overlooking the calm murky green river water below her, and the small smudges of people walking on its sides, pointing at the boats bobbing here and there, or taking pictures of themselves. Ginny can’t see them all that well, nor the details of the water itself. Her vision’s probably gotten more shit with time, too.

She looks down at the cold soup in her hands. The rasam now seems unappealing to her.

Harry’s home earlier than usual. He’s doing the dishes when she Floos in. When she thinks about it now, he’s been going home earlier, which explains the recent surges in cooking. He’s probably avoiding Hermione, or she’s probably dismissing him early.

Maybe this argument was more intense than she had originally given it credit to be.

“Hey, you’re back,” she says as a way of greeting. Her eyes roam the files that have been hastily dumped onto the dining table, about some investigation Harry’s doing.

“Hey Gin,” he says, turning the tap off and turning to her. “What’re you in the mood for to eat tonight? I could make some crab curry…”

“You know I’m not picky,” she responds, trying for a smile and knowing she’s falling short. She’s not good at beating around the bush, but always feels as if she has to with Harry. “Is there no more rasam left?”

“Oh, there is. But I thought we’d want something different tonight.”

“Do we have space in the fridge?”

“Teddy’s swinging by later to pick some up,” he smiles.

“Maybe James will appreciate some too,” she says before she can stop himself. Her voice is light, unaccusing, casual, but she sees Harry stiffen anyway and that annoys her more than anything else. “You know, since he works all those late hours at the Ministry, he might not be able to cook something up for himself all the time. And it’s been a while since he’s eaten our food.”

“Sure, Gin. Of course.”

He’s dismissive now, turning to the fridge and unloading the frozen ingredients he needs. He’s probably thinking that Ginny’s going to go upstairs to her room, start writing a letter to James, and then read her book or watch some sport. Ginny’s not even sure if he’s given it enough thought to go that far, actually.

She exhales sharply. Fuck the pretences.

“Ron came by my work today,” she says, watching him closely, seeing how he pauses for a moment before continuing. “Said you and Hermione had a fight.”

“He’s being dramatic. It was a disagreement, not a fight. That’s all.”

Ginny supposes she should get used to feeling disappointment when she asks Harry about his life. But instead, she’ll find herself surprised each time, and then feel stupid for feeling it.

“Ron’s never come to me before to try to manage a disagreement between you two,” she says.

“Well, Hermione and I don’t have many disagreements usually.”

Cut the shit, she wants to snap at him. And she probably could have if they were twenty and without children, but he’s gotten more sensitive as they’ve gotten older, and she’s become a little more brutal and a little less caring about it.

“What was the disagreement about?” she asks him instead.

Harry sighs.

“Nothing much, Gin. It’s fine.”

“I want to know.” She crosses her arms. “Ron knew because Hermione told him about your fight with her.” She pauses, but Harry doesn’t say anything, only continues to prep the crab. “He came to me because he thought you’d be mad at him too. Are you mad at him?”

“No,” Harry says, but he’s clearly irritated. She’s not sure if it’s at her or Ron, though.

“Must’ve been a pretty big disagreement for Ron to go on his own little reconnaissance mission in the name of making peace between you two,” she says, coming over to the dining table. She flicks one of the corners of the papers. “Are you two still friends?”

He looks at her, plain shock on his face, until his expression morphs into something mixed with disgust at her for even thinking such a thing.

“Of course,” he says, defensive.

Ginny knows Harry well enough to know that his issue not only lies with the apparent disagreement with Hermione that caused him to make him feel protective over his friendship with her, but also from the way she easily laid it out to him. Are you still friends? As if there is a very real possibility that one day they wouldn’t be and when that day came the world wouldn’t implode on itself. Secretly, Ginny knows how much Harry cares about his close circle, how within that circle stood Hermione and Ron and how he subconsciously walled everyone else out. She had given up trying to insert herself long ago, thinking that him being in love with her was enough.

She sighs.

“Why would you think we’re not friends anymore?” Harry asks, and it’s like he’s digging his own grave on purpose.

“It was just a question,” Ginny shrugs. She knows this hurts him, and she sadistically wants it to. He hasn’t done anything on purpose to hurt her, she knows he never would. The guilt from the recognition is not enough to stop her though, it’s nothing she doesn’t already know. “People have fallouts all of the time. Look at you and Luna, you and Neville–”

“Ginny, stop,” Harry growls at her warningly, and something in her flickers to life. Ginny has to focus to keep her face neutral from smirking at it. Harry looks bloody pissed off. “Neville and I are not on bad terms, and Luna is… she’s fine too. You know we don’t talk for her sake.”

The previous satisfaction of his admonishment dwindles almost immediately at that, and Ginny scowls.

“You always tell yourself that,” she grumbles, because she knows arguing with him over this retired topic won’t change his stance on anything. Old age has made him stubborn, but not as stubborn as her. “Anyways, from what I’ve heard she’s long recovered by now. Sobered up years ago.”

He flashes a look at her.

“From what you’ve heard?” he repeats flatly.

“Yes. From Neville, because I still write to him and he still writes to her,” she crosses her arms, now not able to stop from sneering at him when shock crosses over his features for the second time. “Does more than write to her, actually. They still hang out.”

Harry’s upper lip twitches. He looks like he’s going to retort something to her, either defend his dying relationship with Neville or his ostensibly honourable stance with Luna, but thinks better of it. Ginny has always intimidated men enough to think before they speak, an effect she’s glad still works on him, because now he looks downright irritated about his lack of response. He wants to ask about them, but he knows she won’t say anything until he fesses up about Hermione. It’s a crossfire, a flimsy one, since Ginny actually hasn’t been writing to Neville as much as she ought to, so she doesn’t know more than what she has already told Harry. It’s not like he knows that, though. She could spin any lie and there would be a chance he believed it based on how little he still knew about her.

“I won’t get riled by you,” he says instead.

She simply raises a brow.

“I know what you’re trying to do, you always do this,” he seethes, casting a resentful look at a stain on the wall from when James was fifteen and toppled Ginny’s floating cup of self-making coffee. They couldn’t get the stain out, not even with magic.

It’s a bittersweet memory that brings to rise other similar recurring situations with Ginny’s two youngest, occurrences she knows both she and Harry were the ultimate causes of for bringing them into this world, for shaping them to be how they are now. The thought either does not occur to Harry or does not bring him nearly as much warmth as it brings her.

“Why do you think I do it then?” she asks him before she can stop herself. She doesn’t realise how tired she is of their usual games, how badly she longs for change in something, and how badly she wants that something to be him.

Harry just scoffs, and Ginny closes herself back up once more.

“I don’t even know,” he grouches, and this hurts the most because she knows he’s telling her the truth, knows that his languid, unbothered actions aren’t put-on like hers, but genuine. “I don’t even know why you want me to tell you so bad. The argument with Hermione had nothing to do with you.”

She swallows her hurt, puts it on a low simmer that transforms into bitterness.

“Because she’s my sister-in-law and you’re my husband, and I want to know about these things,” she says.

“Well, why didn’t Ron tell you? He’s your brother anyways.”

“He said I should hear it from you.”

Harry scratches his head, looks away.

“It’s really not my business,” he says. “The argument had nothing to do–”

“Oh, just shut up and just tell me.”

“Merlin’s fucking beard Gin,” he swears, his hand wiping his forehead as if her pissing him off is physically taxing on him. “Why are you always like this? You can’t give me a break once. You’re always stubborn and you always have to get your way. Have you ever thought that maybe I don’t feel comfortable sharing these sorts of things with you?”

She scrunches her face at him, feeling her own anger rear its head.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” She spits. “Why am I always like this? Are you seriously asking me that question?”

He ignores her, on a rant now, apparently. His voice heightens as if he’s afraid he’ll lose steam if he falters for one moment.

“You’re never happy to be around me, you always look at me as if I’m doing something wrong. And this– this argument– with Hermione. I don’t want to tell you what it’s about because you’ll just scoff and complain and rub salt in the wound because that’s what you do! I can’t be around you for more than a few moments because you make me feel like shit, and I can’t have a fucking conversation with you without you trying to goad me into an argument! You’re the last person I would tell!”

Harry stops yelling then, the last word cut off in a half-choke as if the shock of what he’s just revealed to her had caught up to him in the middle of saying it. Ginny blinks, equally surprised. He’s looking at her, bottom lip pulled to the side in a sort of cringe, as if he’s expecting her to blow up at him, to scream at him within an inch of his life. Maybe she should, what he had said was undoubtedly hurtful, but she finds herself not knowing what to say. It’s as if his anger has nullified hers.

At her silence, he seems to deflate, a guilty frown on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says, defeated.

“It’s okay,” she says softly. “But I am surprised. It’s been a while since you’ve gotten angry like that at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Harry.”

He breathes.

“Okay.”

She looks at the ground, knowing she’s been beaten. If she pushes the subject anymore, she knows she’ll just be proving his point. And whatever the case is, whether she goads him on purpose or not, she doesn’t actually like arguing with Harry. But it’s the only thing she feels she knows how to do right with him anymore.

She turns to leave when Harry speaks up.

“Hermione told me Ron and her were going to marriage counselling,” he says. “I told her that I thought they didn’t need it and she disagreed. That’s what the argument was about.”

Ginny looks at him for a while. Harry is staring at the counter where the defrosting meat from the freezer is, and he seems a million miles away.

“Why did you tell her not to go?” she asks.

“I told you. Because I didn’t think they needed it.”

“And why do you have the final verdict on what their marriage is like?”

“I’m not saying I have the final verdict,” he groans, starting to gesture wildly. “It’s just that it’s Ron and Hermione. Before I even knew what love was I knew they were it for each other. And they’re my best friends. I know how much they love each other, I’ve seen it play out in real-time in front of my own eyes. Ron’s always going on about what romantic anniversary present he should give her, and Hermione’s always talking about how supportive Ron is of her career. She used to say that… um… she used to say…”

He trails off.

“She used to say that,” he says finally.

Ginny wonders if Harry and her are really that blind. As much as she would like to claim the high ground and say that she saw this coming, she truly hadn’t. Sure, Ron hasn’t been fawning over her for a while now, but that never struck her as anything negative. More along the lines that he was settling down comfortably with his role in their dynamic. And Hermione has always been Hermione. Strong, unencumbered by such things, and Ron loved that about her. And though Harry wasn’t the best at explaining herself, she understood him in this regard. They were Ron and Hermione. Hermione and Ron. They were the textbook example of love, and Ginny couldn’t imagine a universe where they hadn’t found each other, let alone a universe where they left one another.

“She wouldn’t tell you what had changed, if something happened?” she asks him.

He shakes his head.

“No, apparently there was nothing big,” he says. “I don’t know. She was cagey with the details.”

Ginny nods, wondering why Harry thought to keep this so private to her. It’s not like marriage counselling was a despicable sin, unheard of. It wasn’t like admitting to the imperfection of one’s marriage was either.

And the universe seemed to answer that for her almost immediately.

“She, um, she thought we should seek counselling too,” Harry says, sheepish.

Ah, so that’s what pissed him off, she thinks flatly. And so it was about me after all.

“Does she know about how we argue?”

“No,” he says, quickly. “No, I don’t tell anyone. It’s not anyone else’s business.”

She nods.

“Ok, Harry,” she says, and she goes upstairs, because she feels like she might cry if she stays and asks the questions she wants to ask. She thinks she may have the answers to them already, they’re just so disappointing that the thought of them almost masochistically compels her to ask them anyway.

Hermione is smart, it shouldn’t surprise her that she knows. Maybe she’s watched the way they circle around each other during Christmas gatherings, maybe she’s seen how their conversation lulls when they’re invited on double dates with them. When Ron and Harry buddy up and walk ahead to share new stories on their respective jobs, maybe she’s seen how she stares at Harry’s back, willing him to look back at her. Maybe she does the same with Ron, but she thoroughly doubts it.

Harry doesn’t follow her upstairs to ask what’s wrong.

Ginny goes to her room and mentally berates herself until her eyes dry. She’s completely embarrassed, knowing that Hermione has some inkling of the truth of what Harry and her have turned out to be. Because they were supposed to be exactly like they were. And how ironic was that? She’s been in love with Harry since the first moment she saw him. How on earth can she find herself here, decades later, still wishing for him? It was humiliating to know she couldn’t even keep her husband’s love.

She remembered the blissful years when she thought she had caught his heart for life. It was before they got married, before she found she was pregnant with James (which was a month before the wedding), before Harry became an Auror, maybe a little after the war. She knew he was all hers, and even now she knew he had been.

But years and years happened and Ginny found herself a stranger to her own husband, who couldn’t care to look at her the same way she still found herself looking at him. Not with nearly the same affection and warmth, but a heart-achingly familiar obsession, the drive to know him, to always know him. Because if she didn’t try anymore then she knew they would have nothing left.

What had she done for this to happen? Did she bore him? Did he fall in love with the idea of them more than he fell in love with her? Did she happen to change so disgustingly one day that he fell out of love?

I’m the last person he would share anything with, he said so himself, she thought, miserably. I feel so sick with myself, and I hate it. Makes me feel old as shit.

She imagined how she was when she was a teenager, wild and unafraid to live life when everything was on the brink of war. She made sure her biggest concerns would be winning the Quidditch cup, finding the next attractive (but never more attractive than her), lonely Hogwarts boy to snog, and keeping a passing grade in Transfiguration. She assured herself that she would have a girlhood, in war or not. She wouldn’t cower to such things if it stood in the way of her life.

She thought about herself now, working a job she hated, which made her talk to people she hated, and coming back to the same house she had lived in for the past two decades that held a man she was forever tied to who hated her. To hold a daughter who hated her, and be empty of two sons who were long done with that home, who she knew were happy to be out and away though it felt to her as if the house were a body without its lungs in their absence.

There was the future, which was marrying Harry and starting a family with him, and then there was this. She imagined the future she was living now would break her younger self.

Hermione might have caught her looking at Harry on those dates, not in the way a wife looks at her husband, but in the way a woman looks at something she knows she can never touch. And maybe that’s why Hermione had always been more observant than Ron, more understanding than Ron, too.

“We should hang out more,” she remembers Hermione saying on one of these days, back when double dates weren’t a total act of pretending she was alright with being a fourth wheel to the untouchable group that saved the world. Ginny had looked at her, probably not being able to hide her surprise. “We need more friends. Or at least I do.”

Ginny had laughed, Hermione rarely ever used self-deprecation to earn affection. She didn’t realise at the time that that was what probably made her proposal genuine, and not as lighthearted as she had put it. But Ginny had never guessed Hermione to feel lonely, especially when she had Ron and Harry.

This was before Harry and she had stopped talking to Luna, before Neville had grown distant to them in a similar measure. So her plans to hang out with Hermione had never actually been brought to fruition.

She thinks of Luna and Neville then. She loves Hermione, but she had always felt like Harry’s friend before they were sisters by marriage. Luna and Neville had always been hers. They were the godparents of her two youngest children, her daughter literally had Luna’s name, of course she had loved them.

But there is a long, deeply ingrained guilt that surrounds the thought of Luna, which had pushed away ideas of reaching out to her for years. Neville would still write to her, but his visits grew rare, and normally when he came, he came for his godson’s sake. He’s cold in a polite way, always making sure Ginny won’t be able to bridge the gap he had laid out for them following, well, many separate instances she can’t quite make sense of. She doesn’t know if she wants to.

“I need friends,” she repeats to herself, like a mantra as she searches her bedside table for the parchment and ink.

It isn’t as if they are on necessarily bad terms, but it doesn’t mean they are on good terms either. She knows she hurt Luna when they stopped talking, but surely Luna knows how badly Ginny was hurt by her habits too. Surely she knows the decision to draw boundaries wasn’t just because of Harry.

She misses her. And that has to be enough despite the ugly grudge that plagued the course of their relationship.

She recovers a quill from her desk.

Ginny’s tired of her line of vision being solely secluded to Harry. She wants for more than this chasm-like loneliness.

She sits down and starts to write, faster than her brain can make up the floral words needed to beautifully intertwine her pure, if not slightly depressing, intentions. In the end, her letter is an ugly, coarse thing like the rest of her. Ginny has never been good at beating around the bush anyway.

Luna,

I know it’s been a while, but I was wondering if you would like to meet.