A/N: Chapter Five!!! So, here it is. Read and enjoy.
“Ah! If it isn’t Harry, Ron, and Hermione!” said George’s voice from the kitchen as the trio entered the room.
“Yeah, back from your little adventure at the Dursley’s?” Fred joined in.
“Heard about your outbreak, Ron, and I have to say, I didn’t think you were capable of it. I’m so proud,” George said to a rapidly reddening Ron.
Fred was pretending to wipe a tear from his eye.
Hermione looked disapproving. Harry knew that despite how grateful she was that Ron had defended her, she didn’t want to encourage a repeat performance. Harry would have chuckled, but he was too busy thinking through what he was about to do.
“Ginny,” Harry said squeakily, he cleared his throat, and then began again, “Ginny, could I have a word with you in the other room? Please.”
Mrs. Weasley was so busy preparing lunch that she was completely ignoring her children, so Harry was sure she had not heard what he had said. Fred and George exchanged significant looks. Ron appeared deliberately deaf to the question Harry had posed to Ginny, and Hermione wore a knowing expression. Harry would hate to see that expression crumple when Hermione realized he was not about to do what she clearly expected him to do.
“We’ve got a couple of things to say to you lot as well,” said George.
“But we’ll give you a couple of minutes, Harry. Mind you, only a couple, because I don’t think my dear brother, Ron, will be able to contain his curiosity as to who walked into our shop this morning with some rather interesting news.” Fred grinned, malevolently.
“What? Who?” Ron said.
“You see what we mean, Harry? Insatiable appetite for knowledge. That’s our Ron! So run along.” George urged, with a shooing motion.
Harry looked at Ginny, who walked right past Harry into the living room. If Harry hadn’t just asked her if they could talk, he would have sworn she was storming out of the room, but Harry followed nonetheless. When he found Ginny in the living room, she had sat down in a chair near the fire, and was looking at Harry with a cool stare. In reality, she had no idea what to expect next from Harry Potter, but she remained steadfastly silent. He wanted to talk, so he could speak first.
“Um…Ginny…you see. I know what happened…I mean…This is harder than I thought it was going to be.”
“Just spit it out, Harry. You haven’t come to break up with me again, and whatever you have to say can’t top that.” Ginny said curtly.
Harry felt guilt rise in his stomach.
“Look, Ginny, before we started going out, we were friends. Really good friends, and I want us to be friends again.” Harry finished. He had spoken very quickly so that he could be sure he said what he had meant to say before he lost use of his tongue again.
“You want to be friends?” Ginny asked.
“Yeah, I do.” Harry said, a little more calmly.
Ginny looked at Harry with an unreadable stare. Well, it was unreadable to Harry, at least. He was sure if Hermione were here she could probably break down everything that Ginny was feeling and what was oh-so-obviously written on her face, but Harry often thought Hermione expected too much of him. He didn’t know how to interpret girls. To him, feelings were pretty simple. Yes, he still had very strong feelings for Ginny, but he didn’t want to lose a friend. Surely she saw the logic here, also.
“Alright, we can be friends again, Harry. You never stopped being my friend. It’s just gonna take a bit of work to make things-” Ginny faltered, looking at Harry as though unsure of how to describe the tension that was unspoken, stretched between them every time they were in each other’s presence.
“Not so weird.” Harry finished for her, “Yeah, I know.”
Harry sat in the chair across from Ginny, and they didn’t speak, but just looked at one another. After a moment, a memory came unbidden to Harry, and he smiled.
“What?” asked Ginny, a tentative smile on her lips, “What’s funny?”
“I just remembered the first time I really saw you.”
“Yeah. When was that?” Ginny asked, smiling the first real smile she had felt on her face since Harry had broken things off between them.
“My first day on the Hogwarts Express.”
“Really? I didn’t think you even knew I was there that day.” Ginny looked surprised.
“Oh, no. I remember a little girl running after the train, laughing and crying at the same time. She wanted so badly to go with her brothers. I didn’t even know who you were then, only that you loved your brothers enough to want to follow them as far as you were capable of going.” Harry paused; he didn’t even realize he remembered this particular memory, but the came to the conclusion that it had always been in the back of his mind when he thought of Ginny.
“That’s always stuck with me, for some reason.” Harry was now gazing into the fire as he completed his trip down Memory Lane. He had nearly forgotten that Ginny was in the room, but for the taut rope of tension that had worked its way back between them.
He looked up her now.
“Ginny, I-” he started. Not really sure what he was going to say; only knowing that this feeling he had in his heart, this aching could not be ignored. He was pretty sure that he, Harry Potter, was in love with Ginny Weasley, although he told himself that this couldn’t be true. He didn’t know what love meant. Then Mrs. Weasley’s words came back to him,
“At seventeen, witches and wizards are ready, emotionally, to get jobs, even to marry if it’s the right person… We know at a younger age that we would take many risks for the people we love, and we know to accept that the ones we love will take great risks to continue loving us.”
This is what she had meant. She knew Harry was in love with Ginny, and she had, in her own Mrs. Weasley way told him that it was ok to love Ginny too. He didn’t know how he would have finished the sentence he had started, the sentence Ginny waited expectantly for him to complete, because at that moment Fred, George, Ron, and Hermione walked into the room.
He silently thanked them for interrupting him. He may be in love with Ginny, but that was all the more reason not to be with her. He was glad he hadn’t had a chance to spill his heart to her before he had thought about the consequences of such an admission.
Hermione glanced from Ginny’s somewhat disappointed face to Harry’s determinedly blank expression before she shrugged and, with an audible sigh, perched herself on one of the end tables next to Ron’s chair. Fred took the remaining chair, and George sprawled on the floor, grinning cheekily up at the rest.
“Well, you know that our highly successful business draws quite a crowd from Hogwarts,” Fred began, as the rest waited expectantly for a trademark, entertaining Fred and George tale.
They all nodded in agreement with this statement, and George picked up the thread his brother had left dangling,
“This morning we had a customer, one of our favorites,”
“She ordered quite a few love potions not too long ago,” Fred interjected
“Right, anyway, this girl came in today looking sulky indeed.”
“So I asked in my comforting, consoling manner, what the problem was.”
“Comforting, my arse, Fred. He asked what her problem was.”
“I said it in a highly comforting manner, my dear George. It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.”
“Leave off talking about that, you two. What’s the story?” Ron demanded impatiently.
“Patience, little brother,” George said, “Please continue, Fred.”
“This girl, by the name of Romilda Vane, proceeded to accuse us of selling love potions that didn’t work properly.”
Ron’s whole face burned scarlet. Fred and George smiled mockingly at Ron.
“Apparently, no one had informed Romilda of how well our potion had worked. I thought I’d spare you the embarrassment, though Ron.” George said.
“Yeah, you’re lucky. I wanted to tell her how you’d gone nutters over her because of that potion, I was planning to include the bit Harry told us about having to dangle you in the air to keep you under control, too, but George here decided we should play it dumb.”
“So we asked Ms. Vane, How do you know the potions haven’t worked?”
“And she replied that the person she had administered the potion to was now dating someone else.”
“I politely inquired as to whom said person was dating. You see, I knew she was speaking about you, Harry ‘mboy, even if she didn’t know we knew.”
“She then revealed to me that Harry Potter was now dating Ginny Weasley. And how could Ginny Weasley have accomplished this feat?”
“She asked us if we saved the best love potions for our sister.”
“Somehow, through our shock at the information we had just been given, we managed to kick her out of our shop for insinuating that our sister was unable to attract boys without the use of love potions.”
Fred looked at Harry and Ginny who were now both glancing at the door, as though eager to escape the round of questioning that was sure to come.
“Now, George and I felt deprived. How was it that every student at Hogwarts knew that my little sister had moved on to yet another boy,”
“A much better choice, this time, by the way, Ginny,” George added
“And we had no idea?” Fred concluded.
There was a nervous shuffling in the room. It seemed that it was going to be infinitely harder for Ron to ignore the fact that Harry had dumped his little sister. Hermione looked at Ginny, as though to offer her silent support. Ginny and Harry stared at each other. Ginny inclined her head slightly as if to ask, “Do you want to tell them or should I?”
Harry nodded almost imperceptively and Ginny took that to mean that he would tell Fred and George the truth.
“About that, um, you see, Ginny and I aren’t…well, we’re not together anymore.”
Harry looked at the floor while he said this. He waited for the uproar he had gotten from Hermione. He was not expecting Fred and George to be nodding understandably.
“Well, Gin, you do know how to move through men don’t you? Lost a good one this time, you did. And Harry lost out too, I mean, she is our sister, and that means she has the best genes anyone could ask for,” George said in a sad voice that hardly reflected the joke in his tone.
“I reckon we’re gonna have to keep a closer eye on things at Hogwarts next year.”
This last bit of Fred’s statement dropped all thoughts of retort from Ginny’s mind, because she had comebacks for Fred’s and George’s accusations.
“Hogwarts? Is it opening?” Hermione asked breathlessly.
“Yeah, we have it from Flitwick that the governors decided this morning that if parents were willing to let students return, that the school would stay open for them.”
Hermione’s mouth was shaped into and “o” of surprise. Harry knew that she was considering her decision to go with Harry this year, now that she knew Hogwarts was going to be open.
“Wait, you heard from Flitwick?” Ron asked, befuddled.
“Yeah, he came in this morning, too. Wanted to buy a bunch of hats with Shield Charms on them to show his fourth years.”
“Oh.” Ron looked as though he was thinking hard. Harry also knew that now Ron was going to have an even more difficult time talking Mrs. Weasley into letting him go with Harry.
“Well, I reckon we’d better go upstairs and unpack a bit.” Fred said.
“What, are you staying here?” Ron asked.
“The wedding’s in less than four days now, you git. We don’t want to miss all the fun. Maybe mum will get so mad she’ll curse Fleur. You never know.” George replied.
“That means Bill’s going to be moving up to Percy’s room. Mum’s going to have a fit. He isn’t coming to the wedding.”
With this, they left the room. Harry wanted nothing more than to discuss the plans he, Ron, and Hermione had made for the next year, but he didn’t want to say anything in front of Ginny. Ginny realized that there was something they weren’t telling her by the way they were watching one another. They were trying to communicate silently, and the thought made Ginny chuckle.
“You lot are never going to be able to have the conversation you’re dying to have in silence, you know. I can tell it’s big and it has to do with Hogwarts re-opening.” She waited for any of the three to say something, but they remained stonily silent, “Alright, you don’t have to tell me, but you could, you know. I’m not about to blab, I can keep a secret.”
Harry knew Ginny could keep a secret, knew she would keep it until her dying day if Harry asked her too. But he knew Ginny, and he knew if he told her, she’d want to come too. Harry couldn’t risk that.
Harry looked at Ron and Hermione for confirmation of his feelings towards the matter, and instead found Hermione looking as though she longed for nothing more than to be able to confide the truth in Ginny. Ron looked uncertainly between Harry and his sister, but Harry knew Ron wanted to tell her, too.
“I mean, she’ll find out anyway, Harry,” Ron said, “don’t you think we could tell her. Besides, I’m looking at Hermione, and I’m thinking that she’s not gonna be able to keep this from Ginny.”
Hermione looked indignantly at Ron,
“I could so, Ron, you know I could. How could you say I can’t keep a secret?”
“Right, because I’m sure you’ve kept so many things from Ginny over the years.”
“If Harry asked me not to tell anyone, then I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m not doubting your ability to keep a secret, Hermione, I’m just saying that you’re a girl, and girls tend to tell other girls things that are supposed to be secret.”
“Ron Weasley that is the most degrading thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth. You don’t know-”
“OK! We’ll tell Ginny! Whatever it takes to make you two leave off fighting!”
Ginny would have giggled at the expressions on Ron’s and Hermione’s faces. They both seemed to be embarrassed, yet triumphant. At least their bickering had got them what they had wanted. But Ginny didn’t giggle. She knew that she was about to be let in on the secret plans she knew these three had made without her.
“Here’s the thing Ginny. At the beginning of last year, I started taking private lessons with Dum- with the headmaster,” Harry was still shocked at how hard it was to think about Dumbledore, to remember all of the little things that had made him the greatest wizard Harry had ever or would ever know. If he simply referred to him as the “headmaster” as he retold the stories of every lesson, he wouldn’t feel the empty pit in his stomach stretch into a trench of sorrow. So he didn’t think of Dumbledore’s patience or twinkling blue gaze as he commented proudly on how well Harry had kept up with the story of Tom Riddle’s. He told Ginny the entire story of Riddle. Harry spoke mechanically, almost dispassionately until he reached the end of his stories about Riddle and the lessons. Now he was reaching the difficult stage of his story. This was the part where he could no longer objectively tell the story. This was where he had to tell Ginny, the woman he loved, but from whom he could receive no comfort, how Dumbledore, one of the greatest men Harry had ever known, had died. When he reached the point when Snape killed Dumbledore, he recounted everything he could remember. Every detail, and it killed a part of him to do it.
Ginny watched as Harry struggled against the burning sensation in his eyes. Hermione let tears silently pour down her cheeks while Ron cradled her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. Harry continued to tell Ginny the plan that he, Ron, and Hermione had devised to return to Godric’s Hollow and find the remaining four Horcruxes. Harry concluded with,
“So now we have to come up with a way to convince your mum to let Ron and Hermione come with me. And I’m sure Hermione’s going to have to reconsider, now that we know Hogwarts is going to be opened.”
Hermione raised her head from Ron’s shoulder, and wiped the remaining tears from her face and eyes. She had an angry glare in eyes that, a moment ago, had been filled with tears,
“Of course I’m going with you, Harry. I told you I was, and I am! I wouldn’t go back on my word.”
“He didn’t mean that, Hermione, he just meant that you’re so talented, and he wasn’t sure that you should throw away your education like that, right Harry?” Ron said smoothly, looking at Harry with a crazed look in his eye that said very clearly, “Say yes, or all hell is gonna break loose here.”
“Yeah, Hermione, that’s all I meant,” he said wearily. He felt spent after retelling the entire ordeal of last year.
As if sensing his depression that was quickly rolling in, Ginny moved to kneel in front of Harry. She cupped his face in her hands and said almost inaudibly,
“Harry, look at me.”
He did. He was very aware of how close her lips were to him, and it was all he could do not to act on the impulse that possessed him. It was the same impulse he had felt after the quidditch match last year when he had first kissed her.
“Thank you for telling me, Harry. You’re brave and good and kind. True, you’re a real git most of the time, but that’s just your personal life.” She smiled.
Harry couldn’t help but smile wanly back at her. She kissed his cheek and said to the room at large,
“Mum should have lunch ready by now. We should go.”
Hermione, still appearing to be angry, but a bit placated by Ron’s compliments a moment before, squeezed Ron’s shoulder gently in what Harry recognized to be a gesture of thanks and walked arm in arm out of the room with Ginny.
Harry put his head in his hands, and saw Ron looking intently after Hermione. Love was supposed to be nice; it was supposed to be pleasant. He had been lied to. Love was not fun and it was not pleasant. He looked at Ron, who seemed ready to echo his thoughts,
“I don’t know how or exactly when Harry, but-”
“You’re in love with Hermione.” Harry finished for his friend.
Ron was not as surprised as Harry thought he would be.
“Yeah,” Ron sighed, “how’d you know?”
“You have the same expression as you did when you took that love potion Romilda slipped into the Chocolate Cauldrons, and since I know everything you’ve eaten today, I was guessing. Plus, I knew you loved her. Hate to tell you, but you always have.”
“Makes life hard, love does.” Ron muttered
“It was the one thing Dumbledore always said could overcome any obstacle,” Harry nearly whispered.
Ron was stunned that Harry had brought up Dumbledore.
“Don’t see how, as it’s just causing me pain,” Ron said bitterly.
“Me too,” Harry thought, but did not say. He did not think Ron would take well to the fact that, in addition to breaking Ginny’s heart, Harry was also in love with her, “Me too, mate,” he thought again.
Just then, a piercing scream came bursting into the living room from the general region of the kitchen where the girls were headed right now. The scream was followed by a crash, as if something had been broken. Then there was silence.
A/N: Cliffhanger. Who screamed and why? Find out. If you want to know what’s happened, please review and let me know whether or not to update.