Flame by Pondering
Every night Harry Potter lights a candle, reminding him of a woman he used to love. The flame of the candle dances, and it mesmerizes him, reminding him of the way Ginny’s hair used to swish as she walked. He reaches out a hand to touch it. The tip of the flame is not hot, but merely warm. For a moment, he can pretend that his hand is running through her hair again, but it’s not.
“Daddy? What are you doing?” Little Daisy pokes her head through the bedroom door. Daisy, with her long red hair and big brown eyes, the way she moves and the way she speaks, reminds Harry of her mother so much that it sometimes hurts to look at her.
“Nothing,” Harry says, trying to keep the guilty tone out of his voice. He hides the box of matches he was using under his pillow. Somehow the movement of striking the match, as Muggle as it may be, helps sooth him and keeps him from losing his temper.
The look on Daisy’s face shows Harry that she doesn’t believe him. She edges closer to the candle and Harry wants to push her away, but he can’t reject his daughter, not when she’s the only one he has left. Albus and Lily are at Hogwarts; James has finished school and now lives at the joke shop, helping Uncle Ron…he feels a twinge in his stomach because thinking of Ron reminds him of Ginny.
“What’s the candle for?” Daisy asks curiously, climbing up on the bed and onto Harry’s lap.
Harry doesn’t know how to answer, doesn’t know how to tell Daisy that the flickering flame reminds him of her mother. “What are you doing here?” Harry asks, trying to change the subject.
Wisps of red hair tumble into Daisy’s face as she crawls off Harry’s lap and settles down next to him instead. “I had a nightmare,” she says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She stares blankly at the empty space next to Harry. “When’s Mummy coming back?”
Harry feels a fire fill him, full of anger—but it is mingled with a little bit of sadness. “She’s not,” he says shortly, glaring at the flame for reminding him of her and with a breath, he blows it out. The room tumbles into darkness, and for a while, all is quiet. For a moment, Harry thinks Daisy has fallen asleep.
However, Daisy is still awake. “But I see her everywhere,” she says obstinately. “She wouldn’t leave us for ever, would she?” she asks quietly.
“No, she wouldn’t,” Harry replies, wishing fervently that this could be true.
“I miss everyone,” Daisy whispers. Daisy is younger than Lily by nine years, and Harry never imagined that Daisy had been particularly close to her older siblings. “We never even see Grandma anymore,” she notes softly.
Harry can’t tell her that the reason that they never visit the Burrow anymore is that it reminds him too much of Ginny. “We can invite Grandma here tomorrow,” he replies, “Is that OK?” Daisy nods quietly, and slips underneath the covers. After a few minutes of silence he can ascertain that Daisy has indeed fallen asleep this time. Quietly he scrabbles under the pillow for the matches, and he lights the candle again. He falls asleep, dreaming of Ginny.
~*~
Harry is true to his word, and Molly Weasley comes over the next day with a basketful of cakes and sweets. Daisy’s brown eyes brighten considerably as she stuffs her face with chocolate cake. Harry laughs, and it feels so good to be able to feel that things can be humorous again. Daisy finishes the piece of cake she is munching, and Harry helps her wipe some of the crumbs off her face. Molly smiles at finding her family so well fed.
“Grandma,” Daisy says, pulling on Molly’s robes, “Have you seen Mummy lately?”
Molly can not mistake the warning look that flashes in Harry’s eyes, and she looks curiously at Harry. Daisy looks up at Harry too, big brown eyes asking a question that Harry does not want to answer. Molly turns away from Harry and refuses to look him in the face. Instead she bends down so she is eye level with Daisy. “I have,” she replies. “I can take you to see her if you like.”
Harry’s insides churn angrily, and he is mad at Mrs Weasley for making the suggestion in the first place. But the anger dissipates and he scrounges around in the pockets of his robes until he finds what he is looking for: a big fat gold galleon.
“Can you buy me some flowers?” he asks, handing Molly the coin and pressing it into the palm of her hand. “I just want to…tell her…that I’m sorry,” he mumbles, trying not to look at Molly as the expression on her face changes from one of pity to one of hesitation.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, Harry,” she replies, giving the galleon back to him. She looks at Daisy, who is now ripping the leg off a chocolate frog. “Can I speak to you?” she asks, glancing at Daisy again, “alone?”
Harry nods, and says to Daisy, “Why don’t you get that drawing you did of Grandma down from your room?” he asks, knowing that with all the mess and clutter in his daughter’s room it’ll take her ages to find.
Daisy nods eagerly and runs up the staircase, red hair streaming behind her. Harry turns back to Molly and notices that the pitying look is back in her eyes. “When are you going to stop pretending, Harry?” she asks, looking sympathetic as she lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder.
Harry glares at Mrs Weasley, angry with her for putting him in this vulnerable position. “Stop pretending what?” he asks, even though he knows what Molly is talking about.
”When are you—" she falters at the look on Harry’s face, but soon continues her sentence. “When are you going to stop pretending that Ginny’s, well, dead?” she asks, the pitying look now gone from her eyes, replaced with a look of fiery determination that reminds Harry of her daughter.
“Never,” Harry replies. He doesn’t think that he is pretending, doesn’t want to think about the fact that in the deepest part of his heart he knows he is pretending.
Molly asks the question that Harry’s been dreading. “Why?”
In Harry’s mind, he remembers the last time he saw Ginny. She had been happier than he had ever seen her in a long time. Happy, because finally she was getting away from him. “Because it hurts less,” he says bitterly, not wanting to admit that at long last he was telling the truth.
“She misses you, you know,” Molly says, trying to comfort him. But Harry laughs shallowly.
“No, she doesn’t. She found someone else. I know. I saw him.” His hands curl into fists and he resists the urge to punch something. Harry had everything that Ginny’s new boyfriend could have had, but now her new boyfriend had what Harry wanted most of all.
“But—”
“Don’t lie to me, I don’t need it. I’ve just been trying to protect Daisy from getting hurt, like Al, Lily and James…”
Molly’s eyes flash angrily. “Now, you don’t lie to me, Harry Potter. You’ve been the one avoiding Ginny. Al, Lily and James still visit their mother every Christmas—they’re perfectly happy."
“Oh, so that’s where they’ve been going?” Harry asks sardonically. “And you never told me?”
Molly looks angry, and rightly so. “Don’t try and pin the blame on me! I really came here to tell you that you have to start being honest to Daisy. She knows her mother’s still alive—don’t give me that look—and all you’ve been doing is keeping her away.”
It is at that moment that Daisy comes into the room again, a piece of parchment in her hands. “Look!” she exclaims happily, “I couldn’t find the one of you, Grandma, so I drew one of Mummy.”
Harry breaths in sharply, wanting nothing more than to escape the room quickly, before he starts breaking things. Molly seems to detect this, and grabs Daisy’s hand. “We are going to see Ginny,” she says pointedly.
Daisy grins excitedly. She looks at her father and waves. “See,” she says, “I told you that Mummy would never leave us for ever.”
Harry knows that Ginny would never desert Daisy, but it pains him to admit that he had been selfish these past two years. He wanted to keep Daisy all to himself, his special little girl. Ginny would never leave Daisy behind, but he could not deny the fact that Ginny has left him.
“Have fun,” he says hollowly, his eyes downcast. Molly and Daisy head to the fireplace and sprinkle the Floo Powder into it, and within moments they are gone. His body trembling from head to foot, Harry runs up to his bedroom and finds the box of matches. He lights the candle again. He watches it dance slowly, and when he reaches out to touch the flame this time, it bends tauntingly out of his reach. He knows that he will never touch them flame again.
He lifts the pillow above his head and finds a picture that he keeps under his pillow with the matches. It is a photo of him with Ginny the year after Voldemort’s downfall. He doesn’t need it anymore, doesn’t want it anymore. He watches as the shimmering flame burns the photograph, the very same way Ginny burnt his heart.
When the people in the photograph are unrecognizable, he blows out the candle and crumples the photograph in his hands. He doesn’t want to be reminded of Ginny—not anymore. In the end, he acknowledges that it’s not his fault that Ginny left him behind, and it’s not his fault that Ginny fell in love with Neville Longbottom instead.