Disclaimer: With humble gratitude to J. K. Rowling for allowing me to build castles in her sandbox once more.
Eleven
Harry: Bereavement at the Burrow
The bereavement hampers that arrived at the Burrow did not contain any chocolate frogs – or so it seemed to Dumbledore from his otherworldly perch. The sense of depthless sorrow had drawn him forth almost against his will, but he was unable to get a closer view of the inhabitants.
Molly, he was certain, was drowning herself in ceaseless household chores, hoping that her single-minded quest for normalcy would put her world to rights again. Arthur would sigh in silent grief, returning to his Ministry duties sooner rather than later. As veteran members of the Order, they had both come to terms with losing comrades in action – even if the loss had not hit so close to home since Molly’s brothers had fallen during the previous conflict.
It was the younger generation who would be taking things the hardest, Dumbledore knew without a shadow of a doubt. But he dared not intervene. He’d interfered enough in their lives as it was, Harry’s childhood truncated with the destiny that had to be fulfilled. Even an old man like himself had been unprepared for the final cost of their bitter victory.
Death was too random and capricious to suit him – even though he’d always known that many innocents would die along the way. Had it ever been any different? How many nights had he lain awake worrying about the constant danger of Severus’ mission to undermine the Dark Lord from within? The man’s loss in the final hours of battle had saddened him deeply, but Voldemort’s heartless butchery had not come as a shock.
For the thousandth time, he cursed the nobility of spirit that had drawn Remus from his home to lend his support to Harry. Tonks’ heart-wrenching loyalty to her husband had doubled the blow to Dumbledore’s already flagging spirit.
“No!” he had wailed to the silent heavens. “STAY PUT!” But they could not have heard him across the measureless distance that separated the living from those already dead. They had disappeared like wraiths in the night, intent upon heroic deeds, intent upon their own destruction. His insubstantial arms could not have held them back even if he’d found a way break free of the cardboard likeness of himself – not that he believed such a thing was possible.
Meddle as he might, it was a sobering realization that his influence over others was limited. Ultimately, each person was the architect of his own life with the free will to make foolhardy decisions. He’d had other plans for Remus and Tonks, other ways in which their unique talents would be needed to rebuild the world. It was with a frustrated huff that he conceded the world would be a dimmer place without them.
The metallic rustling of a familiar wrapper drew him forth like a siren, his consciousness trembling in anticipation as the overlarge eyes of Luna Lovegood came into view. Was it his imagination, or did they seem unusually watery today?
“…naturally, he’s still struggling,” Luna was commenting in that ethereal manner of hers. “But you know how Father is. Determined above all else to repair the presses and produce a special commemorative issue of The New Quibbler, as he’s bound to call it.” With a barely contained sniffle, she added lowly, “I suppose it’s a self-imposed penance of sorts.”
“Rubbish!” Molly asserted with uncommon emphasis. “No parent could be expected to act the hero when his child was being held hostage. A bunch of cowardly toe-rags those Death Eater were, just you tell him that!”
“Molly’s right,” Harry answered through a voice hoarse from disuse. “Anyone can be manipulated. Just recall how I was their pawn on the night we stormed the Department of Mysteries.”
From where the chocolate frog card had been discarded on the side table, Dumbledore witnessed Harry catch Luna in a tight hug.
“Dad’s gone back to work as well,” Ginny confirmed. “For some it helps…”
“To feel useful again,” Harry finished.
“To keep the demons at bay,” Ginny amended softly as she watched her mother hustle towards the kitchen to prepare a pot of tea.
“Is that where George is today?” Luna posed gingerly.
With a sad shake of her head, Ginny indicated the hamper full of sweets before them on the low table.
Squeezing her shoulder in comfort, Harry supplied, “Verity sent that; she’s been managing the store single-handedly for the most part. Charlie and Percy went to relieve her today, but they’ll need to return to their regular jobs in the next few days.”
“I’ve been helping Father intermittently; you know how headstrong he can be. But I could still take a shift or two,” Luna offered. “Is it possible I might offer George that in person?”
“Be our guest,” Molly offered as she expertly Levitated tea mugs before each of them. “I’ll pour you an extra cup to take to George. He’s taking a walk through the orchard; says it calms him.”
What anyone would find soothing in that twisted tangle of growth was a mystery, but people reacted to grief in their own individual ways, Dumbledore allowed to himself.
With parting hugs all around Luna drifted down the back steps, leaving a gentle whiff of summer breeze in her wake. Through the drawn window sheers, a riot of wildflowers could be seen undulating across the adjacent meadows. But the joyous cries of songbirds were ignored by those consumed by the hollowness in their hearts.
He didn’t dare start a dialogue. Sympathize from afar, Dumbledore reminded himself, but getting directly involved will do them no good now. He’d taken flagrant liberties with the natural laws that governed his current circumstances, already having achieved more than anyone else thought possible – or wise. By the haunted look in Harry’s eyes, it was clear the lad was still struggling with the manifestations he’d encountered on death’s threshold. No need to make him think he was losing touch with reality even more, Dumbledore asserted. Let him continue to suppose those events had transpired entirely in his own mind; that didn’t necessarily mean they were a figment of his imagination. With all the untapped potential in the human brain, who was to say it was incapable of traveling across unnamed dimensions?
Not that he would share his own theoretical ramblings. Harry needed to find his own answers, rework the world in whatever manner made the most sense to him. Such was the path of healing.
“Verity was right to insist we open the doors as soon as possible. Maybe Harry and I could help her with the store,” Ginny proposed as Molly turned away from the back window with a worried frown. “Even a day or two will ease the burden.”
“Perhaps it would be best if we closed the shop temporarily,” Molly posed darkly as she perched herself on the arm of the overstuffed armchair.
“NO!” Harry reacted on pure instinct. At the shocked faces turned in his direction, he croaked, “Fred wouldn’t want that. The world needs to concentrate on being happy; his whole life was dedicated to that.”
Despite the tears welling in her eyes, Molly leaned over and caught Harry in a smothering hug. “The twins always said you were their first and chief investor,” she remarked wetly. “I suppose it’s not out of line for you to have a say.”
“Then it’s all right if we volunteer?” Ginny urged with a slight tremble to her lower lip.
“Not just yet,” her mother cautioned. “Harry’s presence might attract a bit of a riot…”
“Well-wishers,” Ginny defended fervently.
“I’ve never much cared for celebrity,” Harry admitted in a hollow voice which condemned the world for not allowing him the anonymity to find solace in the same manner as others had.
Molly nodded in approval as she observed, “With Ron and Hermione still abroad, I doubt Ginny will be wanting to go off on her own, either. Best that you both stay among family for now,” she decreed, rising to check on the simmering stew.
The stern parting look Molly gave her daughter contrasted sharply with the soft, imploring eyes Ginny focused on Harry’s face. Placing her finger gently across his lips, she breathed, “Don’t even think it. You’re not an imposition to us here; you never have been.” Unspoken were the words that Molly might have surrendered Harry into the temporary care of Remus, but that was clearly no longer possible.
“I could go visit Andromeda and…Teddy,” Harry offered weakly. “Help stem the loneliness…” His voice trailed off as the sting of Tonks’ decimated family burned behind his red-rimmed eyes once more.
“You’ll have time enough to learn to care for your godson,” Ginny asserted in a velvety manner-of-fact tone. “But you don’t want to be waking the infant with your night terrors just now.”
Harry hung his head in glum defeat, acknowledging Ginny’s wisdom.
Night terrors. The words rang ominously to Dumbledore, but it wasn’t until later that he witnessed Harry’s nightly distress firsthand. Ginny had insisted on stashing a few extras chocolates on her dresser and he was afforded a rare look inside her bed chamber.
He hadn’t really understood why Ginny didn’t turn down the coverlet, just stretched out in comfortable athletic wear and a small afghan. The sinuous shifting of moonlight across the ceiling soon had her in a light doze, her features relaxing into girlish repose that reminded Dumbledore of how tiny she had seemed in the frame of the Great Doors the first time he’d seen her. On her way to be sorted, the remaining first years tittering nervously as she walked with the confidence of Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine. He’d known then that it would only take the Sorting Hat a millisecond to funnel her into Gryffindor House with the rest of the Weasleys. The very last of an extraordinary line; but by no means the least. More than anyone, Ginny encompassed the heart of a true lioness, cut from the Prewett mold that had made her uncles such fearsome fighters and her mother such an unbridled force when properly riled.
Ginny was alert to Harry’s footsteps, halfway to the door before the brass knob turned with a muffled click and he staggered into her arms.
“Ssshhh,” she soothed into his tangled mass of hair as the unrestrained anguish made him hiccup against her chest. “Nothing’s changed.”
“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad anymore,” Harry moaned lowly as Ginny’s wand flashed a privacy charm towards the doorway. “Everything was refashioned – almost as if it might turn out right for once. Only I couldn’t remember what the key was. It was essential that I remember what I had done wrong the time before and not repeat that mistake. It was infinitesimal, something so small and mundane that you wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but it held the key to everything. If only…..” He tore at his hair until his knuckles shone white through the raven strands.
With a shuddering sob, he collapsed against Ginny’s chest, making her knees buckle until they were both kneeling on the small rug at the foot of the bed.
“It’s all right,” she cooed gently. “As long as we’re still breathing we can try to re-piece things together again.”
“I don’t want to fix things, Gin. I don’t want to refight the same hopeless battles in my dreams. I can’t change reality.”
“None of us can. But everything won’t seem so bleak in the light of day. At least then you can put these things behind you…until next time.”
It was clear from her inflection that Harry’s inner demons would plague him the next night as well. In the bare week that he had been staying at the Burrow, they had already fallen into a rhythm; their clothing attested to that.
“Come,” Ginny urged as she Summoned extra pillows from the closet as well as the head of her bed. “Lay down next to me here.”
Harry huddled into himself, his arms wrapped tightly around his faded T-shirt to reveal the white drawstring of his sweatpants.
“Now give me your glasses,” she implored as she placed them gently on the dresser above Harry’s head. “Still within reach.”
He nodded wordlessly, the haunted look in his eyes resembling that of Sirius when he’d broken free of Azkaban. “Will you stand guard over me while I fall asleep?” he beseeched in the voice of a lad half his age.
She gave him a beatific smile. “Don’t I always? Wand at the ready to shoot down any nightmares that wander in.” She brandished her wand to show that she meant business.
With a curt nod, Harry grabbed the quilt from the foot of the bed and allowed his head to sink back into one of the pillows. Ginny leaned against the side of the bed, her eyes keeping careful watch on the single window and door which opened onto the outside world. With his hand curled protectively around her ankle, Harry finally closed his eyes and allowed his breathing to relax. Within minutes, he was fast asleep.
Not wanting to disturb him, Ginny Summoned her discarded afghan and tucked it around herself before closing her own eyes. The slow rise and fall of her chest indicated that she had fallen asleep as well.
Feeling like someone needed to watch over these two broken dolls, Dumbledore kept the vigil until the translucent summer sunlight broke over the horizon. The yellow walls intensified the color until everything was bathed in a warm glow.
The first finger of light tickled Ginny’s coppery hair as she slowly awoke and looked warily about her. The barest shift of her leg and Harry was grabbing for his glasses, instantly on alert.
“No one’s awake yet,” Ginny breathed. “You have a few more minutes before your morning jog.”
Harry grinned up at her, a thousand emotions flitting across his eyes. “Somehow this isn’t exactly how I pictured waking up in your bedroom,” he ventured only to be smacked playfully with Ginny’s pillow.
“So those were happy dreams, I take it?” she shot back.
“Except for the ones where the door is thrown back and I’m facing a ring of wands,” he noted with a dry chuckle.
“Rather like when Ron barged in on your birthday. Never did give me a chance to give you your present.”
Why did those words set off so many alarms in Dumbledore’s mind? He had no detailed recollection of the event, yet deep inside a vague memory stirred. A maelstrom of emotions; he remembered that clearly. A collector card must have been abandoned somewhere inside the Burrow; there could be no other explanation.
Suddenly Ginny’s words crystallized the moment in his mind’s eye. She had taken Harry’s hand and eased him soundlessly past her door. He was unsure, questioning, not daring to hope as his pulse raced. She was defiant, ignoring the burning pain that throbbed in her heart as she surrendered to a tide she didn’t fully understand. Harry had been swept away with the intensity, losing himself for blissful moments in the immediacy of her body pressed against his. Who knew how that episode would have concluded had Ron not interfered?
Dumbledore noticed some of that same hesitancy in Harry at the present. “My birthday’s next month…at the end,” he stammered, uncertain of Ginny’s expression.
“Ummm,” she acknowledged. “Still time to think of just the right gift.”
“Why go to all that soul-searching?” he issued, overcome with an unexpected bit of shyness as he drew her across his chest and buried his face in her hair.
“Because you’re not the only one who’s had time to think,” she muttered.
Harry pulled back as if stung. “Regrets?” he managed in a strangled voice.
“Not exactly,” she began only to be cut short by the sounds of movement on the floor above. “Quick! They’re awake!”
Harry didn’t need to be told twice as he bolted for the hallway. From the doorway, Ginny tossed him a balled up pair of socks from her drawer. With a quick smile, he whispered, “Good thing I left my trainers at the back door!”
Ginny grabbed a chocolate frog from the basket that Luna had thoughtfully provided. How clever of her to find one with a self-filling charm, she considered as she secreted her prize in her pocket just in time.
“Going for a morning run again, dear?” Molly’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “Harry left not more than a minute ago; you should be able to catch up.”
“Thanks!” Ginny cried over her shoulder as the screen door banged shut. Within moments, she found Harry at the tree stump where he routinely stopped to stretch his legs.
“What’s wrong?” she posed the minute he looked away from her guiltily. “More nightmares?”
Harry shook his head, making his hair fall into even more disarray. “Not while I feel you next to me.”
“Then what?”
“What makes you think there’s anything amiss?” he hemmed as he avoided her eyes once more.
She planted herself before him and pushed him into a sitting position. The sheared log that had been struck by lightning served as a perfect resting place. “Look at me then,” she demanded.
With a small sigh, Harry complied. But he looked away when the intensity of her gaze started to unnerve him. “What would you have me say?” he muttered as he rose to his feet and took to the path.
Within moments, she’d caught up with him. “The truth.”
“The truth is a royal bitch, Ginny. Set to burst our dreams as if they were nothing but errant soap bubbles.”
They jogged in silence for a few more seconds before Ginny caught him by the arm and spun him around to face her. “It’s about the birthday present, isn’t it? When my clumsy brother couldn’t mind his own effing business. I’m not sorry he interrupted us, you know.”
Shocked to the very core, Harry stammered, “You’re not? It was your idea in the first place…” He shook his head as if to clear it.
“I went about things all wrong,” she admitted.
“Not to my way of thinking.”
“And how exactly do you envision that little scene ending?” Ginny posed with her hands on her hips.
It wasn’t just the uncanny resemblance to her mother in that moment, but the fact that she could see into his very soul. Harry blushed even more deeply as he felt her eyes upon him. “That memory kept me warm at night for months. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I wanted to let you know that I’d forgiven you for being such a heartless clod at Dumbledore’s funeral,” Ginny clarified. “I’m fairly certain that didn’t come through.”
“Not exactly.” Harry issued a mirthless laugh as he bent over double to catch his breath. This was too much of an emotional rollercoaster to try to jog at the same time. “Why did you feel a need to offer up an olive branch?” he wheezed. “I was the one who wronged you.”
“I wanted to start a dialogue of sorts.”
“Words might have suited you better then.”
“I didn’t have the words, not then. Just the feelings,” she conceded.
“I thought you were offering me a vision of hope.” There, he’d almost said it. “That was what I took from it. The promise that one day, if the circumstances were right, perhaps I’d have the foresight to tie Ron up in the root cellar before I eased myself into your room.”
Ginny laughed at that. Probably more than his quip deserved, but Harry didn’t complain.
“Perhaps a change of scenery might solve a lot of those logistical issues,” she volunteered.
He answered without thinking it through, “Fine by me. What did you have in mind?”
It was Ginny’s turn to blush and turn away.
He stumbled around the uneven terrain until he stood before her. “No fair ducking.”
“No rules,” she returned.
“No fair,” he volleyed. “No fair trying to take a childish tack to what’s essentially a serious conversation.”
“What went wrong with us?” she sighed.
“Nothing. Voldemort was like a wedge in my heart; I didn’t want to share you with him.”
“But he’s gone for good.”
“Precisely why a ray of hope for my upcoming birthday would be just the thing,” he replied in a light-hearted tone.
“Hard to gift-wrap,” she argued.
“No, it isn’t,” he asserted as he playfully unzipped her light-weight hoodie.
“Wait right there, mister,” she warned with a sharp swat to his hand.
“You’re wearing something underneath, aren’t you?”
“But that’s not what you’re seeing in your mind, is it?”
The glower she flashed in his direction was hardly encouraging. Staring at his feet, Harry swallowed past the sudden dryness in his throat. “Forgive me if I’ve overstepped,” he mumbled as he set off at a trot. In some ways, it was easier if he could just keep his eyes on the uneven path before him.
“Why do I always feel like you’re running away from me?” she cried as she came abreast.
“I never know what to say is all.”
“That’s the whole point! I don’t regret my actions, not exactly. I just don’t think I did a very good job of conveying what I was thinking.”
Did she want him to ask? Or just gloss over it? “I’m not certain how to respond,” he ventured.
“While you were stomping through the woods, I found the words. Took me months of soul-searching.”
“I had plenty of time to think things through myself. Convinced myself that I was a wrong-footed fool. But I just couldn’t find it in me to ask you to wait for me. It seemed so selfish and…there was no guarantee, see…”
“And now?”
“I have no idea what tomorrow holds.”
“Neither does anyone else.”
The outline of the Burrow was just visible ahead, so Harry took a detour towards the rustic bench that stood near the overgrown orchard. He felt the old boards sway ominously as he collapsed against them.
“I’ve no idea what you want from me,” he ventured. “No idea whether you want me in your life at all.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“As am I.”
“We’re back to where we started,” Ginny moaned.
“Not really, we’ve taken a detour of sorts.” He waited for realization to dawn in her eyes before continuing. “I want to get back on track. Tell me what I need to do to worm my way back into your good graces.”
“Nothing.”
“As hopeless as all that, eh?” He tried to make a joke of it, but felt that he failed miserably. “Look, if Hermione managed to forgive Ron for leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere --”
“I wouldn’t go there if I were you,” she warned lowly. “That analogy ends with me being shipped off to a training ground for hate-mongers.”
He considered that she was probably right. “I didn’t think at the time that you’d be in as much danger as we were. I didn’t know about the Carrows.”
“Apology accepted.” Turning the tables on him, she put forth, “I have no idea what you expect of me, either.”
“I just want to be with you; I don’t rightly care where we go.”
“As long as Ron isn’t about,” she teased.
“He just needs to mind his own business.”
“He’s in Australia with Hermione.”
And probably caught up in the same maze of feminine double-talk, Harry thought, but wisely kept that to himself. Aloud, he deadpanned, “How do you think that’s working out?”
“Better than this, I was going to say. But then it’s Ron we’re talking about.” She started sniggering into her hand.
“Hermione will keep him straight.”
“Only if she writes him a script.”
“Why bother? The Imperius Curse is much easier.”
“Is that what I’m going to have to do with you?” Ginny proposed mischievously.
“I never took you for such a deviant.”
“I’m not. Is that what you like?”
“Who knows? I’ve so little experience with these sorts of things.”
“And you suppose I do? Do you see me as some wanton woman?”
“Can I get to know you better before I answer that?”
Ginny leveled a serious look at him. “That sounds surprisingly like something you say to all the girls.”
“What girls? I’ve dated exactly two: Cho and you. Please don’t count that disastrous ham-handed match-up at the Yule Ball, I beg you.” Another who had paid the ultimate price for her association with me. But under the warm glow of Ginny’s eyes, his sadness dissipated like the last wisps of morning mist.
“I seem to remember your Hogsmeade date with Cho was an unqualified disaster,” she noted.
“That’s actually an understatement, but let’s not go there. I enjoyed much happier times with you. Even when I was too dense to realize how much you meant to me and too tongue-tied to say it.”
“Seems to me you’ve found some of the words yourself,” she observed sagely.
Just not the courage to say them. “Perhaps if you shared some of that chocolate frog that’s been trying to jump out of your pocket ever since we started jogging.”
“Mum will smell the chocolate on our breath. I’m surprised she hasn’t called for us to come into breakfast.”
“Then why’d you bring it? I assure you it was much happier in that basket than in your pocket.”
“Not as happy as I’m going to be with it in my mouth!” She ripped open the package and took a huge bite of chocolate then thrust the remainder at Harry.
He managed to bite the treat just as it was crouching for a jump -- then felt it bounce down his throat. “Merlin! It’s still trying to hop away.”
“Didn’t Ron ever tell you that letting it melt in your mouth soothes it?”
She took the last chunk from his fingers and laid it reverently on her tongue. With a blissful expression, she gave him a look that made his knees grow weak.
He drew his face close to hers but didn’t dare breach the last few inches. There were so many ways her words could be interpreted and he didn’t dare let his buoyant heart override his reason. Luckily, she met him halfway, giving him a tantalizing taste of the warm chocolate lingering on her lips.
Before he had a chance to catch his breath, Molly’s hail made them jump apart.
“Harry, Ginny! Last call for breakfast. Angelina and Alicia are accompanying George to the store today and they haven’t got all morning!”
With a conspiratorial wink, Ginny shot to her feet. “Race you to the back door!”
“You’re on!” Harry barely managed in her tailwind. Perhaps Molly would be distracted enough to not notice their chocolate dalliance.
They barely avoided plowing into Arthur who was lingering near the back door. Doing his best to keep up a nonchalant conversation with his wife, he surreptitiously slid a chocolate frog into his briefcase in preparation for the workday. Catching sight of them, Arthur held a silent finger to his lips as his blue eyes twinkled with childish delight.
“Your secret’s safe with me, Dad,” Ginny breathed in his ear, allowing him to experience the lingering scent of shared guilt.
“Have a good day at the Ministry,” Harry offered as Arthur flashed him a long-suffering look. It was a well-known fact that the man was inundated in stacks of paper since returning to his post under the new administration. He had not been the only employee forced into hiding by Thicknesse’s totalitarian policies, it seemed.
“Oi, Harry!” Angelina Johnson greeted him from the end of the dining table. “Looking a bit ragged around the edges, I have to say.”
“Nothing a few laps around the Quidditch pitch wouldn’t remedy,” Harry returned with a wry grin.
“Don’t I know it!” Alicia Spinnet echoed. “My feet haven’t left the ground in months – and I hate it!”
“Seems we’ve all been grounded,” Ginny rejoined with a quick glance at George’s unfocused expression. “Snape didn’t allow such frivolity; those were his exact words.”
Angelina nodded vigorously. “Have to give the git credit for once. Kept you from being target practice for the resident Death Eaters.”
Molly flashed Angelina a reproachful look as she set full plates before Ginny and Harry. “I’m certain all those details will be ironed out before the fall term. Minerva will sort things properly; you can bank on it.”
“Then it’s a done deal?” Harry urged. “She’ll be assuming the post of Headmistress?”
Molly sighed as she occupied herself with sugaring the tea in the mug before her. “I certainly hope so. Sends a message that women’s work is worthless otherwise.”
“Kingsley’s a savvy enough bloke to see that,” Alicia concurred.
“The Board of Governors isn’t always so broad minded, though,” Molly clarified.
“You’ll have to eat more than that if you accompany us,” Angelina cautioned as she nodded towards George’s half-eaten breakfast. “Fainting in mid-Apparition is a guaranteed splinch.”
“That’s more like it,” Alicia coaxed as she spooned a generous amount of marmalade on George’s toast.
George made as if to offer her some, but she politely declined. “Have to watch my girlish figure now that I’m not in training,” she demurred.
“I’m not training, either,” George mumbled through a mouthful of toast and eggs.
Molly pursed her lips in disapproval, but prudently looked away.
Angelina gave her trademark staccato laugh. “You’d better be! All those anxious customers will make the Slytherin team seem like pussycats in comparison.”
Skewering the last of his sausages, George confessed, “I haven’t rightly finished packaging up the new products we’re introducing.” The ones that Fred had been instrumental in creating during their enforced sabbatical at Auntie Muriel’s, his sad eyes seemed to say.
“Don’t you fret, George,” Molly interceded as she removed his plate. “The three of us here will set up an assembly line of sorts. We’ll Floo you over the first shipment by lunchtime, just you see.”
“Sure, George, glad to help,” Harry concurred as he gave an encouraging smile.
“You just start with the hype,” Ginny proposed. “Work up the anticipation with the prototype you have.”
“We’ll work the hordes like a regular sideshow,” Angelina promised as she waved from the doorway.
In a whoosh of purple robes, the two girls surrounded George as the three of them Disapparated with a resounding pop.
Molly sagged with relief as she sat at the end of the table. “I’m not certain that a riot is what George needs on his first day back, but I can’t deny those two sure lifted his spirits -- for a while at least.”