"I love Harry!"
Hermione's fireplace flares as someone strides out of it. Hermione is on guard, wand pointed at the fire, tea that she was drinking spilled down her pyjamas. She realises quickly - before she has fired a spell, thank Merlin - that it is Ginny, and not some rabid fan, yelling their love for Harry. Ginny often surprises Hermione at her flat: she insists she is saving Hermione from becoming a Ministry slave, though Hermione reckons she's just bored in Quidditch off-season and doesn't believe in owling ahead. But eight in the morning is a time of day Ginny definitelydoesn't believe in. Something must be wrong.
"You love your husband," Hermione echoes. Today is her first free Sunday in months and she has plans, which include the newest issue of Potions Quarterly, visiting Luna's exhibition and many more cups of tea. Her plans did not, up until this minute, include a startlingly irate Weasley.
Ginny collapses onto Hermione's sofa. "I trust him. I respect him."
"That's… good?"
Ginny bounds back off the sofa and paces up and down Hermione's living room, a folded paper in her hand. "He's good with kids - don't look at me like that, Hermione, I'm not pregnant, yet - he's considerate and he's brilliant in bed now I've trained him."
"Are you re-writing your marriage vows? Because you might want to leave out the sex part, for Ron's sake." Hermione's brain is still stuck on not pregnant, yet. She'd known the two of them wanted children, hypothetically, and Ginny is twenty-five so it's not completely absurd. But babies.
She puts aside her mug of tea, resting it gently on the coaster, and returns to the immediate problem. "Ginny…" she begins.
"But screw this!" Ginny shouts. She slams the paper she was holding on Hermione's side table, making it rattle. "Merlin's sagging ass-crack, I am done with it."
Hermione glances at the paper. Potter cheats again? reads the Sunday Prophet headline with a picture of Harry with his arm around a black woman beneath. She's scared for a moment that Ginny thinks it is her, but she's never worn her hair in dreadlocks.
This was the front page almost every wizarding household in Britain received by owl this morning. Poor Ginny. Poor Harry, because it's all a load of bollocks.
Still, it was Harry who was usually angry at their lies. Ginny took all the crap they wrote about her with a laugh. Last Friday they'd even played a drinking game to get through Witch Weekly's four-page pullout, 21 Steps to Avoid Becoming Ginny Weasley and Learn to Really Satisfy Your Man.
There had been a lot of firewhisky. Hermione's memory is a bit blurry after Step 16: compliment his member, and use his favourite pet name for it! But Ron had definitely turned scarlet when Harry mentioned 'Roonil Wazib' and Ginny loudly whispered something into Harry's ear that Hermione was trying very hard to forget. Horntails are not an animal she wants to think about in that context.
"I'm not worried about Harry cheating," Ginny says.
It doesn't answer why Ginny is pacing up and down her carpet.
"He's Harry." Ginny sounds dismissive of the very idea, and thank Merlin, because Hermione's not sure she could bear a crisis like that in their relationship. "It's about George."
"George?" She grabs the paper. Oh. The woman in the picture was Angelina, and they don't stop at just identifying her. A box in the bottom corner tempts the reader onwards:
- Discover how Angelina Weasley cruelly replaced the boy she loved with his neglected twin (and his Gringotts vault helped too!) [p.4]
- Harry Potter's unique appeal to grieving war-widows (he came back to life and we love him for it!) [p.9]
- Drama at the Holyhead Harpees as Angelina and Ginny bat it out (literally!) [Sports, p.18]
- Our predictions on how the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes empire will be split in the inevitable divorce [Business, p.28]
"Someone threw a howler-bomb into George's Diagon store an hour ago," Ginny says. "There was… a lot of yelling."
Harry has some intense fans. Their reasons weren't always clear. Who knew whether this hater was furious at Angelina for breaking up Harry's marriage, angry that she stole their chance to break up said marriage, or annoyed at George for failing to fulfil Angelina sexually. Basically, a horde of Romilda Vanes scaled to infinity and crossed with a pack of veelas.
But George is a joker. He lives for that stuff.
"Didn't George get a good laugh from it? He wouldn't believe any of their lies." In fact, throwing explosives into Wheezes was almost egging him on.
Ginny sighs, and sits herself down on the sofa for a moment. "Hermione, Angelina is cheating. I only just managed to calm George down."
Oh, Merlin. The Prophet had this way of finding that blade of truth to stab you in the heart. Sure, Harry could publicly declare that he was faithful to his wife. They'd accused him of romances with almost every woman in his life, and there was no evidence that could incriminate him. But then people would start to ask why Angelina didn't swear the same.
"Did George know, before?"
"I think he chose not to," Ginny says, resigned. Marriages, Hermione is beginning to learn, are complicated things. Her own parents had such a long, contented one, and she herself hadn't managed a relationship longer than a year, that she hadn't realised how inaccurate the image of dull, happy lives together was.
She wants to be angry at Angelina - hasn't George been through enough? But the Prophet will punish Angelina beyond any deserving.
Ginny kicks the side of the sofa. "I hate it. It could ruin George's marriage, and for what? Sell a few more copies of this rubbish? And there's nothing I can do."
It is, Hermione knows, Harry's fame that has ruined this. They follow any woman Harry is caught with an arm around; she's dealt with thatenough herself. Ginny must know, and that's why she's ranting to Hermione rather than her husband. Because Ginny does love him, and Harry would only feel guilty.
"We need a plan," Hermione states. Ginny is a woman of action, and Hermione will be damned if she lets her friend mope. "We are going to fix the awful lack of press regulation in Wizarding Britain. We are going to return journalistic integrity to this nation."
"And throw dungbombs at the lot of them!" Ginny declares.
"I'm not so sure-"
"George'll love it. A marriage restored through exploding dung. It's exactly his forte." Ginny sends the Prophet into the air with her wand, and with a look of glee fires an incendio into its centre. Black ash falls onto Hermione's carpet, and she's not even tempted to cast a fast scourgio. It's good to see it burn.
"So," Ginny rubs her hands together. "What's the plan?"
Hermione relocates them to the kitchen, with a new cup of tea for herself, a flask of coffee for Ginny, and sets the pans to make a full English for both of them.
"First, allies. Who has the media treated unfairly? Obviously we'll bring Harry in."
Ginny winces, and Hermione raises an eyebrow at it. Her friend shifts uncomfortably on her chair. "Harry has big dreams."
"He's idealistic," Hermione agrees. "Which means he's perfect for initiating change." Ministers used the word idealistic against her like it was an insult, and she loved watching their eyes the moment they realised it meant too damn stubborn for them to beat.
"Your idealism is perfect for changing the world," Ginny counters. "When the world shits on your dreams, you fight even harder. Don't you wonder why Harry doesn't go into politics?"
She rolls her eyes. "He says politics frustrates him. Or it bores him, which is ridiculous, because it's about everything that matters." Honestly, it feels like explaining the greatness of Hogwarts: A History to them again. Hadn't she proved right, that it was important?
"It doesn't make any sense to him, Hermione. He thinks people should treat each other fairly, because he treats people fairly, and he thinks anyone who has experienced hardship should be kind, because he's kind."
It's… a surprisingly accurate read of Harry's character, at least since the war ended and he lost that streak of self-destructive anger. It explains why he was so gentle to Narcissa Malfoy during and after her trial, why he so stridently defended Snape's memory. He believes, at a fundamental level that she doesn't think any of the rest of them who fought on his side really do, that people are redeemable. That most of the world is fundamentally good. It explains why politics so often disappoints him.
She wonders how long Ginny has been wanting to say this to her, when Hermione has pestered Harry to support her latest political campaigns. Has she been hurting him by doing so?
"You know he'd do everything he could to support you and George on this anyway," Hermione has to say. "Even if it didn't think it would work out."
"I know," Ginny says. "But in all likelihood, this won't work. Can we just wait until we have a better chance at success, to tell him?"
"It's your call. Who could we get on board instead? Who else has the Prophet ruined the life of?"
"Draco Malfoy," Ginny declares proudly, like this is her winning hand.
"Malfoy?" Hermione repeats incredulously. "Are we talking about the same spoilt pureblood? Last I heard he was swanning off to Europe on Daddy's money, accompanied by two incredibly hot Italian models."
It is Ginny's turn to raise an eyebrow.
"… Which I now realise might be a media exaggeration," she finishes smoothly and grudgingly notes his name down as number one on her bullet point list. "Anyone else?" she asks, trying not to sound too desperate. She'll be damned if she relies on a Malfoy for progressive social change.
Ginny smiles sweetly, as if this is all a lot of fun and they aren't considering including a ferreted betrayer in their plans.
Hermione reminds herself to breathe. "We need more people, Gin. A sense of what we're dealing with, how much public support there would be to install regulations on the Prophet."
"I have some contacts," Ginny says. "How about I pursue those, and you chat to all your people." Ginny waves her hand in the air, as if to summarise Hermione's millions of contacts.
But who though? Almost everyone Hermione talks to these days are Ministry people; she couldn't bring them into a campaign against the Ministry-aligned paper.
And who else? She never made friends easily the way Ron did, and when they broke up a year after the war, most of their school friends kept more in contact with him than her. Luna agreed about all the problems with the Prophet, but after Xenophilius had died she'd shut down The Quibbler press and looked devastated the one time Hermione dared to bring it up. Lee Jordan would have been her next call. His radio show was wizarding Britain's favourite for alternative (read: honest) news. But Ginny argued with him a couple of months ago – she didn't know over what – and they had actually brawled at the Leaky. It got so violent Neville had to break it up. Ginny and Lee hadn't talked since.
She looks down at her list. "Malfoy it is." In her peripheral view, she watches Ginny's smirk spread wide.
Author Notes:
I plan to update weekly, hopefully in longer chapters than this one if it goes well and people are interested!
As for what future chapters will be like? I'm thinking slow-burn romance, political shenanigans and getting the old crew back together to fight a new fight.