Who Would Have Known?
It was the summer after the war. We have been attending funerals and memorial openings for two months now and this was about the first day we had had in that entire time. Harry, Ginny, Hermione and I all decided to spend this day at the Lake.
The Lake was where Ginny and I had spent our summers before Hogwarts and where we had learnt to swim. The actual lake was only a really tiny area and the water barely came up to my knees but the clearing surrounding it was quite the sight. It was huge and there was nothing around it so we had often brought our brooms to fly around.
Today, we all trekked down to the Lake around ten in the morning and set up blankets and a picnic basket near the pond. Being England, the weather was not quite warm enough to get into our bathing suits yet so we all sat on the grass. Ginny and Harry lay on one of the blankets with her head on his chest and his arm wrapped tightly around her. Hermione got out the book she had brought (some muggle romance novel – she claimed she needed a break from the wizarding world for a bit) and she lay on her stomach and started reading. I was not quite sure where to position myself, as I didn't feel comfortable being as close to Hermione as Harry was to Ginny. I finally chose to lie on the grass looking at the three.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, there was agitation and talking. I opened my eyes to something that shocked the living daylight out of me. Hermione had her back to me and she was pulling her shirt over her head when I saw something that caught my eye. On her lower back, there was a little black shape. I tried to approach her as nonchalantly as I could and as I got closer, I saw that what I had thought was dirt was in fact a tattoo.
An otter, actually.
I blinked to make sure that I was awake because Hermione, brightest witch of her age, always concentrated on her studies, a goody two shoes, had a tattoo. I stared at it for a bit before she turned around and saw me just inches from her back. She looked at me like I had gone mental and all I could do was make sounds that didn't amount to anything.
"When did YOU get a… tattoo?" I asked when I got my voice back.
She blushed as Harry and Ginny both came to see what I was talking about. Harry gasped and Ginny just sniggered. I looked at her and she didn't seem shocked by this information.
"You knew?" I asked, my voice rising in pitch.
Next thing I knew, she was rolling on the floor laughing and Harry soon joined her. I looked back at my girlfriend and she eventually spoke up and answered my question.
"I got it in last summer. Your dear sister dared me to do it and I thought it could be quite cool." I looked at Ginny who was crying from laughing too hard. "She got one too, just so you know." The laughter immediately stopped and I gasped.
"No…" I was in shock and Ginny was glaring at Hermione. "No. No. No."
"Show them Ginny… go ahead." It was now Hermione's turn to snigger as she approached Ginny and lifted her watch up. There it was. Unmistakable.
The head of a horse on the inside of her wrist.
My little sister. The baby of the family. A tattoo.
All this information was too much to take in but the other three seemed to be having fun with it.