only hope
"Why not," is the best reason he can think of right now, because it's raining and cold and she looks so, so alone. (HarryGinny)
It all started, as it always did, with a fight.
They had only been married two years, after all. Fights and fights and fights were all that seemed to happen now, and sometimes they both wondered (secretly, of course) whether that fire was still there.
This particular fight had begun at the dinner table that night. She had made steak and kidney pie, working on it all day, as it was off season this time of year. He had come back from the office late, much later than expected, and she had hoped to surprise him with it - three hours earlier. The entire dinner was cold and hard as stone, the taste and aroma nearly entirely vanished from the food.
"Well, maybe if you'd told me you'd be cooking - "
"Me? Call? Maybe if you checked in once in a blue moon, you might have known!"
"The office is busy!"
"Then how the hell is it my fault that you weren't home?! You should call when you're going to be late! For god's sake, Harry!"
"Don't talk to me that way! We almost had Rodolphus Lestrange today, alright, and we let him slip through our goddamn fingers, and - "
"And what?! You couldn't call to tell your wife that you were hot on the tail of a Death Eater and, oh, I don't know, you might be a little late for supper? Is that it?"
"I assumed that you'd just go to sleep!"
"Well, I wanted tonight to be special!"
"So tell me next time and I'll help make it special!"
"It's not a surprise if I tell you, Harry!"
"And who said I wanted a damn surprise?! I'm tired, Ginny. Tired and stressed and all I wanted to do was come home and get into bed next to you, but you have to have a surprise - "
"Well if you dislike them so much, then maybe I'll leave!"
"Maybe you should!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
Slam!
"..."
He hadn't thought that she would actually do it; she had threatened many times before, been more upset before, and she had never actually left. And yet here he sat, alone in their tiny London flat, on a cold wet Sunday night.
He slouched in a chair beside the dinner table, his green eyes taking in the sight from behind his glasses. The fine china was out, the silverware polished to perfection. The good French lace tablecloth was draped over the table, a wedding gift from Fleur and Bill. Teddy's crib, for when Andromeda left him during the day, was put away in a corner somewhere. Two unlit white candle stood in the middle of the table, beside the painstakingly laid out meal.
He felt something tug at his heart, a twinge; she really had wanted tonight to be special, and maybe he should have called...he didn't, not so much anymore, and he regretted that now, when it was too late.
She would be back, though; all of her things were here, her childhood toys, her photo albums, her robes and broomstick for Quidditch. She would come back soon enough, and then he could apologize properly. He set to work, for now, cleaning the table, folding carefully and setting things to the side, covering and wrapping with utmost care. She had inherited her cooking ability from her mother; this food wasn't something he would readily waste.
Thunder crashed, rattling the cheap windowpanes of the flat, and lightning flashed, lighting the sky like a sunrise. She would come back.
Forboding suddenly rushed through him, a feeling that made him feel intensely ill. He had assumed before, guessed, presumed that she would be home, that she would be there, that she would not be waiting for him tonight...
He assumed she had enough common sense to get out of the rain, to come home, but his assumptions...
He dashed out of the door, snatching two coats along the way.
It was freezing outside, a wind blowing from all directions. Raindrops pelted his skin like icy bullets, cold enough to almost be hail. They certainly felt hard enough. The coat wrapped tightly around his body wasn't helping, but at least the second one was dry, trapped between his coat and his body.
He had long since grown hoarse, screaming her name. He had tried every form of the Locator Spell he could think of, and nothing was working, which left manual searching. He had traveled through every area they had ever visited, every haunt she had ever mentioned, and he was beginning to despair, because she might have Apparated, and if she had done that there would be no finding her tonight, but it didn't matter, because he would search for her as long as it took -
And as though that though had been the spell he needed, there she was, in the middle of a filthy cobblestoned road, on her knees, her red hair wet, her pale skin very nearly glowing.
"Ginny," he calls, and his voice is so low he fears she has not heard him over the wind, but she turns, and he knows -beyond any shadow of a doubt - that most of the wetness on her face is not from the rain. Her hazel eyes are dying, falling, hurting, and he knows that he caused it, and his heart begins to fade in time with her face.
"Oh, Ginny," he says again, drawing nearer and nearer until he is almost to her, his hands reaching out. "Please...oh god, please. I'm so sorry. I was so stupid, so foolish, such a git. Forgive me, please...please come back..."
She looks at him, and she is almost dead inside, her eyes desperate, pleading, hoping for the right answer, searching. "Why?"
He does not speak for the longest time.
"Why not?"
"Why not," is the best reason he can think of right now, because it's raining and cold and she looks so, so alone. And as she kneels there in the street before him, her eyes are downcast and he cannot see them, and so he does not know if his answer is alright, if it is good enough for her (nothing is).
Her shoulders are shaking, and it takes him a few heartbeats to realize she is laughing, laughing as she has not laughed for the longest time now. And she looks up at him, and her eyes are burning, shining with an intenisty and an emotion he has not seen there for such a long time. "Harry," she says, and her voice is tender. "Oh, Harry. Oh, oh, oh Harry."
And then she is pressed against him as hard as the rain is, and they are both laughing now, and he is holding her so tightly that he feels that he will never let go. Her thin little body is pressed against his, and his nose is in her wet hair, and their fingers are dancing together again for the first time in almost a year.
"I wanted tonight to be special," she whispers, and her breath ghosts over his wet neck. "I wanted tonight to be something neither of us will ever forget...I got my wish, I guess."
"Nothing could be more special than this," he whispers back, holding her tightly.
"Yes," she says, and she is looking at him and smiling so beautifully. "You and me, with our child inbetween."
And he looks down and sees her belly beneath her wet t-shirt, and he cannot help but laugh at the sweetness of it all.
A/N ...yes. Review, please.