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Just Friends

They say that if you repeat something often enough it becomes true. I beg to differ. If that were true I wouldn't feel sick with guilt as I lie here next to my husband's best friend.

We're just friends. We were raised by Muggles, which meant, logically, that we should be the ones to do the grocery shopping. Never mind that we both hated it. The elderly cashier at the store had always commented on how adorable Harry and I looked together. I'm sure her mind was going, because she asked us how long we'd been together every time we went in. Florescent light glinting off her thick bifocals, she looked a little thinner, a little more wrinkly, and a lot closer to death every time I saw her. We told her the same thing every time. We're just friends. Just friends, I found myself repeating mentally whenever I saw Harry.

He's like a brother to me. I'd been using that one since we were twelve and Harry visited me in the Hospital Wing more than Ron did. Lavender Brown, gossipy even then, had told everyone we were arranged to be married. I used it later in life too. Harry sided with me most of the time when Ron and I fell out. Nosy girls and immature boys, later bored housewives and immature men, commented on the fact. It drove me to distraction that first year after Voldemort's fall when someone asked me why I wasn't with Harry, because sometimes I had wondered that same thing myself. He's like a brother to me, I would say, again and again.

Ron, you're being ridiculous. Ron has a jealous streak a mile wide and just as deep. Something he's proven on more than one occasion, I might add. He's furious whenever new rumors pop up in the tabloids about Harry and I. Some of the headlines are quite clever. Skeeter is still writing and she never fails to come up with something catchy. I distinctly remember her going so far as to write a jingle about us. Ron can turn everything from pasty white to puce with a side of green in under a minute if you hum the first few notes. Ron is ridiculous and petty about the craziest things.

Of course he loves you, Ginny. How could he not? Ginny has been aging gracefully. That's an understatement, actually. Despite having three children she looks like a supermodel. Hasn't gained an ounce since she was seventeen, as it happens. I've seen her in a bikini; she doesn't have stretch marks either. While she's come a long way from the insecure and slightly possessed eleven year old I first met, she still isn't very confident. She doesn't understand why the man that killed Voldemort would choose her over every other woman out there. He did though, and Harry genuinely loves her. The fact that he does makes me feel, if anything, even guiltier.

I'm happy. False. I dropped out of school to defeat a Dark Lord and never went back because I got pregnant. And married. In a world where women aren't expected to work, even if they're smarter than all of the boys. The last time I was happy I was looking down at a monster's body with Harry's arm around my shoulders. Now I'm just bitter. I wanted to change the world when I was younger. I wanted equality, progression, something new and better. It's been twenty years since the end of the war and nothing is different. Voldemort is gone, yes, but the same broken system that produced him is still in place. I wanted the next generations to live in peace, not worry about cleaning up after our mess.

Our marriage is fine. Ron's never home and I'm cheating on him with his best friend, but our marriage is fine. The Wizarding World is pretty serious about the whole 'to death do us part' thing. Even if I could leave I wouldn't. It would break Molly's heart and wreck Rose and Hugo. I would be a social outcast, war heroine or no. As happy as it would make me, I'm not selfish enough to ruin relationships for my own sake.

Telling myself these things over and over hasn't done a thing for me. I close my eyes for a moment, wondering what life would be like if those things were true. Harry shifts in his sleep, muttering something about Ginny and my happy fantasy shatters into a million little pieces, just like my heart.

Thanks for reading.