Title: So Normal
Short Summary: Ginny finds out something that should be disturbing, but isn't. Tea is involved. This takes place entirely after the events of Deathly Hallows.
Rating: T for discussion of sexual topics, mentions of a menage-a-trois, mentions of infidelity, and some foul language. No actual sexy-times are involved. By request, I am including the following warnings: OOC, HP/HG/RW, AU
A/N: I bet that rating woke you up, didn't it? :P Cracktastic premise ahead—you have been warned!
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Ginny has just put James down for the night when she hears Harry downstairs. He comes in carefully, of course—he knows there's a baby in the house, and though James will sleep for five hours straight, getting him asleep in the first place is a bit trickier—but Ginny can always tell when Harry comes home. Something about Grimmauld Place just...quiets when Harry is there.
She tiptoes out of James' room and goes downstairs, avoiding the left half of the third stair from the bottom (that board still screamed when it was stepped on, nobody could figure it out), and gives Harry a careless kiss.
"Ron and Hermione are all settled in to their new place?" she asks.
"Yeah, though it took a bit longer than we thought it would. There was a boggart under the floorboards that got missed the first time around, and some trouble enlarging the dining room set." They go down to the kitchen; Harry pulls out a kettle and fills it with water.
"So, Ron was the one who did the shrinking in the first place?" Ginny smiles slyly as she lights the fire.
"Yeah. Can't shrink furniture to save his life, that one." A fond grin blooms over Harry's face. He carefully hangs the kettle over the flames. "Will we try Fuller's Black Valerian tonight, d'you think?"
"Sure, why not. Julius Flume recommended it quite highly." Ginny takes a box of the mentioned tea out of the cupboard and pauses. "Harry, when did we become such tea snobs?"
"I don't know, Gin. Maybe when some poor sod knocked you up and you were demanding a new tea every week," Harry teases. They both sit down at the end of the long wooden table, waiting for the water to boil.
"Oh, don't 'poor sod' me, Potter. You weren't complaining when you did the knocking," she says, trying to keep a straight face.
He laughs—and suddenly, she knows.
She doesn't know the way women in stories know. There isn't a guilty gleam in his eyes, his laughter doesn't sound fake, he doesn't smell like another woman, and there are no marks on his neck or clothes. There isn't anything out of the ordinary, and nothing has happened that hasn't happened before. Harry has stopped off at Ron and Hermione's before he comes home a thousand times; Harry and Ginny have had a cup of tea before bed a thousand times; all this is the way it has always been.
But she knows it—she knows it, just the same, and she wonders how she never saw it before. And even though Ginny has always been an excellent liar, has always been a perfect actress, it is impossible to keep this sudden, horrible realization to herself.
Of course, Harry sees immediately that she has figured it out; how can he not see what is written so clearly all over her face? And so he sits there, frozen and white, his expression a muddled mess of fear and shame.
"Ginny—" he starts, but she holds up her hand. Her wedding ring feels like a millstone around her finger.
"Don't," she says, and to her very great relief her voice betrays none of her hurt. "Just don't, Harry. Shut up and let me think about this."
How long had this been happening—how had this started—her brain is a mess of swirling memory, remembering every single time Harry has ever come home late because he was visiting Ron and Hermione. And it has always been so normal, she has never suspected a thing, because, after all, it was Ron and Hermione.
When had it started? Suddenly, that is all she can think of, the only question of any significance, the only thought keeping her from flying into a blind rage or having a miserable breakdown.
Ten thousand memories of ten thousand little things present themselves to her, all pointing gleefully to her blindness. Most of the time it has only been a smile or a glance which betrayed Harry, but there have been things much more concrete than that, things she should not have missed. She looks closely at him. Tonight, there is nothing out of place; but—
—the night she told him she was pregnant with James, he came home wearing Ron's pants.
—five months before that, there had been a bruise the shape of a mouth under his chin.
—a month before her twenty-second birthday, he had come home without underwear.
—six weeks after she moved in to Grimmauld Place with him, he had smelled like Hermione's perfume.
The kettle starts to whistle. Neither of them move to take it off the fire.
And then Ginny remembers something so far back that it must have been the first time.
—
Ginny and Hermione (who justified her choice to continue her education by saying that it was "just cheating to get work on the basis of heroics alone, isn't that right, Ronald?") had come home from Hogwarts for Easter break in the spring of Ginny's seventh year. Harry and Ron were at the Burrow as well—Ron because he lived there, Harry because he might as well have lived there for all the time he spent there. They had come home in early afternoon, and the four of them had spent the rest of the day playing two-a-side Quidditch.
Between the Quidditch and the emotional toll of anticipating the first Easter the Weasleys would have without Fred, Ginny had been exhausted; so the next day, she had slept in quite late. When she finally woke up and went downstairs, she had found Harry, Ron, and Hermione around the kitchen table, laughing and sitting very close to one another.
Then Ginny coughed. And when they all stopped laughing, she realized that they hadn't known she was there.
For the rest of the day, Harry couldn't look her in the eye. At the time, it had just confused her; it wasn't like she caught them having sex in the kitchen or doing something hideously embarrassing or shameful.
But now, of course, she understands perfectly. She hadn't caught them having sex. She had just barely missed the sex—she had caught them in their bloody afterglow.
—
The grandfather clock in the entrance hallway strikes the hour: eleven soft chimes, muffled by walls and distance. A beetle crawls on the wall opposite Ginny; she stares at it, but does not see it. The kettle is now whistling in earnest, but neither of them pay it any attention.
"Easter of 1999," she says, and this time, her voice cracks and trembles. "That was when it started, wasn't it?"
"No," he says, and swallows hard. Ginny thinks in disbelief: is he really going to deny it? But then Harry continues, "It started in Christmas of 1998."
She stares at him for a second, uncomprehending, and Harry elaborates. "Right after I dropped the plates. Remember?"
And then she does.
—
Christmas of 1998 was the first Christmas after the death of Voldemort.
Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys (Harry and Hermione included, of course—they were just as Weasley as anyone else) had all been at the Burrow. Christmas that year was a somber, quiet affair, with everybody treading carefully around the hole Fred left, trying not to fall in. Mum had to keep excusing herself to dry her face, Dad couldn't say more than three words put together, and George wouldn't say anything at all; he just hung around the edge of his family, looking blank and shrunken.
Ginny, Hermione, and Harry had all been in the kitchen helping with dinner when Mum had asked without thinking, "Harry, dear, why don't you set the table, twelve places," just as she had a hundred times before. Harry, also without thinking, had taken twelve plates and was about to carry them to the table in the garden when Hermione quietly put down a half-peeled potato, took a plate from his arms, and put it away.
At first, Harry had just stood there looking confused. Then he paled, dropped the remaining plates to the floor, and stood there over the pieces, absolutely still. For one long moment, everyone was motionless, staring at the white shards and thinking nothing.
Then Ron had come in, fake grin plastered on his face.
"You lot blowing up the Burrow? Hope you haven't burnt dinner—", he started to say, but then he took in the scene before him, cursed, and moved toward Harry. At the same time, Hermione had put an arm around Harry's shoulders.
"I think this is it, Ron—"
"Thank Merlin, he was starting to scare me. Here, help me get him upstairs—"
"Harry, dear, I'm so sorry—I didn't realize, didn't count properly, how stupid of me—so sorry—"
Ron and Hermione had gently herded Harry, who was shaking uncontrollably, upstairs to Ron's room while Mum sobbed and apologized to nobody. Ginny had repaired the plates and brought them out to the garden without further incident.
When the three of them finally came back again, dinner was half over, Ron was wearing Harry's shirt, and Harry seemed substantially more cheerful. Everybody but Ginny was too busy not thinking about Fred to notice the shirt change, and Ginny had just assumed that he was wearing it for a bet or something else equally pointless.
After dinner, Harry and Ginny found themselves alone in a corner of the garden. Harry had said to Ginny that he finally felt like someday he would be okay, and maybe, if she still wanted to, they could—Ginny and Harry could be—?
And ever since then, Ginny and Harry had been.
—
Ginny's anger and hurt drain out of her, as completely as she had never felt them. Suddenly, she realizes the kettle is whistling; she gets up, takes out her favorite rose-patterned teapot, and starts steeping the tea. Harry stares numbly at a knot in the grain of the table. After several long moments of silence, he speaks.
"I'll sleep on the couch tonight, and I'll pack up and move out first thing tomorrow morning—I'll get up early, you won't even have to see me—"
"No," Ginny says firmly, and sits back down.
Harry continues woodenly, "I'll just stay long enough to get an overnight kit, then. Crash at Neville's for the night—"
"No," she says again, and something in her voice makes Harry finally look up at her. "You don't have to move out, Harry."
"Well, you shouldn't have to move out. You're not the one who's been sneaking around having bloody threesomes with your brother-in-law and his wife."
"Nobody's moving out, Harry." Harry boggles at her, and Ginny laughs. "They put you back together, didn't they?"
"Yeah. They did," he admits.
"And you think that was the first time."
"Well, yes. I know it was." Harry blushes.
"It wasn't. Harry..." She pauses, organizing her thoughts. "The first time was six years before that, when you were eleven." Harry starts to interrupt; Ginny waves her hand in the air impatiently. "The first time, Harry, was when the three of you took down a troll together. Everything after that is just..." She stops; while she searches for the right words, she pours two mugs of tea. She hands Harry his mug and continues.
"Four minutes ago, I couldn't stop asking myself: when did this start? How did I miss something this big, a lie this huge? But I was trying to answer the question the wrong way. You see, I didn't miss anything. The three of you, you've always been Harry-Ron-Hermione. There was nothing to miss, because you never lied to me. All this is the way it's always been.
"I don't really understand how that works, or why I'm not mad; I know I should be, and I was a minute ago, but...I'm just not, not anymore. There is nothing to be mad about. There is no one to be jealous of. It has always been so normal, and I have never suspected a thing, because it is Ron and Hermione, and there is nothing I can suspect."
They sit in silence for a moment. "Well, that didn't go the way I expected it to," Harry says at last. He seems to remember that he's holding a hot mug of tea; when he takes a sip, the expression of pure revulsion that dawns on his face makes Ginny laugh.
"I don't think I like this one much," he manages to say.
Ginny drinks from her own mug. The tea is very bitter, almost like charcoal; but it is smoky, too, and somehow reminds her of the sea.
"Well, I rather like it," she says, and smiles.
—
To clarify RE: the "plate incident": The core Weasleys are two parents and seven children. When you add Fleur, Harry, and Hermione, that makes twelve. Twelve is a number that includes Fred; of course, since Fred is dead, there should only be eleven plates. Thus, when Hermione took away a plate, Harry had a freak-out.