How long had it been since she'd seen the Burrow? It looked smaller than she remembered. It was quieter. Ginny crossed the front yard and headed towards the front door, noting the shuttered windows and the unkempt grass. The chickens were all gone. The front step was unswept. And yet, she knew that her family—or her parents, at least—had not moved from the Burrow, and indeed were inside this very moment. Her childhood home wasn't abandoned; it was uncared for because its inhabitants had had bigger concerns over the past three years. Concerns like staying alive in the most brutal war the wizarding community had ever known.
A war that was now over. And she, the prodigal daughter, the traitor of the Weasley family, was home to beg forgiveness. Ginny knocked loudly, unhesitatingly, on the front door. She heard voices and movement inside, from the kitchen, and recognized her mum's heavy, sure footfall approach the door. The door swung open.
"'Lo, Mum." Molly Weasley's eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in anger, then softened to a look of chagrin—everything she felt had always been plain to see on her face. Ginny envied her that freedom; it was one of the many forms of honesty she'd rid herself of long ago. "I've come home, if you'll have me."
"Oh, Ginny!" And Molly swept her up in a great, loving, forgiving hug. Ginny felt her eyes begin to water and let the tears fall, knowing her mum would appreciate them. "I'm so sorry about—about doubting you. Of course you can come in." And just like that, she was forgiven. Ginny was amazed by the scope of Molly's love, by the realization that she could look past all the things Ginny had done and the pain she had caused, and welcome her daughter with open arms. Only one other person had ever shown her that kind of love, but she furiously squelched thought of him. She could only deal with one grief at a time.
"Mum," she sobbed as Molly ushered her inside. "Thank you—I know I have no right—"
"You have every right, my dear! You're a Weas—well. You're a part of this family, too. Arthur! Arthur, come here! It's Ginny!" Molly sat down in the living room and magicked up some tea and biscuits.
"You still carry your wand when you answer the door, Mum?"
"Old habits die hard, I'm afraid. But I'm getting better—we all are. You saw how I just opened the door without fear. We've no need now to peek out the front window, to demand a password. No wards to take down—oh, Arthur!" Though Molly had calmed down a bit while talking, her husband's entrance reminded her of her excitement and she jumped up from her chair. "Arthur, it's Ginny. She's come home to stay!" Ginny stood, too, and faced her father. She chose not to correct her mum's assumption that she'd be staying—not yet, anyway. Right now she had to focus on her father.
He was staring at her, his face impassive. She was tempted to read her thoughts, but resisted the urge—besides, she was pretty sure she knew what she'd see if she looked. Like her, he must be remembering the last time they'd faced each other, when Ginny had hexed him and watched him fall.
"Welcome home, Ginevra." Ginny had moved to hug him, but froze when he used her full name. He never used her full name.
"Dad," she whispered through tears that had started again. "Can you ever forgive me?"
"Are you sorry for what you did?"
"Arthur! She's home, isn't that all that matters?" Ginny hoped her father would answer Molly's question, but he just watched her, waiting for the response to his own.
"No, Dad. I'm not sorry. I'm sorry that things worked out the way they did, that I was forced to do the things I did. But I did what I had to." Terrifying, absolute silence followed her words, and Ginny, dismayed, saw her father's face harden against her.
"I'm glad," he said coldly, so coldly, "that your conscience is clear. I'm glad that you didn't feel the consequences of your own actions. But I did. I had to watch your mother's heart break when her only daughter turned on her and banished her from her life. I have to live with the memory of the pain in your brothers' eyes when you fought against them in battle. I had to comfort Harry when he cried the day you married that man."
"Arhtur—" Molly began to entreat, but again he ignored her.
"I can never forget the pain in my own heart at seeing my child turn against everything I had taught her to believe in, against all that was decent and good in our world. So I'm glad, Ginevra, that you don't feel sorry because you didn't mean it to happen. Because you didn't have to live with the repercussions. But me? I can't forget them. No, Ginevra. I don't forgive you." And with that, he turned and left.
Ginny stood there without moving, staring after him. Years ago, when she had taken the first step down her chosen path, she had been sure this day would never come, despite the warnings. She'd thought that if the good side won then at least her family, if not her friends, would welcome her back. Well, her friends had met her expectations. They had rejected her en masse, had refused to take her back after she'd pushed them all away. But her family…if her father couldn't do it, then none of her brothers would, either. Fred and George, with whom she had always been closest, might have. But Fred was gone and without him, George had turned hard. No, only Molly would be big enough to forgive her. Ginny turned to her now.
"I understand why he feels that way."
"You just have to give him time," Molly said, but even she sounded as if she didn't believe it.
"I will. It's only been a few days since Dumbledore told you the truth. Maybe I just tried too soon."
"That's it, Ginny dear. We…we spent so long hardening our hearts against you. It's going to be difficult for Arthur and the boys to forget that."
"Mum, I want to thank you for—for not holding it all against me. How can you be so generous?" Molly smiled tearfully and pulled Ginny into another bear hug.
"Because you're my daughter. I've told you before, my Ginny—you're all I ever wanted. Your father's right, it did break my heart when we thought you were a Death Eater. But I never should have believed it. Never. I should have known you better than that. You see, dear, I can forgive you because I know I need your forgiveness, too."
"No, Mum, no." And the two Weasley women cried together.
"There, there. That's enough of that," Molly dried both their faces with a handkerchief, and kissed Ginny on the forehead. "I'm always here for you, Ginny, and I will be as long as I'm alive. But your father…I don't think you can stay here, dear."
"No, I know. I won't come again until Dad allows it. But will you come see me at my home?" Ginny watched in shock as Molly stiffened and pulled away from her.
"Your home? You're not still living with that man?"
"Surely you can say his name, Mum, even if Dad can't?"
"I won't! You can't mean to say that you're going to stay with him? I thought when the war ended—"
"He's my husband, Mum. That doesn't have anything to do with the war!" That wasn't entirely true, Ginny knew, but as far as anyone else was concerned, she had married for love. And now that the man she had truly loved was dead….
"But, Ginny. That whole family is rotten. You must know that. You've been living with it for the past three years, how can you—"
"That's enough, Mum. I'm a part of that family now. If they're all rotten, then I'm rotten with them."
Impasse. Apparently Molly had assumed that everything would return to the way it had once been. That the war—and everything she had done in it—would leave Ginny unmarked, unchanged. Maybe she really had expected too much from her family.
"Mum, if you accept me then you have to accept who I am now. Today. And that includes my husband." Molly looked away, her face looking frail and defeated. She bit her fist and turned back to Ginny with pained eyes.
"But what about Harry?" she whispered.
"Harry! Harry?! How can you ask me about Harry? What has he to do with me?! What do I owe him?!"
"We all owe him our lives."
"And am I to marry him because he is a hero? Is that what you expect? How can you even ask such a thing of me?"
"Because Harry is like one of my own!" Nothing she could have said would have hurt Ginny more.
"And I am no longer. Is that it? Has it been too long for me?" Molly shook her head frantically but didn't respond, and Ginny felt something inside her shrivel and grow cold. She suspected it was her heart. "Goodbye, Mum." Ginny rushed back outside into the old, familiar grounds of the Burrow and Apparated home. To her real home.
"What do you mean to do when the war is over, Severus?" Ginny and Severus Snape were sitting together under a tree by Hogwarts lake. He was Headmaster now so they had no need to hide, especially with Draco and Ginny both graduated early. Ginny came back to the school at least once a week, purportedly to carry messages to and from her mentor, but really to have the pleasure of spending a full day with Snape. Occasionally she saw some of her former friends in the hallways, and the looks they sent her way could have frozen the sun. But by now Ginny was past caring; she had weathered worse from people she cared for more.
"That really depends on who wins, doesn't it, Ginny?"
"Oh, go on," she nudged him with her shoulder. He glared at her, and she smirked. "Don't get snippy with me. You know what I mean. If everything goes well, and Dumbledore and Harry defeat the Dark Lord—"
"And we're praised as heroes?" he asked snidely. It was a point they frequently disagreed on. Severus, perhaps used to the scorn of others, was convinced that they would be either punished or cast out despite being spies for the Order.
"Yes, when we're praised as heroes, because everyone will have realized the enormous amount of aid and information we provided to the Order, at the daily risk of our own lives. So yes, Severus, what will you do then?" He snickered derisively, but Ginny glanced at his face and could tell that he was tempted by the dream. "What would you want?" she asked softly. He turned to look at her, and Ginny felt the deep pull she always felt towards him whenever their eyes met.
"There's only one thing I want, but I can't ever have it."
"And what's that?"
"You know. You know what I want."
"And I want the same thing!" she said fiercely, turning fully towards him. "When the war is over, we'll have it, we'll have each other. You'll marry me." She could see the hope in his eyes, and it lasted almost a full second before turning to cynicism. That was practically a record for him.
"Just how many husbands do you intend to have, Ginny?" Her hand shook, aching to slap him. She would've slapped him if he were any other man on the planet. But one did not slap Severus Snape. Instead she reassured him.
"I'm hardly going to stay with Draco when I can have you." He looked at her, love and happiness shining from his eyes, then grabbed her head and kissed her. Ginny kissed him back, feeling almost dizzy, reveling in such a rare pleasure. She pushed him against the tree and sucked at his lip, pressing her hands against his chest. He moaned slightly and kissed her harder, but after a painfully short amount of time, he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away.
He always did that. She didn't even bother to complain anymore.
"You'll have that, Severus. You'll have that and more." He shuddered slightly and his eyes traveled up and down her body once, quickly, before looking away. "Believe it. Tell me you believe it."
"I'll believe it when I see it."
Severus had known, far better than she, the reality of a spy's life. Spies lost what they sought to protect. There was no happy ending for them. If he had survived, they would have found one together, as only two spies could. But the dangerous life they led had doomed him.
Ginny wondered if she would ever know why Voldemort had killed him. Severus had lasted for so long, had fooled him for so long. Had his pretense finally been revealed, on that last day of the war? Had Voldemort realized he had been fooled, and if so, had the realization helped defeat him? Ginny liked to think so. Only Harry had seen Severus die; he had said that Voldemort killed him himself, but didn't know why. Harry's short report of Severus' death had been the last time they'd interacted—the first and the last in many years. Ginny couldn't bring herself to face him after that, for many reasons. Not just because she had broken Harry's heart; to be honest, she didn't really care. What really bothered her was the memory of that moment when she learned he was dead. She had flown at Harry, shaken him furiously, demanded to know where Severus was, and on the whole had acted like the grief-maddened woman in love she was.
By becoming a spy she had lost what she'd started with, and lost what she'd gained: her family would have nothing to do with her, and her love with Severus Snape had been cut short. All that was left to her was the pretense she'd adopted.
A house-elf opened her front door and Ginny walked down the marble corridor to her husband's study. She knocked on the door and waited for an invitation to enter, not because he had ever asked her to, but because it was a courtesy she required of him and she thought it should be reciprocal.
"Come in!" his voice called, and as Ginny opened the door and walked in, Draco was already walking towards her. "How did it go?" he asked, taking her hands and pulling her into his embrace. Ginny wrapped her arms around him and accepted his comfort, his love. This was home, because he was here. And wherever he was, there was her home, because she had nowhere else to go.
"I love you, Draco." He looked at her in stunned silence for a moment, and then a great look of joy dawned upon his face.
"Do you mean that? Ginny, do you love me?" She nodded, smiling sweetly at him, and he grabbed her and spun her in a circle before kissing her with more exuberance than she'd felt from him in a long time. "I love you. I love you—I knew you could love me, if you let yourself." Ginny laughed.
"For once your arrogance was spot-on." They laughed together and kissed each other and as Draco led her upstairs, Ginny couldn't find it in herself to regret this last deception. She had never lied to him about this before now, because she had respected him too much. But now she stopped pretending that truth and honesty mattered. For many years Ginny had walked the fine line between truth and dishonesty, telling herself she only crossed it when justified. Having just discovered that justification mattered little to those she deceived, she realized there was no reason to insist upon it for herself. She would give Draco what he wanted to hear, because an unnecessary lie would make him happier than a truth that satisfied her own morality. And in return for this betrayal, he would provide her what he had always given her—a haven, his heart, and her home.