Chapter Three | Atonement
Ginny wakes in the summer dusk to the hoot of an ordinary, non-magical owl. The air is heavy and ripe with expectation. She is alone at the edge of the wood, and she checks herself, in case she's splinched. She doesn't remember Apparating.
"Miss Ginny!" Ginny punches upwards, hitting a tiny elf in the nose. "Ouch! Miss Ginny has hurt Peaseblossom, yes she has!"
"Oh no, I'm really sorry. Did you say your name was Peaseblossom?"
The elf sniffs, hopping off Ginny's chest. She is a small creature, with slitted yellow eyes like a cat. She bows, but maybe she's doing it to be ironic. "Miss Ginny should thank Peasy, yes she should. When Peasy found Miss Ginny she was down a nasty hole! Miss Ginny should know better than to go into the old hillforts, yes she should. At least not without iron!" Peasy cocks her head at Ginny. "You is a stupid girl! Acting like a Muggle, and not a smart one neither!" She snaps her fingers in front of Ginny's nose.
Ginny sits up, rubbing her temples. She can feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. "Well, thank you and I'm sorry. How's that?"
"Mistress told Miss Ginny not to go off the path, but Miss Ginny didn't listen, what will mistress think? She will be very mad at Miss Ginny, yes she will! Now you come, Miss Ginny. It is almost time to meet Master at the pub where he plays the hideous wailing pipes! Oh, it is the most terrible noise! Peasy hates it, but she will go because Master asks."
Ginny raises a brow. "That was quite the run-on sentence, Peasy. And I didn't leave the path - I found it. Now," she says, batting away the elf as it seems about to fly into a fit of pique, "What time is it? And how do I get to this place? I'll hazard a guess and say you're to be my escort, Peasy."
Peasy sticks her snout in the air, brushing her scrap of a dress off as regally as a house elf can. "Miss Ginny is not dressed proper for a ceilidh. Granny wants Peasy to bring Miss Ginny back and have her put on a dress."
Ginny looks down on herself. She has leaves and bits of petals in her hair, just as she had on that Beltane so long ago, when she leapt over the fire and into the woods like a young doe, hoping beyond hope that Harry would be the one to catch her first.
•••
You're my wild goddess, my evening star, Seamus had whispered as the moon rose and set around them, and all the stars in the heavens seemed to shimmer when he spoke. I may never get another chance to tell you, so I'm sayin' it now, even though I know your heart is promised to another.
And even though her heart had been promised to Harry, her treacherous flesh danced with the flames of desire when Seamus' mouth traced the line of her jaw with his kisses, when he suckled her nipples through her shift, and pulled her down to the mossy floor of the forest, his hands guiding her hips as she rode him as though over hill and dale, not once, not twice, but all through the night, their twining bodies bathed in the glow of the moon.
It had not been about whether she loved Harry or not, but about doing whatever they could to help him win. The land had called for blood, and Ginny and Seamus had given it willingly. And in the end, when all their luck ran out, and the world fell to pieces around them, she couldn't help but wonder if things would have turned out differently with another choice. But even so, she could not regret it.
Harry never gave a sign that he had missed her that night, for he too came back from the forest with leaves in his hair and an entirely too-satisfied Luna Lovegood. Luna and Ginny had made eye contact across the glen, and Ginny had known if it had been any other morning, she would have flown at the other witch with tooth and claw. But she could be magnanimous. If Luna had caught Harry fair and square, then why, she wished her the joy of him. It was Ginny who would warm his bed after the Battle, and be his chosen queen in the world to come.
But that world never came, and with it died all of her hopes and dreams.
For instead of standing proud and true against an evil wind, like a Light witch should, Ginny turned and ran: down the winding road, salt cast over her shoulder, never to return - lest she too be swept away.
•••
There is a dress laid out on the bed when Ginny arrives back at the cottage. She doesn't want to touch it. It is entirely too fine, and worst of all, there is nowhere to holster the gun.
"How d' ya like it?" Granny Mab hobbles into the cottage, beaming. "I know 'tis old, but it belonged to me when I was yet a cailin."
"And how long ago was that?" Ginny asks archly, a sly grin quirking up the corner of her mouth. For the dress is definitely seventy years old if it's a day, if not more. She holds it up against her, a shimmery silver dress with lots of fringe and crystal beads that make a tinkling noise when they clack together. It comes to barely mid-thigh, and she'll have to be especially clever with how she hides the gun. "You were a daring young witch, weren't you, Granny?"
"Ah now, that would be telling," Granny Mab says with a wink. "I know 'tisn't modern, but a good dress should see a witch through all the years o' her life, don't you agree?"
Ginny tries to imagine the little old lady in the silver dress and smothers a giggle with her hand. "It's just... No offense, Granny, but you said it's a Muggle pub. I should blend in. And this dress is beautiful, but..." She fingers the fringe.
"It's beautiful! Did you hear that, mistress? Miss Ginny must wear it now!" The little house elf bobs her head. "'Twould be rude not to, mmm hmm."
Looking from the beaming Granny Mab to the gleeful Peasy, Ginny is torn. With a sigh, she supposes she can dress it down with her jacket, and hide the gun holster under that besides. "All right."
"It's all settled, then." Granny Mab pats Ginny's shoulder. "You'll see, chick. It'll all turn out right."
•••
Peasy proves to be more helpful than Ginny could have predicted - once the silvery dress is on, she arranges Ginny's hair in a long fishtail braid down her back, laced with dandelions and feathers. Despite Ginny's insistence about blending in, Peasy is firm. A ceilidh is a ceilidh, after all, and Ginny wouldn't dare shame Granny, would she?
When she is dressed, Ginny looks into the mirror, and a stranger looks back. Who is this elegant creature? Certainly not a Weasley girl.
Seamus will be more surprised than anyone to see her in a dress. His absence is an itch she cannot scratch, and it bothers her more than she would ever let on. She touches her face in the mirror, trying to reconcile this silvery creature with Red, who wears all black and a perpetual sneer on her freckled face, who can mix a mean Molotov cocktail and ride a broom bare-breasted into battle. Red is Ginny's mocking reflection, feral amber eyes gleaming beneath powder and paint.
I dare you, her expression says.
Ginny takes a deep breath, turning from the mirror, Seamus' gun dark and heavy in her hand. She has killed a man today, and though he was her enemy, she can't help but wonder how many more men she will have to kill before all of this is done.
•••
Ginny hears the music as she walks over the hill, drawing her down into the valley, swelling and spilling out of the open doors of the pub into the warm evening air. She wishes she had a Disillusionment charm cast around her, but no one gives her a second glance. If anything, the looks she does get are those of the speculative kind, laced with appreciation, lingering on her legs and her arse. She stifles a laugh. No one is looking for a witch, and no one would recognize schoolgirl Ginny Weasley, late of Dumbledore's Resistance Army, with her hair braided and her eyes kohled. She is safe as Goblin gold.
Feeling a little more confident, she puts a swing in her step, but it flounders when she realizes there's no way she'll be able to get into the front door of the pub — the building is packed to capacity.
"Excuse me, but can you tell me what's going on?" She asks a sandy-haired boy a few years her senior. He's wearing a black leather jacket, and has a sharp, foxy face. A cigarette dangles from his lip. "Why are there so many fucking people here tonight?"
"Don't you know?" He asks. "Why, it's to celebrate the soon and comin' liberation." He winks at Ginny, tossing the cigarette under his boot. "A pretty cailin like you was made for dancin'. Care to take a spin?"
"What, here?" Ginny glances around. She knows how to mix explosives and how to drink a big man under the table, but the intricacies of Muggle dance are a skill that has passed her by. She wouldn't even know where to begin.
"No," the boy says, and he holds out his hand. "I can get us in through the back. You only live once, right?" He has a wicked, devil-may-care grin and a glint in his eyes that isn't quite trustworthy, but Ginny doesn't care about trustworthy tonight. She only cares about finding Fergus fucking Finnigan, and showing him the business end of a .44.
He'll regret the day he ever crossed her and Seamus, even if it means she has to flee the country tonight. Blood is blood, and there's nothing worse than a traitor, at least not in Ginny's book. Fergus might not have tipped their hand to Avery, but who else could it be?
Who else has bridges to burn?
"Right," Ginny says. "But you'd better not make trouble for me, and that's a promise."
"Cheeky for an English bird, aren't ya?" The boy wags a finger in her face. "Be careful, little red, there are wolves about."
"Trust me, Irish boy, nothing scares this English girl any longer."
"Nothing?" He arches a brow, disbelievingly. "Aye, if you're so sure as all that..." He gestures with one hand, and Ginny follows him to the back alley, lit only by a yellow lamp over the back door that flickers on and off. Moths cluster around it, their wings humming.
"Now will ya dance with me? Far from the madding crowd?" He holds out a hand, and whirls her into a frenzied dance, their bodies pressed together tight and hot between the walls of the alley. His hand is still on her waist when he spins her to a halt, tipping her back, his lips at her ear. "Now that's what I call a proper dance. How about a kiss then?"
Ginny is saved from introducing him to up close and personal to her knee in his nuts when a door slams against the brickwork, causing him to push her away.
"Some lookout you are, Jackaroo!" A dark-haired man with a ponytail and a thick mustache comes through the back door and stops short. "A girl! Why am I not surprised?" He goes to smack the boy upside the head, and Jackaroo dodges him, jumping back neatly to Ginny's other side. The man's hand goes to his holster at the same time Ginny's goes to hers, and they both drop their hands from their guns at Jackaroo's loud, mocking laugh.
He is casually unrepentant. "No one noticed anythin'. They're all too drunk, the feckin' bastards." He turns to Ginny, showing his teeth. It is not exactly a smile. She steps back, and his hand snaps out, catching her wrist and pulling her close.
Jackaroo slides a long knife out from his sleeve, pressing the tip to her throat. "Where are you going, Little Red?"
You won't know the enemy when you see him, Star, Thorfinn's voice whispers down the years. You'll look at him, and he'll look at you, and you'll think the two of you are the same, just ordinary people. Don't make that mistake. If you have a bad feeling, don't give a wolf the chance to come in through the door. It'll always devour you, in the end.
That big Viking bastard should have taken his own advice. Shaking off the memory, Ginny reaches back into her holster for the gun, when Jackaroo leans in, his lips brushing across the line of her jaw.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
"You're lucky you're so fierce, Little Red. You might survive this thing after all. I'm going t' tell you this because I like ya, and because you dance like the devil's mistress. Here 'tis: Run."
He leans in, pressing a kiss against Ginny's forehead. He smells of sulfur and gelignite, something she didn't notice during their impromptu dance, too concerned with pretending to be an ordinary girl.
The up and comin' Liberation.
Her pulse speeds up, and she draws back from him in horror. "If ya have anyone that means anythin' to ya, I suggest ya get them out right now. You have anywhere between six and sixteen minutes. Go!" He blows a handful of dust into her face, and she screams, clawing at her eyes as the ground rushes up to meet her face. A loud click sounds in her ear.
"And if you tell the peelers, we know where to find ya, 'Miss Finnigan'." She feels the back tag of Granny's dress rip off, and goes still when the cold muzzle of a gun presses against the nape of her neck. "Don't think I don't know someone who's loyalty lies on t' other side." She opens blurry eyes, just in time to see the heavy toe of a boot coming towards her side, and she rolls desperately away, scrabbling for her gun. She points it upwards at the owner of the boot, drawing back the pin.
Instead of kicking her, the boot slams into the dust again, and Ginny rolls onto her hands and knees, choking on the taste of gunpowder and grit.
When her eyes are clear, the two of them have vanished from the alleyway. She brushes the dress off the best she can, the shimmery material repelling the dust like it was never there. A good dress ought to last a witch all the days o' her life...
And the hand on the clock, landing on two words and her picture:MORTAL PERIL.
Sick inside, Ginny looks at the pub before her. Six and sixteen minutes. How many has she wasted on her knees? Two? Ten? She's going to be brave and reckless, but she stopped living with regrets a long time ago.
If the Battle of Hogwarts didn't kill Ginny Weasley, then a fifty pound Muggle bomb can't stop her now.
"Ginny? Ginny Weasley?"
A curly-haired Irishman with Seamus' nose and charming grin is standing behind her in the alleyway. Ginny whirls on him, hand reaching for a non-existent wand. He holds his hands up, apologetically. "You're Seamus' cailin, the English witch? Ginny, innit?"
She nods, barely, spitting out blood between her teeth, and he looks at her askance. "Fergus Finnigan, I presume."
He takes her by the shoulder, and before Ginny can protest, he is steering her into the back of the pub. "I'm sorry," Fergus says.
For a single moment, she believes him.
•••
Thorfinn has been listening to the worst excuse for Muggle music for the past three hours without cease. He would never admit the fact in mixed magical company, but the beer and the women make up for it. He'll put up with the unholy wailing of a hundred thousand pipes if it means several barrels of this nectar they call 'stout' and a willing woman or three in his bed, cooing over his tattoos and calling him "Viking". He could tell them his real name, and that he's actually descended from the most fucking legendary Viking wizard of all time, but he has a feeling none of them would believe a word of it come morning. And that's all the better for him.
Pettifer, meanwhile, fucking passed out after the first half-barrel like a weakling, and has been snoring under the table ever since.
Thorfinn misses the bastard - barely. He would have liked to have gotten the junior Auror laid for all his trouble, at least. Finding Fergus Finnigan was the easy part. Getting the little shit to give up his secrets without anything short of Versitarum tipped into his beer has been a fucking nightmare.
But in the end, the bastard caved. They always do. Crucio isn't pretty, but it's a means to an end.
To make the night even worse, Finnigan has been trying to fuck off to Apparate away at every set break, the fucking sneaky bastard. If Fergus didn't have the pugnacious mien of a Gryffindoor written all over him, Thorfinn would swear the young man was Slytherin through and through.
Now they wait for Finnigan's feckless cousin to show. And if 'waiting' means a woman in his lap and a pint in his hand, Thorfinn isn't complaining. He's pretty sure some of the appreciative glances shot his way have held their share of recognition. And why not? Thorfinn Rowle has laid a few more than his share, between his time at Hogwarts, the inglorious end of his Quidditch career, and the rise of the Dark Lord.
"Ilvermorny, my arse," Thorfinn mutters, slamming another pint of stout and glaring at Finnigan.
"Let's give it up for one o' our local lads, home all the way from America tonight, Fergus Finnigan!" The roar that goes up from the dance floor could rival Krum's fans at the Quidditch World Cup. The crowd begins drumming their fists on the countertops and tables, stomping their boots in a sound like thunder that rattles the entire building so hard Thorfinn is half-convinced the roof is about to cave in.
"Fergus Finnigan, I love you!" A girl screams over the roar of the crowd. She's standing on a table, and she jumps to the next, and then the next, trying to get closer to the stage. She reaches Thorfinn's table and strains on tiptoe, trying to see over the heads of the crowd. He can see straight up her skirt. She isn't wearing any knickers.
What the fuck has Fergus fucking Finnigan done to inspire such adoration? With a shake of his head, Thorfinn puts the girl on his shoulders and rises, towering above the crowd. She whips her bra out of her shirt to appreciative wolf whistles, and it whirls through the air, landing on the stage. There's another roar from the crowd, and all of a sudden, two girls that Thorfinn has heard called 'jailbait', in ripped netted stockings, clunky black boots, and skirts that barely cover their thighs begin fighting one another by the steps to the stage, pulling hair and squealing. The girl on Thorfinn's shoulders leaps off, going to the defense of her friend. She throws a pint at the other girl, and misses. It hits a man in the back of the head. He turns around, putting a fist into the nose of his neighbor.
The mood of the crowd surges so violently that Thorfinn is left reeling at the sudden sea change. All of a sudden, glass is smashing, the pipes are wailing, and Thorfinn has to duck as a chair nearly takes him out. He meets Finnigan's satisfied eye across the room, and the fiend starts fiddling a tune with his wand that raises the emotion in the room to a fever pitch.
"Now, now, ladies," Finnigan chuckles into the microphone. "There's a piece of Fergus Finnigan for everyone!"
"I've got you now, you fucker," Thorfinn announces, keeping his eye trained on Finnigan as he advances, wand at the ready. For some reason the spell isn't affecting him like it is the Muggles, but then, their beer didn't affect him much either. The local Obliviation squad is going to have their hands full tonight.
That is, until a badly glamoured house elf rushes onto the stage, whispering something in Finnigan's ear that makes the man's face go bloodless. Thorfinn would pay a golden Knut to hear whatever it said, but it rushes away, towards the back room. Pushing bodies out of the way, Thorfinn dodges his way through the crowd, all the way to the back, where he meets Finnigan at the door. He crosses his arms.
"You'd better have a good explanation for this, Finnigan," Thorfinn growls, his hand bunched in the man's shirt.
"I'll only be a minute!" Fergus pleads. "Then you'll have who you came for and you can take them back to hell or Azkaban, for all I care!"
And Finnigan is good as his word. Not two minutes later, he's shoving someone into Thorfinn's arms, someone who is covered in dust and bruises, copper hair tickling his nose with a faint, familiar scent lost long ago - one that goes straight to his heart and rocks him right down to the bone.
It's cinnamon and ginger, it's spice and mulled cider, it's the echo of the aurora borealis on a still night, cracking and sizzling across the northern sky.
"Star," Thorfinn breathes.
And the world explodes.