Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe and all its lovely characters are not mine.
Chapter 4: Like a Sister
The blonde, the brunette, and the redhead were garnering attention on the dance floor at Blue Door, a new and popular club in Soho.
The DJ had put on a pulsating, techno beat, conducive for rhythmic hip-swaying, head-bobbing, and possibly even jumping up and down, which made the blonde's endless twirling a rather peculiar choice of dance. Her stringy, dirty-blonde hair flew around her head, and her arms were spread out wide as she gazed up at the ceiling with a languorous smile.
The brunette was dancing around the strange blonde woman, prancing about as if stuck in her orbit. She was gently maneuvering people away from the blonde's erratic path, minimizing her potential for bodily harm.
The girl with the copper hair, dancing near the bizarre couple, was attracting attention, as well, but for quite a different reason. Her dark violet halter dress emphasized the soft curves of her athletic figure. Her movements were coordinated and graceful as she smoothly swayed to the music. She caught the eye of several men in her vicinity, and they tried to approach her for a dance, which she politely declined.
This was, after all, Girls' Night – something they hadn't been able to do in years – and she wanted to just dance with her girls.
A few hours and several shots of vodka later, they found themselves at the pub across the street. Their feet were hurting, despite the cushioning charms they had put on their high-heeled shoes at the beginning of the evening, but they weren't quite ready to call it a night.
"Then she flew over his head and tossed the Quaffle in the goal post right behind him," Ginny told Luna, who wasn't at the Burrow and had missed Hermione's stylish flying.
Hermione laughed, face flushed with glee and alcohol. "Oh, it was priceless. I honestly didn't think it was going to work. I've never done that before on a broom. But, oh, that look he gave me when I was flying toward him…he was lucky I didn't throw that Quaffle at his smug face!"
Ginny clapped her hands on the table in delight. "You should have seen it, Luna! Ron just…hovered there for three minutes with his mouth open, his eyes all glazed."
She took a sip of her beer. Luna smiled beatifically at her, before turning to Hermione, "Oh, is it like that look he gets after sex?"
Ginny spit her beer back into her mug, coughing and sputtering. Her eyes started watering from the burning in her nostrils.
"Now that I think about it, yeah, Luna, a lot like," said Hermione, trying to keep herself from falling off the barstool with laughter.
"Thanks, girls," Ginny said acidly. "I could have gone my whole life without knowing that."
"That's what you get for being friends with your brother's ex-girlfriends," Hermione ribbed lightly.
"Ugh, someone Obliviate me now," Ginny muttered.
"I would have liked to have seen you play Quidditch, Hermione," Luna said. "I'm sure it would have been an interesting game to commentate."
"How did you get so comfortable on a broom, anyway?" Ginny asked curiously. She had been wondering for days. "Last time I saw you, you wouldn't even touch a broom. Now, you're a natural flyer."
"I don't know about 'natural,' but I once had to fly for almost three straight hours by myself, in the dark. After that, flying has never really been an issue."
"Where did you go that you needed to take three hours by broom?" Luna asked.
Hermione tried to answer without giving away too much information about her work. "I was holed up…somewhere…cut off from the rest of my team for several days since Apparition was being carefully monitored in the area. Thankfully, I ran into a witch from a nearby friendly enclave, and she gave me a broom, so I could fly to my team stationed two hundred kilometers away."
Ginny whistled. "Must have been the worst experience of your life."
Hermione laughed wryly. "I'm not sure I can label anything as 'the worst experience of my life,' just because there are far too many candidates. But, it wasn't as bad as I would have thought. It helped that I had to fly at night to escape detection, so I couldn't really see the ground below me."
"I'm sure the stars must have been beautiful," Luna said musingly. Hermione agreed.
~xx~XX~xx~
Ginny hurried inside the entrance to Modish Mess, a new boutique tea shop in Diagon Alley. She took off her drenched outer robe and hat as she looked around. She saw her three o'clock appointment sitting at a glass top table by the picture window, waving at her enthusiastically.
She made her way to the eager woman, who stood up to shake her hand.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Weasley," Carys Price said, greeting her with a bright smile. "Thank you so much for meeting me today. Hope you didn't get too wet out outside, that rain came on quite suddenly."
"It's not a problem," Ginny said, sitting down at the empty chair across from the animated woman. She dried her cloak and hat with her wand and placed the hat back on her head.
"I'm so grateful that you're willing to do this interview with me," said Carys. "It's not every day a junior staff writer can get an exclusive with the best Quidditch player in the league."
Ginny waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, that's very flattering, but there have been some amazing players this season. Dylis Lewis over at the Magpies has been unrelenting with that Bludger, and Lennox Keith has had a perfect record catching the Snitch."
"True, but you have the best record of the Chasers this season, and by a wide margin," said Carys.
Ginny shrugged and gave a modest grin.
"Is it all right if we start?" Carys asked, and Ginny nodded.
"Great! Since we're already on the topic, congratulations on another great season!" said Carys. "This is your fourth season in a row that you're topping the leaderboard on most individual points scored among the Chasers in the entire league. What do you think has been helping you improve your game?"
"Uh, the first thing I would credit is my incredible team," Ginny said. "I know the numbers only count whoever puts that Quaffle through the hoop, but I couldn't have done it without MacKenzie Gary and Gabby Bowen. It's most definitely a team effort."
Carys had her head down, writing furiously in her notebook. Ginny appreciated that she didn't use a Quick-Quotes Quill like some reporters, who were less concerned with accuracy.
"The second thing I credit for my success for the last few years," Ginny continued, "is learning how to balance work and everything else in life. When I first started with the Harpies, I was so focused on being an asset to the team that I let everything else fall to the wayside. I found that when my personal life suffered, so did my professional one. Now, I make sure to find time for family and friends, as well as training."
"Excuse us," said a timid voice, and Ginny looked to find two young girls standing near her table. "Ms. Ginny Weasley? Can we…may we please have an autograph?"
Ginny smiled kindly. "Of course, girls." She took the parchment from the younger girl's unsteady hand.
She turned her attention back to Carys when the girls left. "I'm sorry, where were we?"
"You were saying that you have been spending time with family and friends," Carys replied. "It's been reported that Hermione Granger is back in the UK. Is she one of the friends that you've been seeing?"
Ginny tried to not let her disappointment show; maybe Carys wasn't so different from the other vultures, after all. "Of course. Hermione and I have always been close, despite what less reliable publications have written about us in the past."
Carys had the grace to blush. "I'm sorry if I offended you. It's just that, with so many stories out there regarding your relationship with Ms. Granger…so, there's never been any bad blood between you? No animosity, no drama?"
She remained silent for a moment. "Do you have any siblings, Ms. Price? Sisters?" she then asked austerely.
"Yes," Carys replied. "Two sisters."
"And you get along with them all the time, then? No drama, as you say?"
"There's some drama," she consented. "Nothing more than usual among sisters. But, generally, we get along."
"Well," said Ginny. "Hermione's been my big sister since I was a child. There's no more drama between us than there is between any two sisters."
~xx~XX~xx~
Harry had his arm around her, again.
The sight of it through the window stopped her in her tracks on her way to the front door. It was a wide couch, with plenty of space, but there he sat, snuggled up against her, with his head angled down as if looking at something on her lap.
Ginny glared at them through the window, trying to subdue the tightness in her chest. She could only see the backs of their heads, but it was a familiar enough posture that she could guess that Hermione was reading a book, and Harry was reading over her shoulder.
It was just something they picked up during their time on the run, according to Hermione. Through the days when the snow and the cold kept them trapped in their tent, huddled under a few blankets for warmth, Hermione would read. Harry, with nothing better to do, would read with her. It annoyed Hermione, at first, because Harry was a slower reader. But he soon improved his reading speed, and she couldn't begrudge him the only distraction to their dismal situation.
Ginny frowned. Well, they were no longer in that blasted tent. They were here, at Hermione's cozy house, where there was a telly and a stack of DVDs. There was Crookshanks to pet, and a computer to play games. There was an entire wall of books, if Harry really wanted to read. There was no reason for them to sit there like that and read from the same fucking book.
They had grown increasingly comfortable with showing each other affection as they grew up, but after they came back from their journey hunting Horcruxes, Ginny found their level of physical intimacy almost unbearable. It wasn't even that they were doing it – okay, it was a little bit that. It was that they did it reflexively – arms around each other as they walked, or fingers stroking away unruly locks from the other's face as they talked. Ginny knew they did it without thinking, but she couldn't quell the jealousy that arose every time.
"They're not," she heard, and she looked over to find Ron near the front door, leaning against the siding of the house as a cigarette glowed in his hand.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"Whatever it is you're thinking," he replied. "They're not."
"You're reading into things too much."
"Oh, so when you're standing in the garden glaring daggers at them through the window, you're not wondering if they might be fucking around behind your back?"
She walked over to where he stood and plucked the cigarette out of his hand. Throwing it to the ground, she crushed her heel into the lighted end. "Vile habit," she muttered.
"Hermione hates it, too. But, sometimes, I just really need one. Can't help it."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "That's called an addiction, Ron."
"You can thank Charlie for me, then. He's the one who turned me onto this stuff," he said. "Anyway, don't go jumping down Harry's throat when you get in there, just because you saw them reading together again."
"I just don't know why they have to keep on doing it," she said, bitterly.
"Beats me," Ron said. "It used to bother me, too, but I learned to let it go. Now, Hermione and I are –"
"Broken up?"
"—great," said Ron. "All right, we're not together anymore, but we're still great friends. And we wouldn't be, if I gave into the urge to yell at her every time she and Harry were too close for my comfort. She probably would have resented me if I'd done that."
Ginny scoffed. "It always surprised me how you were able to keep your cool when you saw them together like that."
"Whenever I would get jealous, I just reminded myself what Harry told me years ago," said Ron. "That they're just like a brother and sister, that's all."
"Ron, you and I are brother and sister. And never in our entire lives have we sat together on a couch," Ginny sneered, "and cuddled."
Ron raised both hands up in mock surrender. "Okay, I get your point. But I stand by what I said. Stop giving Harry a hard time about Hermione. They're like that, and they're always going to be like that whether you're around or not."
Ginny opened her mouth to reply, but a sudden noise from the front door cut through the silence, quickly followed by, "Ron, I hope you're not out here sm—oh, Ginny! You made it!"
Ginny tried to school her features into a smile. "Hey, Hermione. Sorry I missed dinner. Practice ran late, and I would have Owled you if I—"
"Don't worry about it," Hermione cut in, ushering her into the house. "You didn't miss anything. You know how boring these two can be when there's food in front of them."
"Oy! I resent that!" Harry said, as he came up to greet her. He leaned in to kiss her, and she pressed her lips together, receiving it chastely.
"It's true, though," Ron said. "I already see the two of you at the Auror Office every. Single. Day. Why is it that we still have these weekly dinners to 'catch up?'"
"Why are you complaining, Ron? Aren't you the one who kept wheedling Hermione to join us as an Auror when she was slowly dying of boredom as a Wizengamot clerk? If anything, our boring dinner conversations are your fault. We could have been chock-full of juicy Wiz-gossip by now," said Harry.
"Wednesday nights are the only times I get to see Ginny, since she's so busy with training," Hermione said, and looked at her. "Not that you working hard is a bad thing. I just—well, I miss spending time with you."
Ginny's throat constricted, and she could only respond with a tight smile.
"And if you two are so inconvenienced by these dinners, then maybe Ginny and I will just go off on our own," Hermione told them sternly, and turned to smile brightly at Ginny. "Hey, maybe we can even make it a girls' night!"
~xx~XX~xx~
Ginny walked into the ballroom at Malfoy Manor and looked for familiar faces. By the side table holding canapes stood Ron and Hermione. Hermione caught her eye and waved her over.
"Hi, Ginny!" said Hermione, enthusiastically. "You look lovely!"
"Thanks," said Ginny, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from the skirt of her emerald green dress. "You, too. Hey, Ron. Where's Sam?"
"She's at the Children's Carnival outside. She said it's because she wants to get in 'practice' around kids, but I'm pretty sure she's only there for the cupcakes," said Ron, and added quickly in a mortified tone, "Please don't tell her I said that."
"Let her be," said Ginny. "As if you've got any right to criticize anyone's eating habits. At least she's got a good reason: she's growing another human being inside her. What's your excuse?"
"I…participated?"
Ginny sighed in disgust. Hermione covered her mouth with a hand, stifling a laugh.
"Anyway," said Ron, a bit pink in the cheeks. "You're a bit late. Going stag tonight? Where's your boyfriend?"
"He's checking in our cloaks with the house elves."
Hermione looked startled. "Wait, boyfriend? I didn't realize that you were seriously seeing anyone."
"Well—I don't—I mean," Ginny stuttered. "I've been seeing someone. For the past, um, eight months, now, I think."
"That's wonderful!" Hermione said. "I can't wait to meet him."
"Great, because here he comes," said Ron as he looked over to one set of French doors leading from the hallway.
The two women followed his gaze as a very tall man made his way through the ballroom. He was stopped a few times by middle-aged couples from the Malfoy's old social circle. He greeted them with practiced ease, acknowledging the men with graceful nods and the women with a light kiss on the knuckles of their gloved hands.
He reached Ginny momentarily, giving her a warm smile that reached his bright eyes. "Gin, there you are—" he faltered as he saw Ginny's companions. "Hermione. You're back."
Hermione's eyes were wide as saucers. "Hello. Uh, yes, I'm back. For now," she replied, and after a momentary pause. "For work."
Ginny felt the familiar ball of tightness in her chest as she looked at them both.
A/N: Thank you for your feedback, so far! I realized, as I read through the reviews, that I haven't made it clear that this is going to be a novel-length fanfic. There's a lot of story left to tell…I'm not even done introducing all the principal characters, yet. I hope you stay with me as I write this! I'll try to update every two to three days, so hopefully, it won't take too long to finish.
I also want to point out that this is rated M, so there will be some coarse language, some violence, and some sexy times ahead! I probably won't put any trigger warnings in any of the chapters, but I'll stay within the parameters of the rating.
As for the timeline – thanks for being patient with me as I dole out information rather frugally. I'll try my best to keep it all coherent, but if you feel that the jumping around through time distracts too much from the story, please let me know, I would be happy to sketch out a timeline or go back and date-stamp everything.
Seakays: Thank you for your sweet review! It made my day!
SeleneBlackburn: I feel the same way about OCs, so thank you for giving Bennett a chance! And, as for Harry, I always found him to be a mood-swingy character who has difficulty processing emotions in a healthy manner, so that's why he acted the way he did. (Sorry for the non-answer lol)
Thoughts on this installment?