Chapter Four

Misgivings Turn To Machinations

Ginny Potter sat at her desk at work, trying to find a legal loophole that she was sure existed to get her client out of trouble. Usually Ministry-appointed to defend unrepresented wizards or witches in Ministry trials, her new case was in defense of the Ministry itself, for use of excessive force on a criminal. The criminal was a half-giant and the usual spells had bounced right off her. This half-giant was an unusually intelligent one, Ginny thought, finding someone to represent her before the Ministry. Ginny felt strange about arguing the case—it was almost like working against Hagrid. Of course, Hagrid hadn't been smuggling anything illegal for years.

As she flipped a dusty page in an extraordinarily thick book of magical law, she shot a dirty glare at the other three equally large tomes awaiting her. If it wasn't in here, it would be in one of those. But she couldn't concentrate, not a bit, and she finally closed the book with a snap, sending a cloud of dust into the air and making her cough. She waved a hand in front of her face, eyes watering, and cleared the air.

She knew the reason she couldn't focus. It wasn't hard to figure out what was bothering her so much. It was her family. It was the fact that when she went back to her flat tonight, her family wouldn't be there. She'd thought she would get used to that after a few weeks. She hadn't. It had been close to six months, and she felt no better about it than she ever had. It was why she'd never gotten around to the divorce. She couldn't bring herself to sever that last tie. She and Harry were separated, sure, but not divorced. Not yet.

She missed her children. She missed them badly. Sometimes, when she went to sleep at night, her legs twitching because they wanted to get up and make sure the children were safe in their beds first, the real pain would strike her. When that happened, when she felt the hole in her chest where her family should be, she would stop breathing. So much pain. Nobody should live through that much pain, with their arms wrapped around the hole in their gut to keep anything from spilling out. Wanting to scream but having no breath to do so. They'd been ripped right out of her. Her children. Her babies. And her husband.

Every time she saw them, every time she left them at the Burrow to be picked up by their father, it hurt a little bit more. She would have given anything to keep them, to never let them go. Well, almost anything. She wouldn't trade Harry's heart and soul for it, and she knew that's what it would take. As much as she loved her children, as much as her heart cried out to keep them close, she wouldn't destroy him that way. The children belonged with their father, because of how much he belonged with them.

She opened her desk drawer and looked at the picture inside. Harry was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. There was a bundle wrapped in a blanket in his arms. Harry was looking down, his face alight with joy, and speaking to the bundle as a tiny, waving fist tried to grab his glasses. She touched one trembling finger to the glass covering the picture, touching his face.

"Harry," she whispered.

Someone knocked on the open door and she looked up to see Julius Thorndike standing there with his eyebrows raised.

"Are we going to lunch?"

Ginny slammed the drawer shut and stood up. "Yes, of course."

Julius had promised to help her find the loophole she was looking for. They were both Ministry lawyers, young stars in the Department for Magical Law Enforcement. Julius was barely taller than she, but possessed of so much energy and confidence that he looked twice his size as he escorted her to the Ministry café on the ground floor. He was quite good-looking and knew it, constantly raking his fingers oh-so-casually through his thick brown hair. Sometimes, it made Ginny laugh to watch him, but not today. She was in no mood for humour today.

They chatted about inconsequentials as they waited in line to make their purchases—the weather, the workplace—until they finally approached the cashier and Ginny saw something that made her jaw drop in shock. She'd already seen Wandwork Weekly's article about Sirius' hospital visit, which she'd known about the day it had happened and so had not been caught unawares. The conjectures raised in the article that Crash's accidents were more deliberate than previously suspected had made her laugh, albeit a bit angrily. But the picture on the magazine this week was of her husband, young, skinny, and bruised up. She suspected it had been taken after his fight with Quirrell at the end of his first year. The caption read "Harry Potter's Abusive Upbringing—Investigative Report inside!"

She snatched the magazine off the rack, aware that she was growling but unable to stop herself. She flipped through the article quickly, and came to the conclusion that it was a steaming pile of chicken shit, whatever the so-called expert had to say about it. Harry, her Harry, violent? Not so much, she thought, and her mind inexplicably returned to the picture she kept in her desk of Harry with newborn Sirius. That gentle, happy man didn't have a violent bone in his body. And it sickened her to see his life splashed across the pages for all the world to see. As much as it had been painful to have his life scrutinized by Rita Skeeter that one year, during the Tri-Wizard Tournament, it was infinitely more disgusting to see the truth about his life with the Dursleys put on vulgar display.

Julius was staring at her, his hands held half-open in front of him, as though to either defend himself against blows or grab her if she made any sudden moves.

"I thought you'd already seen it," he said quietly.

Ginny tore the magazine into pieces and threw the scraps up into the air. She spat at one that landed by her foot.

"Hey!" the cashier protested. "You know, you have to pay for that!"

"Like hell I will," Ginny snarled. "That rag isn't worth the paper it's printed on."

The young witch looked nervous, and didn't say anything else. She flapped her hands uselessly, wondering if she should call her supervisor. Julius didn't say anything, just handed over the coins to pay for their meals and the magazine, and led Ginny away with a firm hand on her arm.

"Come on, let's sit down and eat our lunch," he said in a placating voice.

She wrenched her arm away, but followed him to a table and threw her tray down with a clatter. She plunked down in the seat, snatched up her sandwich, and took a huge bite.

"There, happy?" she grated out, her mouth full.

Julius grimaced. "Please, Ginny, have some decorum."

"Decorum?" she said dangerously, but he was quick.

"Do you really want to let them see this get to you? Let them think they've had any effect on you at all?"

"No." She took another bite of her sandwich, scowling furiously.

Imperturbed, Julius forked a bite of chicken. "Good girl."

"Don't patronize me, Julius."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"That filthy little reporter thinks she can just—"

"What if she's right?" Julius interrupted, taking an empty paper cup from the stack on the table. "Aguamenti," he said calmly, sipping his water while he waited for her to recover.

Ginny actually had to restrain herself from cursing him, an impulse she'd had but rarely since she'd left Hogwarts and learned diplomacy. "She's not," she said very simply.

"Well, then," Julius said, as if that resolved the issue. "Let's work on your case, then. Have you looked at the codes for the Reasonable Accommodation of Mixed Species?"

They spent their lunch hour going over possible strategies for Ginny's opening defense in court next week, and at the end of it, Julius escorted her back to her desk though he was due to speak before the Wizengamot in ten minutes. She sat down at her desk, looked at the extraordinarily dusty books, and performed a Bubble-Head Charm on herself.

"Ginny?"

"Yes, Julius?" she replied, already immersed in law books again and not caring a whit how stupid she looked with a fishbowl of air over her face.

"You seem very lonely."

"Do I?" Merlin, he was being annoying. Did he want her to try his strategy or not?

"I thought you might like to have dinner with me later this week."

She finally looked up, her stomach knotting with tension. He stood there with his proud, handsome face looking vulnerable, and the hand combing through his thick hair might be shaking just a little.

"I'm afraid you thought wrong, Julius. I'm sorry."

He nodded and retreated, and Ginny watched him go with troubled eyes. Separated, sure, but not divorced. Not yet.

Ginny kicked off her shoes the minute she got through the door, and sighed in relief. She hated shoes. She hadn't used to, but when she'd been pregnant with Sirius, her feet had swollen so badly that she'd stopped wearing them whenever possible. She'd never gotten used to wearing them again. She dropped down into the chair by her fireplace and slowly curled up in it, drawing her legs under her. She hugged a throw pillow to her chest, hoping it would absorb some of the pain out of her. It didn't. The intense, hot pain ripped through her gut. She'd barely managed to hold it in all day, and now in the safety of her home, it became a roaring monster and devoured her from the inside out.

She reached out a shaking hand that would barely clasp her wand to start a fire, then let herself begin sobbing. Her family. How they must need her now. With this article in that wretched magazine, Harry must be miserable. He valued the public's opinion of him so highly—how would he cope with this? Would Sirius find out? What about Matt? Matt had surely been shown the magazine by some classmate, if Harry hadn't informed Matt himself. Would Matt be subjected to stares and whispers in the corridors, wondering if he'd escaped kidnapping and worse only to suffer at the hands of the man who'd adopted him? Most likely. She remembered how wanton the unintentional cruelty of teenagers could be.

She couldn't go back to them. The longer she stayed away, the less they would need her, and Harry would find someone else. Another woman would take her place, would hold her husband when he faced these ordeals and absorb his grief into her own. That was as it should be, no matter how much larger the hole through her middle grew every time the beast escaped. That was as it should be.

Ginny was trying to let go of her family, little by little, but there was one last thing she could do for them, she thought. She could stop this repulsive Carthy woman. She could bring Wandwork Weekly down. As soon as she'd seen today's article, she'd known that she would give this one last gift to Harry. She would expend all her effort to end the ugly attacks on him. But how to do it?

The ugly beast that ate her heart up slowly retreated to its cage as she pondered. The pain subsided to a throbbing as she let her mind make plans. A war, she decided. Harry would never be satisfied with just seeing the magazine gone. He would believe the public still harboured these doubts about him. He would always be afraid that everyone was thinking the worst and simply not expressing it. The thing to do would be to give the opinions of those who supported him a voice. Let them drown out the voices from that Wandwork rag. And the way to do it came to her, and she smiled. The aching went away, and she soothed the vicious beast with thoughts of vengeance. Oh, this would work brilliantly.

The next morning, just before Ginny went into the office, she knelt down in front of her fireplace. She checked to be sure she looked presentable, then wondered why she bothered. Held to the standards at the other end of this firecall, she would look positively sophisticated no matter what mess her hair might be in. She stuck her head in.

"Anyone there?"

"Hello?" said a dreamy voice, and Ginny looked around as much as possible with her head stuck in a fireplace. Ah, there she was, looking up at the ceiling like Ginny's call came from the heavens rather than from the normal location.

"Over here."

"Oh, hello Ginny." She sniffed, and blew her red nose into a tissue. "How are you this morning?"

"I'm wonderful, yourself?"

"I believe I was attacked by a Malodorous Murbler," she replied, waving her tissue as evidence. "One of the symptoms is a swollen and leaky proboscis."

Ginny laughed, her good mood of the night before refreshed. More likely a common cold, but she decided not to rule a Malodorous Murbler out entirely. "Well, I hope you get to feeling better. I'm sorry to call at such a bad time."

"Oh no, this a very good time indeed!" she was assured. "The Murbler's attacks have a most unusual and desirable side effect, you see. You invariably receive good news after the other symptoms present themselves."

Ginny never failed to be delighted by this girl's brain. "How are sales, Luna?"

"Oh, perfectly acceptable," Luna assured her. "The Quibbler's last issue on the truth about the Weird Sisters sold out very quickly."

"How would you like to boost your readership, Editor Lovegood?"

Luna blinked at her seriously. "As we are old friends, you may call me Luna."

Ginny laughed again, trying to be careful not to get ash in her mouth. Anyone else would have recognized it as a little humour and asked what she had in mind. But dear Luna . . . Some things never changed.