Chapter Twenty-One
Unbeknownst to Harry and Ginny, they had a small audience for most of their conversation.
When Hermione sent Harry to the study, it was with full intentions of him running into Ginny there; their first encounter in twelve years. And it only took just a little bit of maneuvering to pull off, too: a few well-placed Weasleys on Ginny's route to the study so that she would have to stop at least briefly to greet them, meaning she wasn't in and out of the study before Harry could even get there, and then a deserted route to the study for Harry, so that no one would detain the Boy-Who-Lived after not seeing or hearing a word from him in a dozen years. It was a piece of cake, really.
From there, it was simple matter of tracking down Lily and James so that all three of them could listen in on Harry and Ginny's conversation with the (for once, actually sanctioned by Hermione) use of some WWW Extendable Ears. This whole reunion had been planned by the twins, after all, and they didn't want to miss a moment of it.
"Friends…" Lily muttered with a huff. "Grown-ups are impossible."
"That definitely wasn't part of the plan," James agreed with his own frown. "They can't be just friends; that ruins everything."
Hermione sighed. "It's better than hating each other, and you know it. Now that would ruin everything."
"Run," Lily stated softly.
"No, ruin," Hermione repeated.
"No, run!" Lily hissed, yanking one end of the Extendable Ear out of her ear and quickly pulling the other end out from under the door. "They just said they're coming to find us!"
James' eyes widened in alarm before he swiftly mimicked his twin's actions, then grabbed her hand and began pulling her after him down the hall.
"We were never here, Aunt Mimi," Lily said softly, as she allowed herself to be dragged away.
Hermione chuckled in amusement, even as she banished her own Extendable Ear with a flick of her wand which disappeared back up her sleeve just as quickly as it appeared while she took a step back and then reached for the door handle. Just before she could grab it, however, it was pulled open from the inside.
"Oh," Hermione started in surprise…or, at least, she faked it, anyway. "Hello, Harry. I didn't realize you were still up here."
"Oh, er, yeah," Harry replied, running a hand through his hair, a nervous tic that was clearly never going to go away, no matter how many years passed. Hermione couldn't help but smile when she saw it. "I…er…we've been talking."
"We?" Hermione questioned, looking past Harry to see Ginny standing a few steps behind him, just as she expected. "Oh, and hello, Ginny. Well, this is unexpected."
"Yeah…" Harry said uneasily. "Look, have you seen James, by any chance? I need to talk to him about something."
"And Lily, too?" Ginny chimed in from behind him. "I just wanted to have a quick word with her."
"Lily and James…" Hermione repeated slowly. "Well, I do believe some of the children were playing a game of hide-and-seek, and the two of them may have joined in. So, really, they could be just about anywhere in the house."
"Of course," Ginny rolled her eyes with a sigh. "I guess we'll just have to go and find them ourselves, then."
It took more than an hour for Harry and Ginny to track down their children. It probably only should have taken about twenty minutes, maximum, but of course they were unavoidably detained by just about every adult at Ron and Hermione's Christmas party; in other words, just about everyone teenage Harry had ever known in the wizarding world. And they all wanted to say hello, ask how he'd been, whether or not he would be sticking around. Needless to say, it took a while.
But Harry managed to make his excuses (and promises to visit the newly expanded Diagon Alley Weasley's Wizard Wheezes location very soon) and made eye contact with Ginny from where she'd been lurking against the wall on the other side of the room (mostly in an attempt to avoid her mother, who'd looked suspicious ever since Harry and Ginny entered the room together, though they separated soon after—that would be a fun conversation for another day). Ginny followed Harry's lead out of the room and, having already searched the main floor of the house, they made their way downstairs to the basement. And, of course, down there was where they found Lily and James lounging in front of the fireplace, heads close together as they whispered to each other, even though there was no one else around to overhear.
"Together?" Ginny asked, her gaze focused on her two children together even as she willed herself not to cry at the sight.
"Together," Harry agreed. Then, louder, "James! I've been looking everywhere for you!"
Both Lily and James visibly jumped at the sound of his voice, clearly having not noticed the new arrivals.
"Geez, dad, you nearly gave me a heart attack," James stated, "You need to stop sneaking up on people like that."
"You should probably work on not being impossible to find, then," Harry informed his son. Ginny could feel her lips curving up in a small smile as she watched their interaction. Harry and James were clearly very close, and seeing the proof of that before her eyes only strengthened her resolve not to dwell on her regrets of the past twelve years. She may have made mistakes, but Harry and James had had each other. She only hoped she would be able to build her own relationship with her son.
"James," Harry was saying now, "You've met Lily's mum, haven't you?"
Ginny didn't miss the quick glance James shared with Lily before he turned to give her a bright smile.
"Briefly," James answered.
"Well the two of us," Harry indicated himself and Ginny, "Wanted to talk to the two of you about something important."
Again, another glance passed between Lily and James, though this one looked more meaningful. It was Lily, this time, who focused her attention on the adults.
"It's alright," She informed them, "You don't have to do that."
"Don't have to do what?" Ginny questioned her daughter. "You don't even know what we want to talk to the two of you about."
"Actually," Lily began slowly, a sheepish expression appearing across her face, "We kind of do."
Well, personally, Ginny highly doubted that was true. And so she decided to call her daughter's bluff.
"Oh?" Ginny questioned. "Do share, then."
"You're going to tell us that you and my dad dated while you two were at Hogwarts," James answered instead of Lily.
That didn't matter, though, because she continued for him, "But that the two of you broke up right before things got really bad during the war. Before that happened, though, you got pregnant, mum. With me."
"But," James seamlessly picked up the telling of the explanation, "You were also pregnant with me. Because Lily and I are twins. Dad never knew, though, even when you left me with him."
"He does now, though," Lily spoke up again, "Which is why the two of you are here to talk to us; because you think you have to break the news to us that everything we've thought our entire lives was…not a lie, per se, but definitely not the whole truth."
"You don't have to waste time doing all of that explaining, though," James cut in brightly, "Because clearly we already know."
By the time the pair had clearly finished speaking Ginny was staring at them both with wide eyes. If her shock wasn't preventing her from looking away from the two eleven-year-olds (who looked quite proud of themselves), she was quite certain she would see an equally stunned expression upon Harry's face.
"How…How did you manage to figure any of that out?" She finally managed to splutter.
"It was a coincidence, really," Lily said thoughtfully, sharing another glance with James. "We figured out we had the same birthday—"
"No, that wasn't the first thing," James interrupted. "It was the pictures."
"Oh…huh. I suppose it was," Lily commented. "That's right: James had a locket of his mother's and I had an old photo album from Aunt Hermione—"
Ginny narrowed her eyes at this. It figured Hermione would have something to do with all of this. Harry, however, was clearly more concerned about something else.
"A locket?" He questioned James. "Where did you get it?"
"The barman at the Leaky Cauldron gave it to me," James answered succinctly. "He gave it to me when we stayed there before I left for Hogwarts."
"Tom?" Harry and Ginny questioned at the same time—Harry in confusion and Ginny thoughtful.
"I must have left it behind on accident," Ginny explained when Harry's questioning gaze turned on her. "The Leaky…that's where I stayed…where I hid out, during the war, while I was pregnant. I think Tom pitied me. But he gave me work and a place to stay; and he kept me hidden from any Death Eaters that came through there. It-It was the locket you gave me, do you remember? I didn't notice it was gone until I was back at the Burrow…"
"There were pictures of you and dad in it," James stated. "And pictures of both of you in the photo album Lily had."
"Then when we figured out we have the same birthday—not to mention the family resemblance—everything sort of just fit together," Lily explained. "That's when we knew we were twins."
"We never quite figured out why you split us up," James was speaking directly to Ginny now, and she swore she felt her heart stop. This was it. This was the moment she'd been terrified of ever since the last time she held her baby boy in her arms. "But we don't care," He continued resolutely. "All that matters is that we found each other in the end."
Lily nodded her agreement rapidly. "We have each other now and that's all that matters." Then she pursed her lips and crinkled her nose slightly. "Well, maybe that's not entirely true…we would also really like it if the two of you made up or got past your differences, or whatever it is that's kept you apart for so long. Because what we would really like, more than anything else, is to be a real family. All four of us, together."
"This is not quite what I had in mind when I said I wanted us to be a family," Lily commented, easily making out her brother's figure entering her new bedroom at their dad's house even as her vision began to go blurry. But that was likely just a side effect of the fact she was hanging upside down over the side of her bed.
James gave a snort of laughter and sprawled out on the bed beside her (though he chose to have his feet hanging over the bed because a blood-rush headache was not something he felt he needed in his immediate future). "You may have mentioned that once or twice already."
"Only once or twice?" Lily questioned, flipping over so that she could push herself back up on to the bed all the way. "I was sure I brought it up a bit more than that."
"Oh, you have," James reassured her, "I was just trying to be nice."
It was the beginning of January now and they were due to head back to Hogwarts via Platform 9 ¾ tomorrow morning.
Since the reunion of their parents at the Granger-Weasley's (Lily wasn't sure if James would ever stop being amused that his family was now so big it required distinctions like that to tell each family of Weasleys apart from each other) Christmas party, life had changed drastically for the twins. Well, drastically in the sense that they were eleven (nearly twelve, as James was always quick to point out, but five months away still wasn't 'nearly' anything in Lily's opinion) years old and any change from the only way of life they had each ever known was a drastic change. Nevertheless, they were still in an adjustment period.
This was namely because the day after Christmas, James returned to England once again to stay with his mum and Lily and to become better acquainted with his newly discovered extended family. On New Year's Day the pair then traveled to San Francisco together (with the help of James' Aunt Paige…well, Lily's Aunt Paige now, too) where they would spend the remainder of their Christmas Holiday with their dad and his extended family.
And Lily loved it, she honestly did. Because while she loved everything about the huge, boisterous, loving Weasley family, now she got to get to know her dad and his side of the family.
But Harry and Ginny were still not back together.
Oh, they insisted they were friends now, but Lily didn't care about that. In her head, she'd imagined an impossibly romantic reunion between their parents, which would lead to them getting (finally) married almost immediately, and all four of them—Harry, Ginny, James, and Lily—living together happily ever after.
Instead she got a hastily planned temporary custody agreement.
"They were in love once before," James spoke up suddenly, turning his head so that he and Lily, who had repositioned herself to lie next to him after assuming a less headache-inducing position on her bed, were now face-to-face. "Who's to say they won't fall in love again?"
"They live on opposite sides of the world," Lily pointed out. Then, "Although…from what mum told us last week about their break-up…I'd say they never actually fell out of love."
"See?" James nudged her shoulder playfully. "I knew you hadn't given up."
"Not completely," Lily conceded. "But at this point, I would bet on it taking a small miracle for those two to get over their awkwardness and end up together anytime soon."