A/N: Thank you, thank you for all your reviews and kind words on The Chapter! You guys are the best :D The end is in sight: there are four chapters after this, so we'll finish on the last Wednesday in July.
Ginny woke to bright sunshine and a feeling of contentment even before she remembered where she was. Opening her eyes, she saw Harry sprawled beside her, still asleep. She had followed Tonks's advice, and they had made love again, just as tender and a little less awkward. Ginny's hands itched to touch him, but Harry still startled easily in his sleep.
"Harry. Harry, wake up." She slid her hand down and touched his hand, then laced her fingers with his and squeezed gently.
He mumbled into his pillow.
"Harry, it's Ginny. Wake up." She tugged on his hand.
He rolled towards her and threw an arm over her stomach.
"Harry?"
"'s too early."
"Too early for this?" She turned her head and kissed his neck.
He shifted and kissed her mouth, a lazy, languid kiss that spread heat low in her belly. Despite their previous activities, she had been a little too shy to sleep nude, and Harry had loaned her his shirt. He slid his hand beneath its hem.
"How much time do we have?"
"Check-out is at noon," Harry said, fingering the ends of her hair that splayed over her breasts.
"What did you tell Mum and Dad?"
His hand stilled, and all contentment vanished.
She looked at him. "You did tell them something, right?"
"You're seventeen. We're both of age. We can go wherever we like."
Ginny sat up, mouth agape. "Are you trying to tell me that we've been gone overnight, and my parents have no idea where we are?"
"I told your dad I was taking you into Muggle London," he said defensively.
"Did you tell him we were staying the night?"
"Of course not!"
"Harry!" She flung the covers back and stood up.
"What? You expect me to tell your dad—"
"You should have told somebody! Godric, Harry, I thought you had covered for us." It had never occurred to her … Harry had obviously planned the whole thing out, had had Hermione's help … Ginny just assumed he had given some explanation for their absence….
"With who, Ron? 'Hey, mate, I'd like to spend the night shagging your sister. Will you lie to your parents for us?'"
"He's your best mate!"
"He's your brother!" Harry had sat up too.
"We've covered for him and Hermione," she said, darting around the room gathering her belongings. "Besides, if he didn't know before, he knows now."
"But—"
"Don't just sit there, get dressed! We have to get back to the Burrow."
Harry looked bewildered. "But I waited until after your birthday."
Ginny looked up. "Being of age doesn't mean you get to do whatever you like, Harry. It means you're responsible enough to tell people where you're going and when you'll be back, to be accountable for your actions. Mum and Dad are going to be worried sick."
"But—"
"It's not even about the sex. It's the fact that we disappeared without telling anyone. Oh, we're going to be in so much trouble," she moaned, imagining herself confined to her room until September first.
"It never occurred to me that we would need a cover story."
This stopped Ginny in her tracks. "It never occurred to you that my mother would panic if we didn't come home? I know she hasn't been herself this summer, but she's going to notice two empty beds. Especially when we don't show up for breakfast. Not to mention my brothers." Ron she could handle, but Charlie was home too … and Mum would have Floo-called Bill. And Percy. And maybe even George. Oh, Merlin. The innocent baby sister routine was obviously out.
Harry looked confused and ashamed, and Ginny took a deep breath, trying to calm down. "Surely you had to tell your aunt and uncle where you were going when you left the house? Didn't you have a curfew?"
He shook his head. "They didn't care what I did. In fact, they liked it best when I was out of the house."
Yet another reason to hate Harry's relatives: they hadn't even bothered to make sure he was safe. "Well, my parents certainly care. All right, then, leave Mum to me. But get dressed—we really do need to go home, now."
"Ginny?"
"Yes?" She leaned against the doorway, tapping one foot.
"You're wearing my shirt."
()()()()
Ginny and Harry Apparated to the Burrow. Still holding his hand, she opened the back door and led a very reluctant Harry into the kitchen.
"I see you've decided to grace us with your presence." Mum sat in wait at the kitchen table.
"We're really so—"
"Beds empty! No note! No explanation, no Floo-call, not even an owl!" She stood up so abruptly her chair fell over. "I would never have expected this from either of you! I'm very disappointed in you, Harry."
He looked, if possible, even more hangdog. "I'm sorry, Mrs. We—"
"We don't hear from you for nine months—nine months!—and then you disappear with my daughter without a word."
"I—"
"You didn't think I had enough sleepless nights during the war? You thought I had forgotten what it was like to imagine my children dead? Lying helpless in some gutter, or worse yet, dragged to a Muggle hospital and stuck with needles?"
"Mum—"
"You think just because there's no longer a price on your head, Harry Potter, that you're safe? There must be half a dozen Death Eaters still on the loose, and I'm sure they'd like nothing better than to torture and kill you! And Ginevra."
Ginny backed up, just a half-step, but Mum closed the gap, looking all the more fierce for the dark circles under her eyes.
"Your brothers have been worried sick."
Actually, Ginny rather suspected her brothers knew exactly where she'd gone and what she'd been doing and hadn't been at all worried.
"Charlie went to St. Mungo's when we discovered you and Harry were missing, and Percy checked with the Aurors and the Magical Law Enforcement Squad, but your bodies had not been recovered."
Ginny opened her mouth, but her mother pressed on.
"Which was no comfort whatsoever, considering the proliferation of disappearances over the last few years. Nearly twenty-four hours, Ginny! Your father had to leave for work this morning without knowing where his daughter was or if she was safe!"
"It was an accident," Ginny cut in. "I thought Harry told you, he thought I had. It wasn't until this morning that we realized there was a mix-up. We knew you would be worried, so we came straight home."
Mum's gaze was sharp. "Straight home from where?"
Ginny looked her in the eye. The most important part of lying was knowing when to tell the truth. "Chadwick House, in London."
Harry choked.
There was an agonizing silence broken only by Ginny's heartbeat in her ears as she and her mother stared at each other. Then Mum pursed her lips.
"Well then, you'll have had a good night's rest. Harry, the garden needs degnoming, and when you're done with that, pick the vegetables. Ginny, clean the chicken coop, then come join me in the house. Breakfast is on the stove, then I expect you both to get to work—without magic."
()()()()
Having picked every ripe bean, cabbage, pepper, cucumber, and tomato in the Weasleys' sizable vegetable patch, Harry wrestled the last bushel basket into the pantry and stretched his back. He tiptoed across the empty kitchen and peered into the sitting room, but Mrs. Weasley was nowhere in sight. Bounding up the stairs two at a time and taking special care to be quiet outside her room on the fourth floor landing, Harry entered Ron's room and flopped on his camp bed with a sigh of relief.
"Finally escaped, have you?" Ron said, amused.
"You could have helped."
"She is my sister."
"Yeah, I know."
"And you're my best mate. Why didn't you ask me to cover for you?"
Harry shrugged, watching a black spider build a web in the corner. "I thought since she was of age, it wouldn't matter."
Ron shook his head in disbelief. "Sometimes, Harry, it is painfully obvious you grew up without a mother. It always matters. Even Bill and Charlie tell Mum when they're going out, or at least Bill did before he got married, and they haven't lived at home in years."
"That's what Ginny said, that it wouldn't be about—that she would be most upset about us disappearing."
"Went spare, she did. I think Charlie went to St. Mungo's just to get out of the house. It wasn't until Dad reminded Mum how they spent her first birthday after they were married that she stopped imagining you were being Cruicio'd."
Harry stared at the ceiling, pretending more interest in the spider, which Ron hadn't noticed yet. "How—what do I do to get her to like me again?"
"Who, Mum? She still likes you."
"She yelled at me." Just thinking about it made his heart shrivel.
Ron studied Harry thoughtfully. "You've never been yelled at because you were loved, have you?"
Harry broke his contemplation of the spider to stare at Ron. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Remember when me and Fred and George flew the car to get you away from the Muggles?"
"Yes."
"Remember Mum's reaction?"
Harry grinned. He had been most relieved her anger wasn't directed at him that morning. "How could I forget?"
"She yelled at us, fed us breakfast, and—"
"Sent you to degnome the garden," Harry said slowly. Just like she'd done to him this morning. He felt his heart re-expand just a bit.
"She treated you just like one of us, which means she loves you, which means she worries about you. You love her back by not doing stupid shit like disappearing overnight."
"It's just weird, considering I've done a lot more dangerous things than spend the night in a hotel."
"Every other time you nearly died," Ron reminded him. "She thought maybe this time you had."
"You're … okay with this?" Harry said hesitantly.
"I talked to Ginny."
Of course he had.
"She said you were perfectly lovely, and she had a wonderful time. As long as Ginny's happy, you and I are good."
"I think she's mad at me," Harry admitted. "For getting her into trouble."
"That's because she knows you'll have a hell of a time meeting up this year now that Mum's on the watch. You could have said you were going to stay with Hermione, or to see Hagrid, or anything."
"Your parents would have seen right through that."
"Of course they would. But at least then they would have known you weren't coming home on purpose rather than being kidnapped by Death Eaters. I almost told Mum you were staying at Grimmauld Place, but she was so wound up by then I was afraid she would go over there looking for you."
Harry remembered the terrible look on Mrs. Weasley's face when she had said she was disappointed in him. "You're sure there's nothing—"
"This is family stuff, Harry. You screw up, you get yelled at, you take your punishment, but you're still loved. We took Percy back, didn't we?"