A/N: So, here I am quarantined at home for six days (so far) bemoaning my lack of an update to share when I open up my writing software to start a Charlie/Amy one-shot (doesn't everyone write new fic at 4:15 in the morning?) when I find this beauty.
I honestly have no memory of writing it.
But it was in pretty good shape, and since it's Wednesday (cue harmonic chord) I decided to post. Ginny and Harry find out about Lily's Sorting.
"So, are you going to see Ron today?" Harry asked over breakfast.
Ginny, who was staring into her tea and wondering how her baby girl had grown up so fast, started.
"What? Who? Ron? Why?"
Harry gave her a knowing look over a spoonful of porridge.
"I am not thinking about Lily."
"Of course not," he agreed, lying with the smooth practice of a man married the better part of two decades. "Why should you be thinking of our youngest child simply because she left home yesterday?"
"Oh, don't say it like that," Ginny moaned. "She's only eleven. She won't leave home for ages yet."
"Did you see how little she looked, climbing onto the Hogwarts Express?"
"She knelt on the seat to wave goodbye through the window."
"Her trunk is bigger than she is."
"She was so excited, though," Ginny said wistfully. "I remember my first train ride to Hogwarts after having watched my brothers go every year."
"Mmm," Harry said through a mouthful of toast. "Isn't the owl post usually here by now?"
"What do you think it means that she didn't Floo-call last night?" Ginny said, ignoring his question.
"Nothing," Harry said, looking surprised at her concern.
"James and Albus did."
He shrugged. "James and Al do a lot of things Lily doesn't."
This was true, of course, but Ginny was not mollified. "I hope she didn't try and we missed her."
Harry scraped the last of his porridge out of the bowl and washed it down with a gulp of tea. He refilled his cup from the teapot on the table between them, then made to refill hers before realizing she hadn't drank any of it.
"Ginny. We were home all day yesterday."
"Yes, but…." She let her voice trail off, and her husband smirked at her.
"We were out of bed before the train even arrived at Hogsmeade and you know it."
Ginny sighed, looking over his shoulder out the window but seeing no owl. "I know, I just … I need to know where she is, to be able to picture her," she sighed. "And the boys know they're supposed to send me their timetable."
"It's early still," Harry said. "Drink your tea."
She complied, then made a face at the tepid temperature. She cast a warming charm and tried again. Better. Maybe Lily was doing the same, right now—pouring tea, adding the splash of milk she liked, slathering her toast with marmalade and chatting with her roommates as she waited for the owl post.
"I can't take it," Ginny said, springing from the table and pacing to the window and back. "Why in the name of magic did she not Floo and tell us about her Sorting? Doesn't she know I'm stuck here waiting on news from her?"
"I doubt it," Harry said mildly, trading his empty bowl for her untouched one. "You weren't like this with James or Al."
She rounded on him. "I told you, Jamie and Al Floo-called! I didn't have to spend a sleepless night wondering where they were or waiting for a bloody bird at breakfast. Not to mention I had children to feed and dress and Floo to Audrey!"
"You didn't sleep last night?"
Ginny had just taken a deep breath—to yell or curse, she hadn't decided—when James's owl sailed through the window left open for him, followed promptly by a post owl with the Prophet. Untying the letters with shaking hands, she set aside the ones from James and Al and sat down on Harry's lap so they could read Lily's together.
Dear Mum and Dad,
Hogwarts is amazing! Hagrid took us across the lake and no one fell in, although I tripped over my robes getting out, I was staring up at the castle so hard. I did have sweets on the train, but don't worry, Mum—I didn't get one of everything like Dad and Uncle Ron did. The Sorting Hat still sings awful songs, and I think maybe it's going a bit batty in its old, old age, because …
Ginny pictured her daughter biting her lip as she wrote, just like she did when she had something to say she didn't think her listener would like.
It put me in Slytherin. I told it who I was, that I was a Potter and a Weasley, and the Hat said it knew that perfectly well, thank you, it could see who I was for itself. It also said it had considered Slytherin House for both of you—
"I didn't know that!" Ginny and Harry said together, turning to each other in astonishment.
They both nodded, then silently agreed to discuss it later and turned back to Lily's letter.
So I said it should look really closely and think really hard and put me where I
She had underlined the pronoun three times.
Lily Luna Potter, belonged, and wherever it was, I would go. It said some would consider that brave, but since I meant it to be independent
"Isn't that the truth," Harry muttered.
I fit better with Slytherin House. So, I'm writing this letter from my dormitory and watching mermaids in the lake. Ariel and her sisters are much prettier, just like you said, Dad.
Everyone's been really nice so far and the prefects promised our Head of House is the best and I hope you're not too disappointed.
Love, your daughter,
Lily
Ginny finally broke the silence. "Well."
"That's why you couldn't sleep last night," Harry said shrewdly.
"I … wondered," Ginny admitted. "I was always able to dismiss it when the idea occurred, but when she didn't Floo-call us, I worried it was because she'd been Sorted into Slytherin and was afraid of our reaction."
"Which is completely unfounded," Harry said firmly.
Ginny turned to him in surprise. "Absolutely! Lily is her own person. She was Sorted on her own merits, and none of them are lacking."
"Exac—" Harry broke off, staring at the post owl behind her.
Ginny turned to discover that even rolled into a cylinder, the front page headline clearly displayed the top half of the letters POTTER SLY. She barely had time to stand up before Harry snatched the paper and unfolded it with a snap, earning an indignant hoot from its deliverer.
"No, Harry, don't read it—" The words left her mouth even though she knew they were useless.
Ginny didn't need to see the byline to know the article was written by Rita Skeeter or read it to discover its contents. She read them on Harry's reddening face instead. When he was done, he folded the paper neatly and stood up.
"Harry?"
"I'm going to kill Rita Skeeter," he said with deadly calm. "I am going to crush her like the bug she is, and then I'm going to hex the editor, and quite probably melt the printing presses into tiny thin Frisbees and fling them through the Veil of Death in the Department of Mysteries. Then," he added, "I am going to Apparate to Hogwarts—yes, I can Apparate inside Hogwarts—and have a chat with McGonagall about the folly of allowing reporters to attend the Sorting of my daughter."
Ginny swallowed. She'd never seen Harry this angry, not even in fourth year. "Maybe—"
But she got no further, for Harry's tight control broke.
"MY DAUGHTER!" he raged, sending both owls scurrying up the chimney in fright and Ginny holding on to a chair back to resist the temptation to join them. "THEY'RE GOING AFTER MY DAUGHTER, GINNY! IMPLYING SHE'S A DARK WITCH, THAT THE BIT OF VOLDEMORT IN ME NEVER DIED AND GOT PASSED ON TO HER! SHE'S ONLY ELEVEN YEARS OLD AND I'M GOING TO KILL THEM!"
Any thought she might have had of hiding his wand vanished at the sparks—actual embers that scorched her kitchen table and nearly set the boys' letters on fire—emanating from his pocket.
"Harry James Potter!" It was her "halt or die" voice, the one she only used with the kids in genuine emergencies, and that combined with her use of his full name was enough to divert his attention. He stared at her, breathing hard.
"Our daughter is spending her first day at Hogwarts on pins and needles because she thinks her Gryffindor family is disappointed and ashamed. You are going nowhere until you write her a letter and assure her it is not so."
He stared at her a moment longer, then crumpled like a puppet. "Godric, Ginny, why? Come after me, fine, I'm a grown wizard, I'm used to being slandered in the press, but little Lily-Lu?" His voice cracked. "She's just a child!"
Ginny took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She had to stay calm because if she lost her temper, she lost any hope of calming Harry and together they likely would kill someone … Rita Skeeter being at the top of the list.
"Here," she said, flipping Lily's parchment over and Summoning a quill from a drawer. "Write to Lily, and then we'll go to the Prophet together."
()()()()
Their visit to the Prophet offices was both frustrating and useless. Skeeter refused to print a retraction, both Harry and Ginny had been so upset they'd performed accidental magic in front of witnesses (not just witnesses, Ginny reminded herself—reporters), and while the sight of Rita Skeeter and her boss hanging upside down in midair with their tongues glued to the roof of their mouths and thick, juicy bat bogeys flapping over their faces was immensely satisfying, they—and Lily—would pay for it in additional press coverage. Pearson had threatened to arrest both of them, but Harry had laughed in his face.
"Give it a go," he jeered. "See what a Gringotts curse-breaker, a dragon keeper, an upper-level Ministry official, a professional prankster, and an Auror have to say when you arrest their baby sister—your own employee!—for defending their niece. It will be newsworthy, I'm certain of it."
They'd left them there, hanging in plain view through the glass-walled office, and now Ginny wanted nothing so much as her own kitchen, a cup of tea, and a good cry.
"Well," Harry said as they stepped out onto Diagon Alley, "that was the stupidest thing we've done in a while."
"Oh, Harry…."
"Come on. Might as well go to Kitchy Witchy Stitchery while we're here."
"What? Why?"
Harry raised one eyebrow. "Have yarn in Slytherin colors already, do you?"
"Oh, shit."
()()()()
Kitchy Witchy Stitchery, despite its ridiculous name, was the best yarn shop in England. Ginny had loved coming here with her mum for as long as she could remember, with all the yummy yarns sorted by color: squishy yarns, fluffy yarns, silky smooth yarns just waiting to be worked up into something beautiful like the items displayed on the walls. For the first time in her life, the sight of the crooked wooden door and fuzzy sheep on the awning did not make her smile.
"Do I have to?" she asked Harry plaintively.
"Of course not. But if our only child who was not Sorted into Gryffindor doesn't receive a house scarf handmade by her mother by the first weekend of term … like her brothers did … she—and everyone else in the British Isles—is going to think her Gryffindor family is disappointed and ashamed. If you're okay with that, by all means, let's go home."
"Couldn't I wait a few days? Just for the hubbub to die down? All the mums are going to be in today, buying yarn for house scarves."
"I repeat—"
"Piss off," Ginny growled, then relaxed her face into a smile and crossed the street.
The yarn shop was as warm and cozy as always, if a bit more crowded than usual today. In addition to the shop noise dampened by yards and shelves and bins and baskets of fiber, there was the obligatory new knitter with a half-finished jumper and a panicked expression, the Auntie Muriel look-alike knitting a complicated lace pattern from memory, and the busy clerk directing proud mums to the baskets of gold, scarlet, yellow, black, blue, bronze, green, and silver yarns in the worsted weight section. Ginny headed in that direction.
"Mrs. Potter," the clerk said loudly upon seeing her, and the quiet hum of conversation ceased. "I knew we would see you here today," she smirked.
"Yes, well, my last first-year," she said with a smile she hoped was not as grotesque as it felt.
"And no Slytherin colors in your stash, I expect," she said, her voice still pitched loudly for everyone to hear.
"Not yet," Ginny said lightly, wondering how many skeins she could wrap round the woman's neck before she choked.
"No one else in the family to borrow from, either, is there? Even a family as large as yours."
What the hell, Ginny thought. It could hardly get any worse.
"No, Lily is the first Slytherin in—" Ginny paused when she realized she didn't actually know the answer. She'd have to ask Mum. "Well, three generations, at least. Harry and I are excited for her. She'll have a lot of firsts no one else in the family has experienced. That's always a treat for a youngest child."
With three emerald-green skeins in one arm, Ginny reached to add the corresponding number of silver.
"She's got some nerve," someone muttered soto voce. "Acting like it's no big deal Harry Potter's kid was Sorted into the Dark House."
Ginny gritted her teeth and continued comparing dye lots until she had a matching trio. Other women were ahead of her, but no one blocked her approach to the counter. "You know, I've never liked using labels for the houses," she said casually as the register rang up her purchase. "The smart house, the brave house. My sister-in-law, Hermione Granger-Weasley, is the cleverest witch I know, but she's not a Ravenclaw. The coward who betrayed my husband's parents was Gryffindor. The man who risked his life nearly constantly as a double agent was Slytherin. It's people's choices, you see, that determine who they really are." She handed over the exact change, picked up her bag, and turned for the door. Just before she reached it, she paused, looking her heckler in the eye.
"Anyone who has a problem with our daughter in Slytherin House would do well to remember her mother is a lioness."
Satisfied with her parting shot, Ginny left the shop. After all, she had a scarf to knit.