THC
House: Hufflepuff
Position: Transfiguration
Standard
Prompt: (Theme) travel and (Action) Buying a dress
Word Count: 1302

"How long are you going to take in there? I feel like the Earth has gone at least five full rotations around the sun already," Harry griped from his spot in the waiting area. Ginny had told him that her family was coming over for Christmas dinner and that she needed a new dress for the occasion.

"Don't you take that tone with me, Harry James Potter. You know as well as I do that the clothes make the man in every occasion. Or woman, as it were!" Ginny hollered back while looking at herself in the mirror from behind the curtain.

"Your family is coming over for dinner; it isn't a wedding or something, where formal clothes are necessary. Pick something, anything, before I die of old age. Please." Harry ignored the looks from other wizards in the store with their wives and girlfriends as he played with his Lord's Head of House Ring. He hated shopping with Ginny; he really hated shopping with her. She took forever to make a choice and when she did, he had to carefully word his response, which would inevitably lead to her changing her mind, and then the process would begin all over again.

"It has to be just right though, Harry. It will be our first time hosting anything since we announced our engagement and—"

Harry cut her off. "And your family is going to have a good time no matter what. Ginny, we've had your family over before and nothing has changed since the days when family dinners were hosted at The Burrow. Your mother will barge her way into the kitchen and dismiss the House Elves to take over making the food no matter how much we insist that she is our guest. Your brothers and their other halves will mingle around gawking at the grandeur that is the drawing room while we try to have drinks. The House Elves will be underfoot as we try to entertain everyone and catch up before they inevitably pester us for details about the wedding. Just pick something pretty and let's be done with it. It's not like we've invited the entirety of magical Britain's nobility into the house. It is your parents, your siblings, and their spouses— that's it."

"We still need to dress up for it, and I want to look the part of the next Lady Potter. Your reputation—"

Harry groaned loudly. "My reputation doesn't rely on whether you look like a million galleons. I defeated Voldemort for good. I am quickly becoming one of the best Aurors that the department has ever seen. My limited time in Wizengamot sessions is quickly improving the lives of Half-Bloods, Muggle-Borns and Magical Creatures putting me in a favorable position with those who haven't been historically well-represented. The days are numbered for people like Lucius Malfoy and his goons having a stranglehold on the law so that only their causes have any sway or backing are done," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "For the love of Merlin and Morgana Ginny, just pick something."

"Fine! Everyone would think you'd be more concerned with the fact that you're less concerned with the image of your House's future Lady," Ginny said while pulling on a beautiful auburn dress. She threw back the curtain and stepped out for Harry's inspection. "Good enough for you?" she asked, with a pointed look at the seated wizard.

"It's fine, Ginny, it flatters you. You look beautiful! Can we please leave now and get back so we can tell the House Elves how to prepare dinner before one of them gets it in their heads to make a feast worthy of a king and his court?" Harry said while standing up and offering her his arm. "We'll take this to go; she'll be wearing it out."

One of the shop attendants came back with a bill for the dress. Harry signed a draft for the cost of the dress on the bill to be taken from his Gringotts account before he began to lead Ginny out of the shop.

"Charlie will be bringing his new girlfriend Rachael with him tonight. He called while you were getting dressed. Ron and Hermione are going to be a bit late; she made a floo call saying they were going to Saint Mungo's before they swung by. She's felt ill the last few weeks and thinks that she might be in the family way," Ginny said as they passed the threshold of the shop and back into Diagon Alley proper.

"They aren't even married yet. Your mother will have a fit if Hermione and Ron have a kid before they're married. Merlin help us if it gets into the ears of the idiots at the Daily Prophet," Harry groaned as he was already imagining the nightmare that it would cause his future in-laws and himself. 'Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, Heroes of Hogwarts, having a bastard child out of wedlock!' was definitely not a headline that he wanted to wake up to one morning. When it rains, it pours, and that deluge of 'rain' would definitely fall over him and Ginny after the Daily Prophet got through attempting to destroy the good name of his best friends.

"Nothing is set in stone yet, but she's been puking a lot in the morning. Oh, what is it that the muggles call it? Morning sickness, that's it!" Ginny said, looking extremely proud of herself. "My brother is frightened by the prospect of her being in the family way, though, as he should. He acts like a toddler at the best of times. I shudder to think what kind of example he'll set for their children."

Harry shuddered at the utterly grave and serious expression on Ginny's face. She wasn't entirely wrong, Ron did act like they were still in their First Year of Hogwarts a lot of the time; he suspected that it was more of a coping mechanism than anything else. After all the dust had settled and all the Death Eaters were either tossed in Azkaban or through the Veil of Death, he had started to search out forms of therapy in the magical world to work out all that had happened. To call what he had found appalling was extremely generous and kind. Most magical therapists he had spoken to basically admitted that they obliviated the emotional attachments to a memory essentially lobotomizing the patient to any sensory input from the memory. 'It makes the trauma just a series of images in your mind. You'll feel nothing about it one way or another, just that you experienced it,' one of the men had explained to the Potter Lord.

"-rry. Harry! Are you even listening to me?" Ginny asked, while sharply tugging on her fiance's arm.

"Sorry, I was just offering up a prayer for your brother to survive your mom's wrath in case Hermione is pregnant," Harry said, covering up for being spaced out.

"Harry, you don't have to do that anymore. All that muggle nonsense about some make-believe God judging everything you do or whatever it may be is behind you. We live in a world of tangibles; don't get caught up in the past and let it slow down your journey forward towards our future," Ginny said, waving her free hand dismissively.

Harry did his best to hide how much that statement irked him as he led them toward the Apparition Point by The Leaky Cauldron. The past was what cemented the foundations of his beliefs. The past was what made him the man he was today, both for good and for bad. The past defined the tangible and intangible things that were the core of his philosophy about the word.

Sometimes, he couldn't help hating Molly's influence on Ginny.