Disclaimer: ::sigh:: Here we go again...not mine...nothing but the plot...::grumble::
Time to make Merry:
Harry and Ginny sat close to each other at the long polished bar at Callahan's, enjoying their new closeness and taking in the happy chaos around them. The delirious young wizard leaned over to his new girlfriend and said, "I just now placed what this reminds me of." Ginny cocked an eyebrow at him, prompting him to continue. He grinned and said, "It reminds me a bit of Christmas at the Burrow. All the noise, the conversation, the jokes. There seems to be everything but the Twins, testing new fireworks."
Ginny looked around her a moment, considering, and replied, "You're right. This place is barmy. It's like an asylum. All we need is Mum bustling around, making sure everybody has a bellyful of cookies, refilling glasses of pumpkin juice." She thought for a few moments. "I'll bet this place is brilliant on New Year's."
Harry nodded, trying to picture this warm, friendly place filled to overflowing with happy people, celebrating the coming year, remembering the one past. As this place was a great place to be on just a regular night, in the middle of the week at that, it would have to be incredible on an occasion like that. As he mulled that thought over, he noticed Mike, behind the bar, look up with a smile on his face and turn around, going into the back. He came back out to the front a moment later, with an elegant, gorgeous redhead on his arm, beaming. This was Lady Sally. As the couple walked through the crowd, exchanging greetings with everyone as they passed, she leaned over and whispered in Mike's ear. He started to turn red (surprising Harry to no end, as he'd had the impression that the big man was unflappable.), and burst into a great laugh. Somehow, the sound of that laugh seemed to make the atmosphere even more joyful. The two of them walked up to Harry and Ginny.
"Harry, I believe you've met my wife, Sally. Sally, this is Ginny Weasley, a friend of his." Sally came up to Harry, and hugged him, murmuring, "Took my advice, I see." She released him after a moment, and turned to embrace Ginny as well. "So very nice to meet you, my dear. I hope you don't mind, but I gave Harry some advice a few days ago. I'm delighted to see he listened." She shot a look at her husband, saying, "At least someone does." Thet grinned as she watched Mike squirm under her gaze.
Harry grinned as he watched this couple. They were obviously very much in love, and had been for longer than he could even imagine. "Your wife? Why doesn't this surprise me one bit?" He laughed, as he saw the slightly smug look that Sally gave him. He stood and gave her a deep bow. As he straightened, he told her, "Yes, you were absolutely right, Your Ladyship."
Ginny stood and asked Mike, "Do you mind if I borrow Sally for few minutes?" At his nod, the two women walked over to stand a little way from the fireplace. The two men watched them walk away, aware that they weren't the only ones watching. Most of the male eyes in the room were on them.
As Ginny and Sally sat down and talked, Mike asked, "Do you have any idea how incredibly lucky you are? She's really something else."
Harry nodded fervently and said, "Believe me. I know. You don't know the half of it." He looked straight at Mike. "I know that, somehow, you have a connection to the wizarding world." Somehow, Harry knew that this would be the one place on earth where he would never have to worry about who might overhear the things he said. "How much do you know of what's been going on, on our side of the pond, the past few years?"
"You're right. Sally and I may not be directly involved, but we know plenty of people who are. We also have certain...advantages...adaptations, you might say, that allow us to utilize certain parts of the wizarding lifestyle. You know that most, muggles, as you would say, can't use the floo network, brooms, or even see certain things in your world?" At Harry's nod, he continued. "Sally and I, as well as our daughter Mary, are able, for reasons I understand but have no way to explain, are able to use all of those things, and more. We also subscribe to a number of newspapers from your world, the Daily Prophet among them." He looked steadily at the younger man. "We're both pretty damned good at reading between the lines, as well. The only thing I still haven't figured out is how in the world Fudge managed to hang on so long." He raised an eyebrow at Harry.
Harry burst into a huge belly laugh, surprising Mike. After a few minutes, he finally calmed down enough to speak. "Well, if you promise to never tell another living soul, I'll tell you."
The big bartender, knowing there just had to be a great story behind this, said, "Cross my heart, not a soul."
"We kept him there. Dumbledore and me. The past year or so, Fudge wanted out. Badly. Desperately. Most of the wizarding public wanted him out as well. He was the most inept, incompetent, bumbling, idiotic...never mind. The problem was, we had a pretty good idea who would replace him, if he managed to step down, and that would have been a complete disaster. One of the Lestranges who had never been proven to be a Death Eater. He would have been just a bit too efficient, if you get my meaning."
Mike had followed up to this point, but was puzzled. "So how did you manage to keep Fudge in place?"
Harry grinned and said. "Well, it all started when Arthur, Ginny's dad, ran across some pictures of Fudge, in some very small lacy pink knickers, some stockings, high heels, and his lime green bowler. Very disturbing pictures, as a matter of fact. One of those times when you really start to hate the fact that wizarding pictures move." Harry shuddered at the thought.
The older man shuddered along with him. He had seen pictures of the pudgy ex-Minister, and had no desire to allow that mental image to cross his mind. As he listened to the rest of Harry's explanation, his booming laugh echoed around the bar.
Ginny and Sally had relaxed at a table on the other side of the room. As they sat down, Ginny had to ask, "What advice did you give to Harry?" She looked curiously at the other woman, wondering how anybody could have ever gotten through to him. She was just glad to be the one to reap the benefits of the change in him.
Sally said, "Harry used the entrance to The Street, that I maintain in my establishment. I knew who he was as soon as I saw him come in. I run what is possibly the only brothel in existence that is worth working at. I don't say this to boast, just as a matter of fact. I don't employ anyone who is not absolutely confident in him or herself. I have an artist on staff right now who is the only empath I am aware of in this country. She generally has to be in the same room, in order to get a sense of how someone's feeling. She usually has to have some sort of physical contact to know exactly how they feel, and how to proceed with them. When Sherry, who was on the door that night, led Harry to the bar, Arethusa, the empath I mentioned, was on the third floor. She was off-duty, and very much engaged with her fiance. It didn't matter one whit. As soon as he walked through that door, she shot straight up in bed, giving poor Joe whiplash in the process.
"She gave me a psychic blast neither one of us had ever known she was capable of. Somehow, though she was three floors away and at the other end of the building, she had picked up everything going through his mind at that moment. His thoughts, his emotions, his fears, his shame, everything you can think of was right there, in her forebrain. She sent it to me, with the thought, "He NEEDS You!" The next thought was, "Wait...not you...her..." I then saw a picture of you, Ginny. Apparently, there's enough of a resemblance between us to confuse even Arethusa. For a moment or two, at any rate. At that point, I walked out of my office, and saw him sitting there. I knew of him, who he was, what he and the rest of you had been forced to deal with lately. Now, I also knew almost everything that was behind it. I knew how much he was fighting with himself over his feelings for you." The two of them looked across the bar at Harry. Sally shook her head, wonderingly. "I can't imagine how he made it through the past few years, with all the responsibility he's carried on his shoulders, thinking he had to take it all on himself. The burden of guilt he carried, and still does, would have crushed anybody else, long ago." She looked back at Ginny. "He even carries his own load of it related to you. He regrets ignoring you for so long, and that his own problems eclipsed yours. Something to do with a chamber. I don't think his love for you is because of guilt or obligation to you, so you can get that look off of your face, young lady. From what I saw, it's real. It's genuine."
Ginny looked across at Harry again. After a moment she said, "I don't know how much you got in all that of his childhood. Harry had the absolute worst upbringing you could possibly imagine. He was barely a year old when his parents were brutally murdered by the Dark Lord. He turned on Harry then. He had heard part of a prophecy about himself and Harry, and focused on the part that said that Harry was the one who would have the power to destroy him." She sipped her drink and gave a wry look. "Apparently, he'd missed the part about him marking Harry as his equal, and tried Avada Kedavra, the killing curse on him. It backfired, completely destroying Voldemort's body. Even to this day, nobody knows exactly what happened. His mother, Lily, had somehow created a kind of a bond between them, based in her love for her baby son, that protected him from the curse, and gave a big portion of Voldemort's power to Harry. After he was pulled out of what was left of his parents home, he was sent to live with his aunt Petunia, Lily's sister. She was the only blood relation left to him. Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster for Hogwarts, decided that the wards that Harry would need would be best served by being with family. That was the easiest way to construct them. He, along with everybody else at the time, was exhausted, in every way concievable. So, in a way, it actually was the best solution available at that time." She looked contemplative for a moment. "Truthfully, with any other family, it should have worked perfectly. In any other family, Harry would have been raised in a loving environment, safely sheltered from the notoriety and fame that night had brought." The young witch's expression turned hard, her brown eyes went flinty, and Sally could have sworn she saw sparks flashing from them. "In any other family. Any real family. The problem was that he was with the Dursleys." Her normally sweet voice almost seemed to drip venom as she said the name. "They mistreated Harry in every way possible. When he wasn't doing the chores they set for him, from dishes to weeding the garden, to painting the fence, making breakfast, cleaning the house, washing the car, anything and everything you can think of from the time he could walk, they were neglecting him. He got nothing. Their precious son, Dudley, got everything he ever wanted. They never even told him the truth about how his parents died. When he got his Hogwarts letter, they tried to keep it from him. The only time they ever talked to him was to tell him how much of a freak he was. They tried to deny him everything." Ginny paused for a moment. "In the wizarding world, one of the greatest abuses a parent or guardian can be charged with is preventing the child from knowing that they are magical, and not allowing them to be schooled in it. It's because they will never be able to gain their true potential, otherwise. They'll never even come close, because they'll always know something's missing, even if they don't know what it is. The only reason Harry even got his letter was because Hagrid is damn stubborn." Ginny giggled a little at this. "Rubeus Hagrid is the groundskeeper at Hogwarts, and completely devoted to Professor Dumbledore. When it became obvious that Harry wasn't getting the letter, despite many repeated attempts to deliver it, Hagrid took it upon himself to make sure it got to him. He'd known James and Lily, and with as loyal as he is to Dumbledore, he just made it his mission to get that letter into Harry's hands.
"Harry was dumped at King's Cross Station the day he was to leave for Hogwarts. To get there, the students take a special train, called the Hogwarts Express, from King's Cross. There's a special platform that isn't accessible to muggles, where you board the train. Harry was trying to find it, when he heard my family hurry past, talking about Hogwarts. He followed along, asking my mum how to get to the platform. I knew who he was at once, and didn't hesitate to let anybody know." Her cheeks turned pink as she remembered. "For as long as I could remember, I had heard about Harry Potter. I mean, to most of the wizarding world, he was a legend. He had stopped Voldemort just after his first birthday. Hundreds and thousnds of adult wizards and witches had spent the twelve years before that trying, but couldn't. Every child in our world had heard bedtime stories about him for over a decade. I had spent almost every night of my life since I could talk, asking my dad and mum to tell me the story. On the one hand, it was a horrifying story, if you think about it."
Sally nodded at this and replied, "Yes it is, but have you ever read the original versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales? Hideous."
Ginny nodded and continued. "On the other hand, by the time I saw him on that platform, I had, quite simply, a huge crush on him. I idolized that poor boy." She shook her head again. "It's embarassing to think about now. When he came to stay at the Burrow during the summer after his first year, I couldn't talk to him. I wanted to, but I just couldn't. Every time he looked at me, I squeaked and ran away. He was quite nice about it, actually. I think he was quite wondering why mum and dad didn't just have done with it, and send me to an asylum. He had to have seen me as quite the nutter. Ron kept making little jokes about it. Making sure to tell Harry, "Bit strange, that. We normally can't get her to stop talking." I think if that summer had gone one more week, I really would've killed Ron in his sleep.
"The next school term was the start of my first year. During our outing to Diagon Alley for school supplies, Lucius Malfoy slipped a diary into ny cauldron. He had grabbed my transfiguration text out of it, to make fun of the fact that all we could afford were used books. That diary turned out to have belonged to a student named Tom Riddle. It actually contained a shade of Riddle. What nobody knew then, and very few know even now, was that Thomas Marvolo Riddle later became Lord Voldemort. His shade posessed me, forcing me to open the Chamber of Secrets." Ginny shuddered hard at this, holding herself. Even now, there were times, when she remembered the events of her first year, that she thought she might never be warm again.
Sally saw this, and gestured for the attention of the man behind the bar. "Tom, Ginny needs to be Blessed. My recipe, please" Tom Hauptman quickly brought a steaming mug over and set it down in front of the young woman. Sally said, "Drink that, Ginny. You look like you need it." Ginny brought the mug to her lips. She sipped at it, tentatively at first. Then, tasting it, her face lit up, and she downed half of it at a draught. Seeing the smile, Sally explained, "That's what we call God's Blessing, Irish coffee to the uninitiated. It's Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, with Bushmill's irish whiskey, Bailey's irish cream, and just a sprinkling of raw sugar around the rim. It's good for damned near anything that ails you."
Ginny reluctantly set the cup down. She recounted the events of her first year to Sally, starting with the first time she opened the diary, continuing with the memory blackouts that occured when Riddle had taken over completely, to when he had later shown her everything that she had done while under his thrall. She told how she had poured her heart into the diary, thankful that somebody would listen to her eleven year old ramblings. She had told him everything, from her shaky confidence in her own magic, to the fights with her brothers, her petty fears, the crush she had on Harry. "He made me go down to the Chamber, one last time. He started a spell that would drain all my life energies, and transfer them into himself. I knew then, he didn't care for me, as he had made me believe he did. It was too late for me by then, though. Before he made me go down there that last time, he used me to leave a nessage that made it clear that my bones would lie in the Chamber forever. Somehow, Harry worked out how to get to the Chamber, and rescued me. He didn't do it because it was me, the girl with the silly crush on him. He did it because it had to be done. That's the reason he's done almost everything since. Just because he saw what needed doing, and he knew he would have to be the one to do it. Everything from the Chamber to the last battle." She shook her head, frustrated. "Everybody who knows him knows that there is absolutely nothing for him to feel guilty about. Everybody knows it, that is, except him." Ginny had a determined look in her eyes. "I'll get him to figure it out. One way or another."
Sally looked at Ginny, and said, "I do believe you're going to do just that. I think if anybody has a chance at it, it's you. For right now, though, I think it's high time we get back over there, before they forget who we are." Laughing, the two women got up and made their way back over. On the way, Ginny looked at Sally and said, "Like we'd let them."
The two women made their way back over to the men they loved. Ginny put her arm around Harry's waist, just enjoying the bond they now shared. She looked at Harry and asked, "So, do you have a place for us to stay the night?"
He looked stunned for a moment. He had completely forgot that he hadn't arranged anything. He had become a bit spoiled over the past few days by being able to just go to the back room at the Weasley's stores at the end of the night. He looked at Mike. "Is there anywhere around here where I could get a room at short notice?"
Callahan looked back at him and grinned. "Yep. Right through that door." He pointed to the doorway leading to the back.
Harry shook his head and said, "We can't take your place. Where will you sleep?"
The bartender said, "Don't you worry about that. I'll just go stay with Sal for the night. If you'll remember, she's got some pretty posh digs in the city."
The young wizard replied, "Only if you're sure..."
"Hey, I almost feel guilty. I'll be a lot more comfy than you will. The bed back there is lumpier than a bag of rocks. I suspect you'll figure a way arounf that, though." Mike winked at Harry.
"Well, if you don't mind, I think we'll retire for the night. It's been a long day, and I know Ginny has to be tired after everything earlier."
Harry got up from his chair and took Ginny's hand. "Ready, love?" At her nod, the two of them said their goodnights. They both gave hugs to Sally and Mike, and made their way to the back.
Sally and Mike waited for the last few patrons to clear out, locked the doors, and disappeared, heading to Lady Sally's.
As the happy new couple reached the back room, Ginny remembered what time it was, and thought she'd better let her mother know she was staying overnight. When she mentioned this to Harry he asked, "Just tonight? I was hoping to talk you into staying here for a while, so we could travel around a bit. You wouldn't believe what the countryside is like here. You'll love it."
She smiled and said, "That's a good idea. I mean, if there isn't anybody here with you, who knows when we'll get you back home? Just let me floo mum and let her know, alright?" She gave him a quick kiss. "Oh yes. I'm definitely staying here."
She bent to the fire, and threw a pinch of glittery powder in, saying, "The Burrow!"
Just as she bent to put her head in, she heard a murmured, "Nice bum."
"Stop that!"
She heard her mother ask, "Stop what, dear?" as she tuned from the sink.
Ginny's cheeks flamed as she replied, "Nothing, Mum. I just wanted to let you know that I'm staying here for a while. Harry wants me to travel with him, for a bit."
Molly's eyes lit up. "Have you two got together, then?" At her daughter's happy nod, she said, "Enjoy yourself, dear. Just be careful, alright? I know you know the spells.", she said with a lift of an eyebrow.
Ginny's cheeks got even redder, an impressive sight. "Of course, Mum. I love you.Talk to you soon."
"I love you, too, dear. Give Harry a hug for me, and tell him it's his turn to call next time." she said with a smile.
The redhead straightened up and fixed Harry with a glare, arms crossed. "Now. What's this about my bum?"
Harry pulled her close and held her. "It's as beautiful as the rest of you."
She couldn't stay mad at him. She looked up. "I love you, Harry."
"I love you, too, Ginny. How could I ever be blind enough not to see you for a moment, much less all these years?"
"I don't know. But, now that the scales have finally fallen off, I'm not letting you out of my sight, Harry Potter. Not for a moment."
They sat and talked awhile, and snogged for even longer. After a while he lay down, with his head in her lap. They stayed that way for a long time, watching the fire burn down to embers. She ran her fingers through his jet black hair, running her fingertips over his scar. She realized with a start that it was fading, and smiled. That had been too much a part of his life, for too long. It was long past time for it to go. Now, he was free to just be Harry. She looked forward to seeing how that worked out.