Day After Voldemort's Defeat
Harry opened his eyes sleepily. He didn't know how long he had been asleep, but he felt completely refreshed. In fact, he couldn't think of a time when he had felt more perfect. He looked around the foreign room, amazed at its simple beauty.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"You can rest now, Harry; it's done," he heard a soft voice call.
"What's done?" Harry asked, but the voice didn't answer. Suddenly, the memories came pouring back into his mind; so many people dead, yet he had done it, he had destroyed Voldemort. "Where am I?" he asked again, hoping the owner of the soothing voice would appear. He caught a flash of red in his peripheral vision. "Hello? Is someone there?" He saw the red again and realized it was the back of a woman's head. He hurried after the woman until he finally caught up with her. He reached out to grab hold of her, but his hand went straight through her body. He stood frozen, gaping at the woman when she turned around. "Mrs. Weasley!" Harry exclaimed. "What are you doing here?" But she simply shook her head and continued walking away. Harry began to follow her again when he heard a familiar voice.
"You can't go with her, Harry," Dumbledore said gently. "It's not yet your time."
"Professor Dumbledore, where am I?"
"The only thing that matters is that you can't stay. They still need you." It finally dawned on Harry where he was.
"No, they don't. I fulfilled the prophecy. My purpose in life is done. Let me go on; let me be with my parents and Sirius."
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that," Dumbledore said gently.
"No one is going to want me there, I'm a murderer. It's all my fault."
"They want you back, and they don't blame you. They love you," Dumbledore said.
"I love them, too."
"Especially her," Dumbledore added knowingly.
"Yes," Harry admitted sheepishly.
"You've hidden it for her safety for far too long. You shouldn't be ashamed that you're in love with her," Dumbledore said with a smile. "Do you hear that, Harry?"
"No," Harry said stubbornly.
"Listen harder. Hermione is calling you. She needs you, she's depending on you."
"I need Hermione, too."
"It's time to go back, Harry." As the peaceful world around Harry began to fade away, he heard his hold headmaster call out to him one last time. "Your parents are very proud of you; we all are."
Ginny slept restlessly that night. She couldn't get Harry out of her head; his pain, his suffering, his kiss… She knew that if she wanted to maintain any kind of a normal life, she would have to move on from what happened last night. If she didn't, she would never get Harry to open up to her again. She just had to figure out how to prove to him that he could trust her again. Well, that and she had to figure out if he had been talking about her when he had said he had been in love…
When she arrived in the dining room for breakfast, she was surprised to see all of the guys already there eating. MJ looked like he was in the middle of a very interesting story, because not one of the guys noticed her presence in the room.
"So then," MJ said, "she pushes me onto the bed and reaches behind her back and…" MJ's face turned bright pink when he finally noticed Ginny in the room. "Morning, Miss Weasley," he said sheepishly. Everyone cracked up, except Harry and Jacob, both of whom seemed to be completely mortified.
"Well, don't stop your story on my account, MJ," Ginny said slyly. "It sounds like you had an excellent weekend."
"It was alright," MJ replied with a grin.
Ginny sat down at the table and helped herself to a plateful of eggs. "So is that what you lot talk about when I'm not around, your conquests with women?"
Tank chuckled. "Well, seeing as how most of us are married, it's nice to live vicariously through the single blokes on the team, remembering the good old days."
"Although mostly it's just listening to MJ talk about his flavor of the week," Dustin added.
"What can I say, the ladies love me," MJ said cockily.
"I have stories too, from time to time," Jeff said.
"Jeff, the last date I saw you on was with Ginny," Wesley pointed out.
"Don't worry, Jeff. Not having stories isn't a bad thing," Ginny assured him.
"Oh, to be so young and ignorant again," Dustin said dramatically.
"I'm not ignorant! You don't grow up with six older brothers and stay ignorant about the mind of the teenage boy!" Ginny insisted.
"The mind of the teenage boy is a bit different from the mind of the man," Jacob said, blushing furiously.
"Here, here!" MJ cheered.
"How old were you when your parents gave you 'the talk,' Tank?" Dustin asked.
"Oh, let's see. I guess I was around thirteen or fourteen when I got the brief version. I got the full blown thing at sixteen when I got my first serious girlfriend," Tank answered.
"It was about the same for me," Dustin said. "I'm curious if it was the same for the different generations."
"My dad talked to me at thirteen, I think. I still wasn't interested in girls, so I didn't care about it much until later," Wesley said.
"I got it at eleven," Jeff said. "It was just Dad and me, so he was very blunt with it."
"Isn't eleven a bit early?" Ginny asked.
"Not when you're going to school with veela," Jeff said with a grin.
"Aren't you older than Fleur?" Ginny asked.
"She wasn't the only one at that school," Jeff replied with a far off look in his eyes.
"What about you, MJ?" Dustin asked.
"Fourteen," MJ answered. "Mum couldn't get up the nerve to talk to me about it, so she finally just convinced her brother to do it. I do have to say he told me a few things I don't think my mum would have."
Jacob let out an appreciative chuckle. "When I was thirteen my dad gave me a book on the topic. He sat patiently at my desk while I read it, and then asked me if I had any questions. I told him no, and he just told me that when the time came to make sure I was responsible."
"I have to admit the talk my brother gave me was much more useful than the talk my dad gave me," Tank added. "He's the one who actually talked about technique and such."
"Okay, I think this conversation is now pushing the 'not appropriate at the breakfast table' limit," Ginny said, trying her hardest not to blush.
"Well, Miss Weasley, when did your mum give you the talk?" Tank asked with a grin.
Ginny smiled proudly. "By the time Mum gave me the talk when I was fourteen, I was already well advised on the topic." She knew they were all giving her curious looks, but the look Harry was giving her was enough to make her burst out laughing. She smiled and maintained her composure. "When I was seven, I had a nightmare. Bill had just come home from one thing or another, and I snuck to his room so he could protect me from my bad dreams. Needless to say I was surprised to find a girl in Bill's bed with him. Only now can I fully appreciate the look of pure horror on Bill's face. He pulled on a pair of pants, and quickly ushered me back to my bedroom. When I asked what they were doing, he gave me my first very abbreviated version of the talk."
"How many versions did you get?" Jeff asked.
"Well, a got another one from Charlie after a similar situation, but he was stupid enough to be out in the open, practically in our backyard. Then there was the talk Fred and George gave me before I started Hogwarts about what to do if any boys tried to touch me. Then there was Tom… he pretty much took away what was left of my innocence." Ginny shuddered at the thought and was shocked when she realized how easily she had mentioned him in a normal conversation. She shook her head and regained her composure. "And finally the one from Mum with the general knowledge of how things worked, and the assurance that no respectable witch would have relations with a man before she was married to him." Ginny giggled at the memory.
"What's so funny?" Tank asked.
"After that I told my Mum that Bill and Charlie must not have dated very respectable witches," Ginny said through her giggles. "You should have heard the howlers she sent them!"
After the laughter had died down, Dustin looked at Harry. "Alright, Potter. Everybody's shared their embarrassing stories but you. I think it's only fair you take your turn."
Harry turned a brilliant Gryffindor red. "Well, it's just that…"
"Spit it out," MJ said laughing.
"I never got the talk," Harry mumbled.
"What was that?" Tank asked.
"I never got the talk, okay?" Harry repeated forcefully. Ginny couldn't believe she'd never thought about it before. It was just one of the many things Harry had missed out on.
"What do you mean, you never got the talk?" Tank asked incredulously.
"Well, my parents died before I reached that stage, and my pig of an uncle barely said two words to me," Harry explained. "And then when I was thirteen I found my godfather, but he was pretty much on the run from the law from the time I met him until the time he died. We really didn't have time to talk about things like girls and sex." Ginny stifled a laugh when Harry's face flushed further when he said the word sex. "And by that time I had heard enough by word of mouth that I figured even if I had someone to talk to about that kind of thing I didn't really need to."
"Oh, but you were gravely mistaken," Tank said in total seriousness. He turned and looked at Ginny. "We've got practice in a few minutes, but I want you to make sure our schedule is cleared for tonight. We've got a 'men only' bonding activity that needs to be taken care of."
"What do you mean?" Ginny asked. She followed Tanks gaze to Harry and suddenly understood. "Oh, I'll make sure you won't be interrupted. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help." Tank raised an eyebrow at her. Ginny rolled her eyes in response. "I meant if you needed any kind of visual aids…" Tank burst out laughing at the implication. "Tank! I meant like a book or something, but forget it now if you aren't capable of correctly interpreting an innocent comment."
Harry looked around the room nervously. "Should I be scared?"
"No, mate," MJ said smiling. "You should consider yourself lucky that you're going to be gaining the wisdom from all of our experience."
"Okay, okay, we'll worry about this tonight. Let's just get to practice now," Tank said.
"Have fun," Ginny called as they all left the kitchen.
It was two hours after dinner that Harry came walking absently into the living room where Ginny was sitting working. She had stayed up intentionally to make sure that the team didn't scar Harry for life. As soon as they had finished eating, Tank had forcefully ushered Harry back upstairs. And now, two hours later, Harry was sitting in the living room, alone with Ginny.
"Are you okay?" Ginny asked tentatively.
Harry took a deep breath. "I can honestly say that was the single most mortifying experience of my life."
Ginny laughed. "Oh, I'm sure it wasn't all that bad."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"
"It couldn't be any worse than walking in on your brothers shagging," Ginny said.
"Oh, I don't know. If I told you the personal stories they told me, you'd never be able to look any of them in the face again," Harry said. "Although if you ever get to a point when you don't think you'll ever see them again, I have some really funny stories to tell you."
"I'll let you know," Ginny said with a chuckle. "But, come on, that couldn't have been that bad."
"Oh, that wasn't what was bad. They insisted that they know the full extent of my limited experience, and when I told them they wouldn't let me hear the end of it. They proceeded to tell me exactly how everything I haven't done should be done or how it should feel. Then they went on to conjure up images of examples of what things should look like, which wouldn't have been that bad if they weren't real images from MJ's memories."
Ginny's face flushed. "Oh my…"
"Exactly. Then they went on to say that a bloke like me could have any girl I wanted. They thought that on our next night off I should go out into town, drop my name, and shag the first female that responded."
"They didn't!" Ginny exclaimed.
"Oh, they did. I told them that I wanted it to be special, something more memorable than a witch who only wanted me because of my name, but they insisted that I was being unreasonable and that I sounded like a girl."
"They just don't understand at all!" Ginny said.
"Well, don't tell them that. I think they thought I was the luckiest bloke in the world to get the benefits from all of their wisdom. I think they came close to screwing up my perspective on the subject for life."
"What are they doing now?" Ginny asked.
"I think they're still comparing stories. I just had to get out of there," Harry said with a sigh.
"Oh." Ginny looked at Harry, and decided then was as good of a time as any to try and get him to talk more. "Are we ever going to get to finish the conversation we started last night?"
"I didn't realize we weren't finished," Harry said stubbornly.
"Harry, I still have so many unanswered questions," Ginny said.
"I told you that I couldn't answer all of your questions," Harry said quietly.
"Can you tell me why you're so thin? I couldn't help but notice last night. And today, I noticed that you don't eat as much as the other guys," Ginny said.
Harry looked surprised to hear her question. "Well, I'm not as big as the other guys; I never had Ron's appetite."
"Yes, but you still shouldn't look this thin."
Harry sighed. "Honestly? I lost a lot of weight right after I got out of school. I wasn't eating properly, I was drinking a lot, and I spent most of my time just lying around. I didn't take care of myself, and I'm still kind of paying for that today."
"What do you mean you're still paying for it today?" Ginny asked.
Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, that's one of those things I can't tell you."
"Okay, but shouldn't you have put weight back on since then?"
"Well, this is probably the best I've eaten in a long time. I never exactly ate well while I was traveling, and I never really took the time to cook for myself. If it wasn't for the times when Hermione was at home, my body probably would have completely fallen apart a long time ago."
"You two really depended on each other, didn't you?" Ginny asked.
"We both went through a lot. We had a lot in common."
"You both cared about Ron," Ginny pointed out.
"I can't tell you why she broke up with him if that's what you're getting at," Harry replied.
"Fine. But you really should try and take better care of yourself, Harry."
"There were just so many days I didn't see the point," Harry said quietly. "But I've been trying more lately, I really have, I promise."
"Good. Now why don't you continue to take care of yourself and go get some sleep," Ginny said.
"I'll go up in a bit. They were using my room, and I really don't want to go back up until I'm sure they're done. You know this was the first time I really felt like a kid around them?"
Ginny smiled. "I know what you mean. You don't think on a day to day basis that they're that much older than us."
"In some ways we have so much more life experience, but then on the days like this…"
"Again, I know what you mean," Ginny said with a giggle. "But since I don't have anyone in my room I think I'm going to go to bed. I hope your room clears out soon."
"Good night, Gin."
"Good night, Harry. And thank you for being honest with me tonight; it really means a lot to me."
"I'm trying," Harry said with a sigh.
"And so am I."
A/N I have to tell you all, the first thing I wrote with this story is the backstory. You now offically have every piece of the backstory, minus two crucial Harry/Hermione moments. And maybe one more piece that isn't written yet. Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter, I found it to be quite humorous to write. The next update will be sometime this weekend as usual. I'm updating today since I'll be traveling all day tomorrow (I'm going to go stay with my parents). As always, thanks for your reviews, they mean the world to me. Oh, and trust me, Ginny just hit the tip of an iceberg with the whole eating issue. Harry made some mistakes, and you'll see a lot more in the next 3 or so chapters...