There and Back Again Lane
Ch. 11 – Beaters and Hounds, Part One: Two English in Scotland
Interlude: Passers-by
Rustling of robes, chattering.
Oliver Wood (OW): Hello, and welcome to this, er, summary. I'm Oliver Wood, Keeper for Puddlemere United and former Captain and Keeper of the Gryffindor House Team. Go Gryffindor!
Katie Bell (KB): Oliver, why are you such a prat?
Lee Jordan (LJ): And that was the lovely and talented former Gryffindor Chaser and Captain, Katie Bell, now with Puddlemere United as well. I'm, of course, Lee Jordan, WWN Quidditch commentator par excellence and regular contributor to Quidditch!, the magazine of the beautiful sport.
KB: Don't I get to introduce myself?
LJ & OW: No.
KB: Gits. You lot are the reason I'm not in the books that much.
Alicia Spinnet (AS): This is Alicia Spinnet, Holyhead Harpy and former Gryffindor Chaser. I think that's all of us.
LJ: Yeah, Dean... stop drooling Alicia. If this was a Muggle mic you would have electrocuted yourself. Where was I? Yeah, he's busy with his exhibition at the British Wizarding Portrait Gallery.
AS: Who knew art could be so... fit.
KB: And Nev's in Italy...
OW: Nev now is it? Something I should know?
KB: Dunno. Never seen a man blush before, so maybe...
LJ: Salacious details can wait.
AS: Hopefully not too long.
LJ: Remember why we're here?
OW: Contractual obligation?
KB: OK, OK. The summary.
LJ: Actually, how much of this shite are we really supposed to know?
OW: None of it, I think.
KB: Brilliant.
LJ: OK, so what's gone on so far?
OW: Harry defeats Voldemort, gets obliviated, meets Ginny, he starts remembering.
KB: My question is, does Auror training last two years or three, because really, this story should be six years after Harry defeats You-Know.
AS: How's that?
KB: Well, Ginny has another year at Hogwarts, right, and three years of Auror training and two years with Harry. And he's got four years of university as well as two years with her.
LJ: Yeah, but they spent the last year of each together, so...
OW: Did they?
AS: I think so.
KB: OK then, we'll let that issue slide for now. What else is happening?
LJ: As far as I know, Ginny and Harry met up again in Edinburgh, Fred's getting an earful from Angelina, and Ron and Hermione are panicking.
OW: What about Lupin?
KB: If only he was younger...
LJ: Katie...
AS: He's in the vaults with that Skeeter cow.
OW: I can't think of a more disagreeable way to spend a day.
KB: That's just because she wrote you were a knock-kneed pillock.
LJ: That was pretty hilarious.
AS: Was that after we beat you or before?
OW: Bugger off, the lot of you.
LJ: We don't really have any backstory on what happened in the intervening years, do we?
KB: A few more domestic scenes could have livened it up a bit.
AS & LJ: As long as they were in bed...
OW: Pray that neither Fred nor Ron hear this.
KB: What about that secret-keeper nonsense?
OW: Aye, that's fallen into the background hasn't it?
LJ: Who do you think it is?
AS: Somebody obvious, of course.
KB: 'Hide in plain sight' and all that?
AS: Yeah.
LJ: Malfoy.
Laughter erupts.
OW: Where is that little git?
KB: Hopefully rotting in hell with his father, after what he did.
AS: Who got him?
LJ: Wasn't one of us or the other lot, I don't think.
KB: Nev?
AS: He did fill out well after his fifth year, didn't he?
KB: Well fit, our Nev.
LJ: Out of the gutter and back on the kerb, ladies.
AS & KB: Berk.
OW: I faintly remember Fred saying Neville and Ginny were getting married.
AS: Nah, never got 'round to it. Too much past between them. Think they were still fixated on their losses, kind of fell together as a result. Fell apart for the same reason. Least, that's what Ange said.
LJ: Cute couple, though.
KB: Didn't know you had it in you, Lee.
LJ: An old romantic, me.
Sound of an arm being slapped.
KB: Still, one woman's loss is another's gain...
OW: As long as you're ready to play next Tuesday, I don't want or need to hear anymore.
KB: Never used to be such a prude, Oliver. I remember just last month...
OW: And I've some tales 'bout you, too, dearie. Something about a certain Weasley product in the lads' changing rooms at the pitch...
Sound of an arm(?) being slapped.
AS: Captains will be captains.
LJ: Seems like I've been chasing the wrong chaser.
AS: I'm sitting right here, tosser.
OW: Have we lost the plot yet?
KB: Yeah, might as well get back to the story. That's Harry? Murmurs of assent. My, Muggle life certainly agrees with him...
LJ: Stop drooling, Katie.
KB: Wait 'til the brothers hear you've been ogling Ginny.
LJ: You wouldn't...
AS & OW: Oh yes, she would.
KB: I wouldn't talk, Ollie.
OW: That's Oliver. And I was simply seeing whether the team could use another chaser.
AS: Methinks the wee Scots pillock doth protest too much.
OW: Bloody Sassenach.
Paean to Lost Days
Edinburgh
---(Harry's POV)---
I can't sleep. I'm so bloody tired, but I can't fall asleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Bloody Shakespeare.
Ginny's curled on her side beside me, hair splayed in an auburn corona on the pillow, her breath flicking an occasional strand to tickle my nose. Her arms, freckled from just above her elbows, cover her breasts, touching my chest, protecting my heart. She seems so peaceful, but I notice her fingers twitch, close slowly, and release as her brows furrow, her lips tighten into a grimace. I kiss her forehead where it creases as she confronts some wickedness in her dream. The fingers relax, anguish ebbs from her face, and a light grin emerges. I long to pull her tightly into an embrace but have no desire to ruin her calm so hard won. If not for a nagging thought that makes me restless, I would stay here next to her until she wakes, enthralled by her presence. Careful not to disturb her slumber, I slip my arm out from under her neck and, with another peck on her cheek, cover her with the duvet before dressing and head to the sitting room.
My left hand is still wracked by a phantom ache spurred by whatever dream woke me. I can't recall much save cracking my hand against stone, marvelling at the agony and indefinable levity. How much don't I remember?
Those girls I met at the cinema after school, in broom closets and loos, clumsy mutual groping in quiet forest groves, stealing packs of three from Dad in fervent expectation of something more. If I could trust my memory, I would've said Sarah was the first girl with whom I'd slept, awkwardly and with much fumbling, too eager, horribly maladroit. Not that things improved once I entered Uni, so both Sarah and Maggie must have been figments of someone else's fertile imagination. Their faces are beginning to shift, blend, and fade as photographs unprotected from the harsh light of day. I miss them dearly, more now that I know I never experienced their laughter, the happiness we'd brought one another, and even the sadness. As I peer into the flat opposite, my eye starts to sting but I let it flow. Even false memories deserve to be mourned.
Ginny's teenaged face, however, is coming into sharper focus. Slightly more freckled than now, but equally beautiful. A bittersweet joy replaces all those sordid fictions I've lost. Her smiles, that gleam in her brown eyes, a blissful serenity amidst chaos. It's coming back to me, slowly but certainly. How could I have forgotten these things? And yet, for all that pleasure I feel in flickering recollections, I am certain she wasn't my first. That dubious honour goes to another.
Kirstie, reading English literature at Edinburgh, was my first. Familiarising myself with my new home, with the geography and the speech. Getting lost looking for a prospective flat, I decided to walk the Royal Mile to the Castle. As I strolled up the hill toward the gates a bizarre feeling of homecoming filled my heart. I entered with the odd belief the feeling would grow stronger. Instead, it was all strange to me. Baffled by the discrepancy between sight and sentiment, I resolved to leave, travelling back down toward the Tron Kirk. There I met her as she was hawking souvenirs to disinterested tourists to supplement the meagre student's stipend. Thin but not weedy, with short dark hair and an intense, almost predatory air. I remember we argued a lot. When we finally parted ways after a couple of months, she screamed loudly enough for the entire tenement to hear that I was crap in bed. Enhanced my reputation with the local 'talent' immeasurably. Maybe I shouldn't have told her she was a feckless git with no greater ambition than to torment me 'til my ears bled white. It was needlessly cruel, though true. Besides, I still bear the scar where the mug struck me, right above the other one.
The other one. Will Ginny tell me how I got that? Is it the last reminder of my parents or simply the result of some fool teenage piss-up gone awry? To think of it, maybe I don't want to ask.
To sit, perchance to brood.
I would blame the weather, but the rain doesn't bother me. The sound of the rain beating against the window pane comforts me. My muscles cease their struggle against the forgotten dream. But my mind still probes, seeks ingress into the hidden spaces. Clearing the detritus of seven years, maybe seventeen, of lies and four years of Uni to bring the day I met Ginny to the fore.
Christmas in London, the weather parky and generally wet. Siobhan and I had parted without much recrimination save the loneliness brought of losing a friend through neglect. We were both too busy working and swotting that we barely had time for each other after the summer. We loved one another in our own way, but fell apart. I withdrew deeper into my books, she with her friends. The shattered carafe was simply the final straw. Can't say I was morose, more philosophical about the whole affair. Besides, I was off to meet my mates and it would scarcely have been on to barge into a pub all red-eyed and weepy. That'd been a death sentence. So, I wasn't necessarily sad the day I collided with Ginny, nor was I on the pull. Just another single bloke wandering the London streets.
I'd side-stepped this wanksta, some Ali G type, when I abruptly struck something fast-moving and solid. A pretty red-haired woman, her flushed face set in a scowl, dressed like a Goth, thankfully without the make-up. I felt a twinge of recognition that I'd presumed was simply honest attraction. Ginny was shaking her head at her satchel and its contents strewn out on to the pavement. My embarrassment at having placed her in such a predicament as well as from the string of muttered oaths streaming from her mouth banished the initial sentiment of familiarity away as I helped to collect her things. Then I heard her fall flat on her arse and fail to still a gasp. She said she knew me from school, but somehow Surrey and she didn't connect. More than anything, it was that broken link that caused me to respond automatically in the negative. But seeing her face-on flushed out a skulking remembrance, nothing entirely discernable, but certainly tenable. Until I said my name she was likewise uncertain. Yet when I did her face regained some of the colour it had before, albeit now for a happier reason. The smile on her face brought by mutual recollection radiated deep into me, awakening I knew not what except that I felt undeniably happy. By the end of the night I was positively ecstatic.
Yet it was odd, that first day. She answered questions about herself and us obliquely, spinning the tale of being a homeopathic healer, but with enough bluff and charm to dissuade me. The drink didn't hurt, either. If I'd been wary instead of anxious, I'd have noticed she was nursing her bevvy while making her enquiries, at least until she heard about Siobhan. Then we both got right plastered. Then I found out, or rediscovered, how hilarious she was, after she joined me in drowning nerves. As for the snogging, I was too pissed and too pleased to be surprised or to suss out why. I faintly remember wondering why my eyes were watering and her cheeks were wet, the both of us crying but laughing like schoolkids. Hugging each other like long-lost lovers, which I guess we might have been.
Who put me in this metaphysical purdah? Whom did I displease so gravely that they'd reduce me to an amnesiac? Ginny can't tell me, I do believe that. My world is unravelling before me. To her much of my history must be some dreadful secret de Polichinelle, the great truth everybody but poor Muggins can see. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Why can I remember such oft-quoted lines from Shakespeare but scarcely a whit about Ginny, about our past? I desperately want to scream at someone, but she's the only one here and she's as miserable as I am. She's a superb actress, but other than this grand comedy of errors, she never lied to me; her tell – a quick shy grin while tilting her head to the right – always gave her away.
Since I asked Ginny to marry me, even after all these revelations started to frustrate our lives, I've been thinking on fate. Before this, I'd believed that whole idea of predestination, that events are destined to happen, was complete and utter bollocks. There was no guarantee that either Ginny or I would be in London on the same street at the same time. But events conspired with us, despite all that had been arrayed against us. Then again, fate is always written about after the fact. One can say something is destined to happen, then it doesn't. I could've as easily repaired my relationship with Siobhan and be engaged to her instead. Or I could have simply stayed in Edinburgh that Christmas as I'd intended. Bollocks. I'm no sodding philosopher.
All I need to know is that Ginny's here with me, that we are still together, and that I'm not going mad.
I walk back to the bedroom to watch her sleep for a while. A frown creases her gorgeous face once again as she struggles against phantoms. Another kiss to the forehead and her expression lightens. It's a gift, and one I'm delighted to give her 'til the end of days.
Ginny's the best thing that's happened to me. Rare enough to meet a sporty woman, but she's terribly sharp as well. And sweet, able to get me out of a bad state either with a joke or simply by calling me on it. It sounds weird, even to me, but being around her is orgasmic: the world comes into sharper focus, everything becomes that more real, my emotions that much stronger it hurts. When she smiles, my heart's fit to burst from my chest and I've the strength of ten. I've never been so alive, or so frightened.
Back in the sitting room, I peer out the window. An oddly dressed figure across the road swiftly darts into the doorway of the tenement opposite. Stepping back a foot-and-a-half and off to the side to conceal my presence, I note the strange person casting looks at the flat. Only then I remember about the spells Ginny had cast on the windows and door, which I assume were to camouflage us from people like the tow-headed git in the anorak trying to spy on us. If it was an ordinary bloke out there, I might have gone down and had a wee chat with him. But he isn't. He's one of, er, us, thus beyond my ken.
Like a small child waiting for his mummy to assure him no monsters are lurking under the bed, I wait for Ginny to awaken. I feel so miserably vulnerable for the first time in this life.
I hate being this weak.
Q & A and other bits:
To gallandro-83, thanks for putting me on your C2 archive! I hope I managed to answer some of your questions.
To Foxfur, only time will tell how things will work out... The story has begun to write itself: I originally planned this as a simple 7 chapter fic.
To mrsmunkee, the reason for choosing Fred over George likely owes to a couple of fics I'd been reading as well as OotP itself. In all of those works, George seemed the more sympathetic and caring of the two, thus the one who would likely takethe shortest character arc. As with Luna, it was miserable to put him on the list of the dead, but Fred made a better antagonist and threat in the earlier chapters. Both twins are great characters and but for the war I would have kept both.