Skin and Bones

"Are you coming out?" Ginny whispered through the bathroom door.

"Yeah," Harry shouted back.

"Shhhh," Ginny whispered through the crack in the door, "Baby Luke's asleep. Don't pull the plug when you get out either. I want to get the worst of the gunk off your jeans in the bath before I put 'em in the machine."

Harry opened the door and stood before Ginny with a towel around his waist.

"Are they really that bad?"

"They're caked in it. Shitty green mud."

"Sorry," Harry said as he cringed.

Ginny dropped the jeans into the already stagnant-looking water with a plop and began to swoosh them around. She had said something about the Scourgify spell not taking the smell away so needing to wash them in her half magical, Muggle machine. Apparently Mr Weasley had customised it for them to clean up after Bill's baby boy.

"How are your feet?" Harry asked as he looked down at them and winced.

Ginny grumbled and lifted her right foot off the floor to show him the state of her sole. Harry took her foot tenderly in his hands.

"Don't touch it!" Ginny snapped.

"I'm not going to touch it. Just relax, will you?" he leaned forward and blew gently onto her heel and the ball of her foot where she had two raw burst blisters.

Ginny had never felt less desirable in her life.

"Have you got ice cubes or frozen peas or something?" he asked as he rested her foot gently back down onto the cool damp lino.

"Um..." Ginny mentally scanned the contents of the freezer,"...there's a bag of mince."

Harry paused for a second and gave her a look, an 'are you being serious?' look, before making his way to the kitchen.

"Frozen minced beef, eh? Your mother would be so proud."

Ginny punched him in the arm before pulling the jeans out of the bath, wringing out the excess water and marching out to throw them into the washing machine, tapping the top of it with her wand; it sprang into action in complete silence.

She went to the freezer and grabbed the bag of mince and gestured for Harry to go into the living room. They sat on the sofa and Harry lifted her feet up and put the mince down on the floor beneath them. She lowered her feet down on top of it and gave an uncomfortable sigh.

"Ah, cold!"

"That's the point," Harry smirked.

Ginny huffed and waved her arm vaguely towards the stairs.

"In my room I've got an ointment, if you fetch it for me I can smear it on and the blisters will heal in five minutes."

"Okay," Harry nodded, "which room is yours?"

They sat reclined on either end of the sofa, Harry rubbing the fennel-scented ointment into Ginny's sore feet and Ginny giving out the odd moan of pleasure. He could feel the skin healing beneath his fingertips and tried to figure out where to begin the inevitable conversation.

In the end Ginny started it. He'd always known she would. She hated beating around the bush.

"So how long have you been back in England?" she sighed as she wiggled her toes and smiled contentedly.

"Two weeks now, I think," Harry said, hoping she wouldn't be upset with him for not coming to find her right away, "Yeah, it'll be a fortnight on Thursday."

"And you were going to hang around in the Thames, were you?" she smirked.

"No I was going to go to the Burrow, but I thought I'd come back into magical life gradually. I was going to stay in London as a Muggle for a week, then move into Grimmauld Place for a couple of days while I dealt with some business at Gringotts, and then I planned to go home. Well, your home. You know what I mean?"

"My home is your home, Harry," Ginny smiled, "It always has been."

Harry sighed with relief that he was still going to be welcome at the Burrow.

"So everybody understood why I went into hiding then?" he frowned.

"Of course we did," Ginny said as if Harry was mad to think otherwise, "that whole hoop-la. The Ministry pulling you one way to be their poster-boy, the Aurors wanting you to be their spokesperson and giving you an 'honorary' position but not actually recruiting you because you were too high-profile to ever be undercover, the Prophet stalking you for juicy gossip."

"Stalking you, too," Harry said as he remembered all the hassle Ginny had from Rita Skeeter wannabes.

"Yes, well, they were gone soon enough once they realised you'd done a runner."

"I sent you owls, all of you," Harry said, anxious to find out that they had been kept informed of his activities the whole time. "You got them all, didn't you? They didn't get intercepted by the Prophet's vultures, did they?"

"No, we got them," Ginny shrugged, "It sounds as if you saw some wonderful places. I wish I could have gone with you."

As soon as Ginny completed the sentence her face seemed to freeze and then fall. She appeared to be feeling guilty about something.

"What is it?"

She shook her head and pulled her healed feet out of Harry's slick ointment-covered hands to cross her legs and lean forward.

"I'm glad I stayed behind, Harry. I'm glad I was here for my family when they needed me."

Harry wiped his hands on his t-shirt and then took Ginny's pale, soft hands in his own. Something had obviously gone on between Bill and Fleur, and there was something about Hermione not living in the house - she and Ron had been so very much together when Harry had left on his quest for privacy - that made him feel greatly concerned.

"I'm sorry I put that shield up so owls couldn't find me. I should have come up with a way for Errol or Pig to get through," Harry said, his shoulders slumping, "for emergencies, y'know? I'm sorry."

"There would have been nothing you could have done and Bill and Ron wouldn't have let us trouble you anyway," Ginny shrugged, but there was something about the way she said the words that made Harry feel suddenly cold inside."

"Wait, Ron? Something happened to Ron while I was away? Is he alright?" Harry sputtered.

"He's fine, everything's good, everybody's doing really well and there's nothing for you to worry about, okay?" Ginny said with a look of determination.

Harry exhaled his relief and broke into a smile as Ginny continued.

"The thing is, well, Fleur died."

Harry's face gave up on trying to smile when he heard this.

"What?" he gasped, "How is that alright, Ginny?"

She raised her hand and pressed a finger to his lips.

"You knew something had happened when I told you Bill was here with the baby," she said sadly. "She died just after Luke was born. There were complications, it was really fast and she was gone without warning."

"But the healers?" Harry said as he put his hand to his head in shock.

"Healers heal the sick, Harry, they can't bring back the dead," Ginny hugged her arms to herself and looked into the dying embers of the fire that had been burning when they arrived at the house.

Harry shuffled along the sofa and hugged Ginny to him. She curled her arms around him and they sat like that for some considerable time.

"So Bill and the baby moved in with me, Ron and Hermione," Ginny said, as they pulled apart again to look into each other's eyes.

"Hermione lived here then, with Ron?" Harry said with a shake of the head as he tried to keep up with the conversation.

"Yes it was the four of us and Luke, we all helped out, we were all there for Bill and we were like our own little branch of the Weasley family here in London." Ginny smiled. "Despite Bill being broken-hearted, we were doing really well, and soon he stared to heal and laugh and now he's Bill again."

Harry smiled before reluctantly plucking up the courage to ask the next question.

"So Ron and Hermione?"

Ginny's smile grew very wide and incredibly confident all of a sudden.

"Well a while ago now Ron was getting a bit tired from doing not much at all and Hermione bullied him into going to St Mungo's for a check up, she was saying things about anaemia and diabetes and other Muggle words that none of us really understood."

Harry nodded, eager for her to get to the point and disconcerted by the grin she was still flashing him.

"So they found something that was making him tired and ill, and it was spreading, and Hermione called it cancer and went a little dramatic, but it wasn't," Ginny grabbed Harry's hands desperately as his face drained of all colour and his jaw hung slack, "It isn't Muggle cancer, Harry, it's a magical thing, like a side-effect witches and wizards sometimes develop when we have a near-death experience."

Harry didn't know whether to pull out his hair or calmly nod and have an emotionless intellectual discussion.

"Well, what's a near-death experience? Surely every professional Quidditch player must have this if it's just missing getting your brains bashed out by a Bludger," Harry said with an uncomprehending shake of the head.

"Not that type of near-death experience, Harry," Ginny said as she shuffled a little closer and the smile she seemed determined to wear faded into a normal expression of calm confidence, "By near-death, they mean when a person is inflicted with a fatal curse, or a lethal magical weapon strikes them, or," Ginny left a meaningful pause, "for example, a fatal poisoning."

Harry's heart clenched inside his chest.

"The mead," he whispered to himself.

Ginny nodded and took his hand with both of hers.

"But I was hit by a fatal curse and survived," Harry said before she could continue, "So that should mean that I..."

"You would have displayed symptoms within the first ten years of your life, Harry. After a decade the wizard or witch is declared in the clear, and like I said, it's never definite. Only some magical folk suffer from this after surviving the un-survivable, one in three."

"So," Harry said as he struggled to organise his thoughts, "Ron's ill because he survived the poisoning?"

Ginny took a deep breath in and out before straightening her back and lifting her head in a defiant manner.

"Right, here we go," she began. "The bezoar saved him from the poison, but that little stone had magical properties and had to become something, didn't it?"

Harry nodded once.

"Okay, so it could have just lain dormant for the rest of Ron's life, or other magic and hexes could have aggravated it over time, and Ron did get hit with a few nasty things after the poisoning, didn't he? The war wasn't kind to any of you."

Harry swallowed and nodded again for her to continue.

"Well that's what happened to Ron: the bezoar was aggravated by a combination of hexes, curses and stress, and it began to grow and spread; if it got too big, it would have started to weaken his internal organs and eventually shut them down."

"Oh God," Harry said with a shudder.

That sounded a lot like a Muggle tumour to him and he didn't like the sound of this at all.

"But thanks to Hermione, they discovered what was happening early on, and they've been treating it for eight months. It's gradually reducing, and soon it'll be gone altogether and he'll be perfectly healthy again."

Ginny had that confident grin on her face again. Harry felt reassured by her attitude now, rather then cautious of it.

"So he's getting better?"

"Much," Ginny nodded proudly, "It's a hell of an aggressive treatment though, very rough on him, but the bezoar is retreating and breaking down inside him ever so slowly. He could be getting the all clear as early as next year."

"Early?" Harry blinked, "Next year is early? Next year is five months away, Ginny."

"Like I said, it's a slow process, Harry, but we don't count the days, we just enjoy them," Ginny smiled a smile of genuine warmth and happiness.

"And Hermione?" Harry almost dreaded to imagine what could have happened to her while he was away.

"She lives just across the road," Ginny nodded over her shoulder. "Ron broke up with her a little while after he got diagnosed. He thought it was for the best, Hermione didn't agree, there was a huge fight and she moved out."

Harry was about to bemoan Ron's obstinacy when Ginny arched an eyebrow at him and shook her head.

"Don't you dare say what an idiot he's been when you did the exact same thing to me, Harry Potter. He saw you walk away from me to minimise my pain should something go wrong and he went and did the same thing. He followed your example, so if you slag him off for what he did, then you've got to accept the same yourself."

Harry rubbed his forehead roughly.

"So she lives across the road? That's got to be awkward!"

"What?" Ginny frowned before rolling her eyes and laughing, "Oh no! They made up within the week and were best friends again. They're just not a couple anymore and she isn't living here, although she's here every day so she might as bloody well be!"

Harry chuckled at this oh-so-Hermione-like behaviour.

"So they're still Ron and Hermione...just not Ron and Hermione?" Harry confirmed.

"Exactly," Ginny nodded, "and the second Ron gets the all-clear, which he will, she's going to dare him to come up with a reason for them not to be together and then have him back no matter what he has to say about it!"

Harry felt his chest ease a little more now.

"I wish I could have been here for all of you."

"No you don't," Ginny said as she scrunched up her face and shook her head rapidly, "You really don't."

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, their fingers entwining and their knees touching softly, before Harry leaned in close to Ginny and parted his lips. He hesitated.

"Is this okay?" he asked her nervously.

Ginny smiled and bridged the gap. Their lips met and her slender fingers were sliding into his unruly black hair while Harry's glided along the contours of her body. The kiss was passionate and lingering and, as far as Harry was concerned, over far too soon. Ginny smiled against his lips and rested her forehead against his.

"I missed that."

"Me too," Harry breathed heavily into her face.

"Do you want to sleep on the sofa or would you like to come with me to my room?"

Harry felt a strangled scream of joy at the back of his throat but not a sound escaped his lips. Ginny laughed and took his hand, pulling him up from the sofa.

"It's really late, Harry, actually it's alarmingly early, and Luke will be up soon wanting his morning feed, so we really will just be sleeping, you know?" Ginny shrugged and set her face into a petulant pout, "Unless you had other ungentlemanly ideas, Mr Potter, in which case I will throw you out on the street in your underwear."

Harry grinned. Ginny's deadpan delivery was a hard thing to grow accustomed to, but he was well attuned to her teasing now, and lunged forward to tickle her.

"Nice to know some things never change, little Miss Wind-up!"

Ginny squealed and gave Harry a playful slap before shushing him and pulling him up the stairs by the hand.

Harry woke up at the sound of an almighty crash from downstairs and sat bolt upright in Ginny's bed. Before he even had time to think, he had put his glasses on with one hand and grabbed his wand with the other. Instincts were hard to shake off after all those years, after all.

There was a billow of sheets and Ginny threw herself from the bed and ran from the room in nothing but her nightie. He heard her thundering down the stairs and shouting something fearfully. Harry quickly checked that he wasn't totally naked and jumped out of the bed to run after her.

"...scared the shit out of me!" Ginny was huffing.

"Sorry but it's not exactly early in the morning Ginny," Bill's voice said distractedly, "What time did you get home, exactly?"

"Oh sorry, mum!" Ginny snapped.

Harry paused halfway down the stairs and leaned over the banister. He saw a mess of broken breakfast things and food all over the kitchen floor. Bill was on his knees trying to clear it up while clutching a wriggling strawberry blonde baby boy under his arm. The mischievous little one was trying to wrestle his father's wand out of his hand and sent it flying across the kitchen before grabbing a handful of something from the mess on the floor.

"Here, let me take him, Bill," Hermione's voice said before she stepped into view and lifted the chuckling baby Weasley into her arms and uncurling his tiny fist to remove some kind of mush from his hand, "No, Luke, dirty!"

Hermione looked Luke in the eye and poked out her tongue after she said this and Luke did the same and dropped the breakfast sludge onto Bill's head.

"Oh, sorry," Hermione said before brushing the mess off of the baby and carrying him out of sight again.

"Don't worry, Hermione," Bill sighed, "I'm used to crap being dumped on me by now."

"She said put it down and he put it down." Ron's oh-so-familiar chortle of amusement lifted Harry's heart, and he strained to lean over the banister further to see his best friend.

"Did you eat anything before my demon-spawn yanked the tablecloth off?" Bill said as he lifted his head and cast a fierce look deeper into the kitchen.

"It's alright, I'll get something later on," Ron answered.

"No," Bill said firmly, "you're eating now. We're all eating now, all five of us!"

Ron let out a growl and Ginny groaned.

"I want to go back to sleep, I'll eat when I wake up," she said with annoyance.

"You want to play at being a night owl, that's your prerogative, Ginny but you will sit and eat breakfast with us all now and you'll bloody like it too!" Bill barked gruffly.

"Scourgify!" Hermione called out and the kitchen was cleaned up around Bill, who still knelt in the centre of the floor looking up at Ginny with an expression that was scarily like Mrs Weasley's when she was talking to the twins.

"Thanks, Hermione," Bill sighed before straining as he got back to his feet, "Oh, I've never felt so bloody old in all my life!" he grumbled before walking towards Ginny and dragging her out into the hallway by the elbow.

"Oi!" Ginny complained before Bill leaned down to look her in the eye with fierce determination.

"Knackered, hung-over, completely paralysed from the nose hairs down, I don't care, Ginny," he said in a low determined voice, "I've got to feed Luke and I've got to coax Ron into eating something and neither of them will do as they're told if I let you off, will they?"

Ginny opened her mouth to speak but Bill raised a warning finger and carried on.

"So you will sit down at that bloody table and you will eat as if you are enjoying it and we will not leave the table until everybody's plates are clean, understand?"

"Sorry, Bill, it's just that..." Ginny began before Bill raised both his hands and shook his head as he took a step back, away from his little sister.

"Don't want to hear it, Gin!"

"Rough night, was it?" she asked as she peered back into the kitchen.

Bill dropped his hands down to his sides and released all his tension with a single sigh.

"You have no idea."

Ginny stepped forward and gave her brother a cuddle, which he almost collapsed into.

"He doesn't have another treatment for three days, we should all get a couple of easy nights now, shouldn't we?" she whispered as she rubbed Bill's back soothingly.

"He's puking up three times more then he's eating," Bill sighed as he broke away from her and ran his hand over his long hair, the scars on his face crinkling against the worry lines to create a chessboard pattern on his forehead, "I don't know where it all comes from."

"Shh, don't fret about it; this is just a particularly rough patch, and we've had them before. We'll just keep plugging away with it, won't we?"

Bill smiled and nodded in a bracing manner before glancing up over Ginny's head and directly into Harry's face.

"Bloody hell!"

Ginny spun around and broke into a wide grin.

"This was what I was trying to tell you, Bill, I found him in the Thames!"

"Found who in the Thames?" Hermione was saying as she stepped into the doorway, still clutching the baby in her arms, and followed Bill and Ginny's line of sight over the banister, "Harry?"

Harry smiled at her and set off the rest of the way down the stairs while Ginny explained their bizarre meeting at Embankment. While Harry was bear-hugged by Bill, who then took his son back from Hermione so she could launch herself bodily at her prodigal friend, Ginny giggled before stepping to one side to reveal Ron's huge grin lighting up his pale face.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Ron said before chuckling and making his way through the narrow, crowded hallway, "Welcome back, Harry!"

While feeling delighted to see his best friend, Harry also felt as if his stomach had just been put through a mangle. Ron was so thin. He was as tall and freckled as ever, his fair skin was even more so than usual, and his hair was about two inches longer then Harry remembered it being last time he saw him. Ron reached Harry and gave him a hug and a slap on the back before stepping back to look him up and down approvingly.

"You look great," he beamed. "I was afraid we'd get you back and you'd be all craggy and world-weary like Lupin!"

Harry snorted while still unable to stop staring at the emaciated form of his best friend in the entire world.

"Oh, thanks!"

Bill carried Luke back into the kitchen to pull an extra chair up to the breakfast table and attempt to salvage some of the ruined breakfast. Hermione paused before following after him, she looked over her shoulder when she got to the kitchen door and her eyes welled with tears. She knew that seeing Ron like this for the first time must have been a shock and she didn't seem to want to draw attention to it.

"So you're back for good?" Ron asked eagerly.

"I'm not going anywhere," Harry said with total sincerity.

"You moving in?" he probed further.

"Whoa there," Ginny said as she gave Ron a light slap on the arm, "give him a chance to breathe. He thought we all still lived at the Burrow, that's where he was planning on living, give him a minute to adjust!"

Ron threw a playful scowl at his sister, who grinned back at him, and then he rolled his eyes and returned his full attention to Harry.

"Sorry, but we've got plenty of room and it's well cheap!"

Harry laughed.

"You could be an estate agent, Ron!"

The three of them shared a chuckle before Harry's eyes flickered down Ron's thin body and returned to his face again. Ron had seen him do it and gave a shrug.

"I know," he said with a resigned smile, "but what can you do, eh?"

"You can eat," Ginny said teasingly as she tugged at Ron's arm.

"Who needs mum when I've got you and Bill!" Ron snorted and Ginny cackled wickedly before setting off into the kitchen.

Ron and Harry stared at each other for a moment before Harry shook his head and tried to make light of the situation, as was obviously the way the family were coping with this whole thing.

"I can see your ribs through your t-shirt!" he smiled sadly.

Ron looked down at himself and shrugged.

"Yeah well, I've lost a bit of weight."

"You didn't have any weight to begin with, ya scrawny git!" Harry forced a laugh from his dry throat.

"Well, that is a good point," Ron conceded before nodding over his shoulder towards the kitchen. "You going to eat with us?"

Harry nodded, remembering Bill's words about everybody else eating encouraging Ron to join in.

"Definitely."

Just as they stepped into the kitchen there was a knock on the front door.

"I'll get it," Ron said as he turned back and headed for the door while Harry took a seat beside Ginny at the newly laid breakfast table.

"D'you get many visitors?" Harry asked as he heard the front door opening.

"We had to block off the Floo network when Ron got ill. It aggravates the Nex Ultionis, that's what the condition's called, and he's not allowed to Apparate with it either."

"So he can't perform magic while he's like this?" Harry frowned.

"He can, he can do lots of stuff, but he can't really do anything where he's physically affected by magic."

"Oh right," Harry nodded before hearing a screeching exclamation that caused Bill's head to fall into his hands and Ginny to close her eyes and groan.

"Merlin's beard, look at you!" Molly Weasley's voice declared, "Have you looked in a mirror this morning or did they all break?"

"And you look beautiful too, mum," Ron's voice sounded resigned to the forthcoming rant.

Ron was pushed into the kitchen by his livid mother who glared at Bill with wild eyes and pointed at her youngest son.

"Look at him, look at the state of him, he looks terrible!"

"Mum, look at all of us," Bill protested, "we're all zombies this morning."

"So how did he get into this state?" she yelled as she shoved the hugely annoyed Ron forward again.

"Come on mum," Bill sighed, "we had a rough night, didn't we? Sit down and eat with us."

Mrs Weasley inspected the disaster area that was the kitchen table and took a long hard look at her dishevelled children before her eyes fell upon Harry. She cried out in shock and threw herself at him with such force that he almost fell off his chair.

"Harry! My dear, when did you get back? How did you find this place? Why didn't you let us know you were coming?"

Harry hugged Mrs Weasley and took a deep breath.

"Well, I was kicking this can along the north bank of the Thames..."