Sorry for the long wait. I've had a little trouble getting a computer. Sorry. Enjoy.
Chapter 8: Mundane Monday, Terrible Tuesday, Wicked Wednesday
"It's been a long time since I found you out here." Harry marched casually across the lawn. "How was work today?" He sat down on the old tree stump.
"Oh, I survived." I kicked up dust as I pushed back and forth on the swing. "Mary Ellen ran away from me, but I think D—somebody said something to her."
"Doesn't sound too bad for a Monday. Hey, you want to teach me how to pull weeds? Need to get a start on that garden." He suggested casually.
"It's October." I reminded him. "It's too cold to start a garden." I leaned back and looked up at the very blue sky. "Halloween is Friday."
"Yes it is." Harry leaned back as well. "Pretty day today. I'm not looking forward to the cold."
Why couldn't he just ask me like everybody else? Why did he have to be so damn easy to talk to, with that dreamy half awake look? Why did I feel like I could confide everything in him?
"You're looking pensive, care to share?" He asked, looking at me from the side as if it made no difference how I answered.
"I don't think I'm ever going to get these damn memories out of my head. And I want to really, really, really badly. I want them gone." I got up and kicked my way through a big pile of leaves. "I wish memories would just blow away like leaves in the wind."
He gave a little chuckle. "If they did that, how would we ever learn from our mistakes? Besides, aren't there some things you would miss if you couldn't remember them?"
"I guess." I plopped down in the middle of the leaves. "I would miss you if I couldn't remember you. But I feel like any minute the shit is going to hit the fan, really, any minute now." A bright red leaf floated down catching my attention. "I'm not stupid, you know. I gave those memories away for a reason, and I'm not sure I want to know why."
Harry joined me in the middle of the leaves, picking up the red one. "You can't pick and choose you know. It's—It's like this leaf. It's pretty, red, nice to look at. But not all of the leaves are. Some of them are wrinkled and ugly. Should we say fall is ugly because of a few leaves?"
"Depends on how ugly the leaves are!" I smiled at him, glad to make a joke.
He wrinkled his nose and threw leaves at me. Then the stupid bugger laughed at me! "You have leaves stuck in your hair." He managed to spit out between the fits of laughter.
"You!" I shouted throwing some back at him.
It was war. We chased each other all over the yard, leaves bunched in our hands and giggling like mad. Several times one of us slipped and went head first, or in my case butt first, into the leaves only to pop back up with half the leaves and twice the laughs. Even the wind joined in blowing everything everywhere and just in general increasing the chaos.
Eventually Harry got the upper hand pulling me down by the waist. "You're not getting away this time." He smirked. "Not now."
I've never roared so loud as I did when he started tickling me.
"St-st-st-STOP!" I squealed and tried to roll away, but he caught me between his arms and continued the onslaught. "I surrender! I surrender!"
"Say Uncle." He was laughing too. "Come on, say Uncle!"
"Never!" I shouted and tried to scout out between his legs.
"Oh no you don't, not until you say Uncle."
"Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!"
We both collapsed on the grass covered in leaves and breathless with laughter. I curled up next to his side half gasping and half laughing. Harry grinned recklessly, also still laughing and pulling leaves out of my hair. And we lay that way for a little while, until Mom called us in.
"Dinner time you two, get in here." We both rose from the pile our clothes wrinkled and our faces red from the exertion. "I don't want to know what you've been up to back there," Mum said bluntly.
We just laughed at her.
"He's pretty funny," He said. "Got to hand it to Malfoy, he's got to be a genius to come up with something like that."
I smiled at him and went back to looking at the painting. "It's cute in a very, very odd sort of way." The painting looked like a grey glob with some white blobs on top of it surrounded by a bunch of blue stuff. "So it's not Monet or Picasso, that doesn't mean it's bad."
We both stared at it, thinking the exact same thing. There was no way in hell anyone would ever consider that painting art. Absolutely no way.
"Ginny, the man cannot paint to save his life. We ought to set it on fire out of respect for the art community."
The giggles bubbled up until I couldn't hold them in anymore, and I had to lean against the wall to stay upright. But that only helped as long as my legs were still holding me up; they didn't last very long.
"Hey Ginny, Penny-Pincher, you up there?" Harry shouted.
My head popped up off of my desk, another dream, another memory. I closed my eyes and mentally clutched that feeling of happiness to me. Just because I now had more happy memories then before, didn't mean I wasn't going to treasure everyone. So what if I couldn't tell who I was dreaming about? So what if I suddenly felt romantically inclined towards two different men? So what if I was now more confused in my life then I'd ever been before? At least I was happy, and nothing else mattered.
But who did I keep dreaming about?
"Hey, ready for lunch?" Harry stuck his head in the door of my office and interrupted my very happy moment. I glanced guiltily at the pile of papers on my desk, and he read my thoughts before I could even have them. "Oh come on, it's a Terrible Tuesday; you can't possibly want to sit around here for your whole lunch hour!"
I looked at him and wondered if he'd caught my silly mood from just seconds ago. Who was that man? Was he the same one from my earlier dreams? Why were we laughing about Malfoy? Harry! Harry was in the dream, so maybe he knew. A burning crept up into my heart; I needed to know. "Okay, okay, but we have to talk about something serious."
He held one hand over his heart and the other one up in the air. "I solemnly swear to allow you your one serious topic before I switch to something more amusing."
"Fine, fine," I consented.
"So, I thought we could go to this very little hole in the wall that has absolutely horrid food, but really good beer." He glanced at my sour expression. "Or we could eat at that charming little café in muggle London that you like so much."
I nodded and started across the street. "Well, come on, I've only got an hour, and we might need the whole thing."
We got a little table for two at the back, and the hostess smiled knowingly at us. The red and white tablecloth mixed with the pink candle would make for a pretty romantic dinner. But it was lost on everyone, except the waitress. She found it amusing when Harry gently took my hand, and gave a friendly wink when she approached and Harry dropped it.
At first we talked about trivial stuff while munching on a turkey melt and a burger. He got me to laugh by talking about the Quidditch team and Weasley Wizard Wheezes. But this delight couldn't last for all of lunch.
"So what's your serious topic?" Harry asked, ketchup dribbling down his chin.
"It's kind of complicated." I leaned over and wiped it off, ignoring the giggles behind me. "These dreams, I don't think they're going to go away. And now, I don't know if I want them to." I paused needing to find the right words. How could I explain this new man? "There are these two guys, and at first I thought they were the same person, but now I don't think so."
"What do they look like?" Harry asked trying to sound simply curious and not pulling it off.
"I don't really know; I can't remember or I don't see them in the dream. One of them you called a—a penny pincher; and one of them gave me a white rose—an everlasting white rose."
Harry leaned back and folded his arms. "I remember." His intonation never changed.
"Lance," I realized with sudden clearity. "Malfoy, and the other guy's name was Lancelot, but you called him Penny-Pincher because he used to walk around with his eyes on the ground watching for lost pennies." The strangest things were coming back to me. I could remember Lance with his quirky, American humor and dirty blond hair.
A creak in the chair jerked me off of memory lane and back to Harry. "Have you told anyone else about this?" He leaned across the table, his eyes narrowed as if angry.
"No, I wouldn't know who to tell, other then you." Something niggled at the back of my mind, something important that danced just out of my reach. "Why are you all defensive all of a sudden?"
He sighed. "Lance is a bit of a touchy subject," He said without explaining anything. "Most of us don't really want to bring him up anymore."
"Why's that?" Lance was a good guy, at least from what I could remember. My heart was beating just a little too fast, whether with fear or anticipation was anyone's guess.
"Like you said, it's complicated. Everyone has his or her own opinions of Lance. I, myself, question a few of his decisions," Harry leaned back in his chair, suddenly very tired. "Especially ones regarding a certain someone. But then, I questioned a lot of people's choices then."
"Did you ever question mine?" His answer should have been important to me. I should have wanted to know if he trusted my judgment or not. But I was just a little curious. Why?
A half smile crossed his face. "You were the level headed one. You always made the best choice at the time. And if I ever did question you, my doubts always disappeared. Luna was like that too. I only ever lost faith in her once, when she told me she loved me."
There was no response to that, and so I said nothing.
"But that's dirt under the rug. How's Mary Ellen?" He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. And I knew the topic was closed, no matter how much I wanted answers.
It's odd how sometimes I could remember the exact shade of a rose petal and how the sun shone down on it and cast a perfect shadow on the ground. But everything else about that day I just couldn't recall. I would go about my day wondering about that particular memory, but nothing would come back. And then all of a sudden, everything would come rushing back in a torrential downpour.
It was like that with Lance.
I was sitting on the floor of my room trying to pick a book to read, and my gaze fell on a worn out old one, my favorite. In that moment, I couldn't remember anything else about it, except that it was my favorite. Not the character names, or what the plot was, not even why it was my favorite.
But then, in the next, I knew everything.
Lance had given it to me because the main character's name was the same as his. He had wanted me to have it because he thought he was going back to the United States for a job interview. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for everyone else, he never left.
Lance, who was known to walk on the wild side, the guy who could get anyone to smile, the only Order member to take on five DeathEaters single handedly and live to tell the tale, Lance the legend was my best friend. He had more outrageous tales to tell and more fights for my honor then my brothers combined times two. Everyone loved Lance, even finicky Snape, even Dad.
Mum pushed the door open; I hadn't heard her knocking. "Oh, honey!" She cried and ran to wrap her arms around me. "Oh, honey!"
I didn't realize until that moment that tears were streaming down my cheeks. But then, it was a bit much to take in, the life and death of my best friend.
Wherever I went, whatever I did, it reminded me of Lance—the bright red leaf I'd almost lost forever. And I was ravenous for every memory of him. Those memories made me very happy.
"Well, you know that black choker he had? He told me, he stole it off of some girl." Harry had the most Lance stories. And even though he couldn't tell them very well, I could remember as the tale was told. "But it wasn't just any girl, but the one who'd stolen his wallet less then a week ago. And whenever someone asked how he got it off of her, Lance would wink and say 'There are some charms no girl can resist.' Anyway, he called it his token for fighting crime."
I chuckled. Lance never took it off, except once, when he let me wear it. That was an important night; I had needed to tell Mum and Dad something. Lance had given it to me for courage.
"Is that the thing Ron used to fantasize about getting?" Mum asked as she pounded dough for bread.
"Yes!" I laughed loudly. "He stalked Lance for days, but he never took it off.
I was happy, Mum smiled, and all was good in the world while I remembered Lance. Harry stopped by a lot for dinner, and Dad took to fiddling with his gadgets in the family room. We were a family again.
But like always, good things must come to an end.
"Hey Mum, can I see the paper?" I asked at the breakfast table. "I want to see who won the Quidditch match yesterday."
Normally she would hand it over with a smile and a nod, but occasionally she pursed her lips and gripped the paper harder. It was on those days that I knew someone had brought up my name in the paper, and that it wasn't necessarily complimentary. Lucky me, today was one of those days.
"Never mind, I don't want to know after all." I stuffed a bagel in my mouth. "It's not like I can't just ask Harry anyway." The whole office would be buzzing with this new bit of gossip; I wouldn't be able to escape it.
Strangely enough, I was right and wrong. They were all talking about it, but no one would say anything in front of me. It was like they were trying to hide the fact that they liked to gossip, even though I already knew they were talking about me. That was the most annoying thing about the office, how everyone tried to hide things from me. But I could always count on the loo to pick up those juicy bits of gossip. It hadn't let me down yet.
"Harry Potter? Gay? Highly unlikely," the woman had a robust and authoritative voice. "No man with that amount of masculinity could possibly be gay. I mean, he's manly, but not overly so."
The stall next to me opened and shut. This woman had a high twitter voice, not unlike Mary Ellen's. "He does have those wonderful shoulders. I would kill for Greg to have those shoulders." She sighed.
"Well, if your husband ever got out from behind the desk, he might just get some." Apparently the first woman didn't have to use the facilities; she'd just come in case the other one needed some kind of moral support, in case anything went wrong. "But then I did read in the paper this morning that he hasn't been seen with a woman since the end of the war. Rumor has it that He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named fiddled with his head."
I heard the toilet flush and the door open. "Well, what about that Ginny Weasley? He's been visiting her recently I heard. Mary Ellen won't shut up about it. Did you know she was living with Draco Malfoy last week?"
"Who? Mary Ellen?"
"No, Ginny Weasley."
"Well, it's not like you can really count her as a woman. She could really pass for a man in the right outfit."
"Or a cross dresser!" Their laughter trailed out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with their mocking words.
No matter what topic started the conversation, it always ended in one of three names: Harry's, Draco's, or mine. Those three names were worked into countless conversations daily, perhaps even hourly! What was it that made us so damn interesting? Had the masses suddenly become obsessed with tragedies? Or had I missed something?
Even my own family wasn't immune to it I realized as I trudged back to my office. The whole thing was like one gigantic epidemic! Ron and Hermione were always arguing about us, and Mum would often complain about my name or Harry's being in the gossip column (not while I was in the room, of course). Even Dad would obsess over the things people said, especially when he knew they weren't true. I guess when the gossip was on the low, we were the backup. Unfortunately, it seemed gossip was always on the low.
At least in my office, I could escape for a few hours.
Or not.
"Harry! What are you doing in my office? Don't you have Quidditch practice?" He was sitting on my chair with his feet propped up on my desk and a very grim expression.
"I can't take it any longer. Your Mum and Dad won't stop asking me what happened with Malfoy. Malfoy keeps asking me how you're 'holding up'. And the answers I have just aren't enough anymore. What happened that made you run away from Malfoy Manor?"
Was this what it meant to have the shit hit the fan?
I slammed my office door with a little more force then necessary, but he'd made me angry. "I told you, I learned something about myself that scared me." He didn't need to know anything else.
His feet hit the floor with the same amount of force that I shut the door with. "I don't think you're telling me the truth, Ginny. It takes a lot to scare you, a whole lot more then just learning a little fact. I think it was something else."
How could he sit there looking as angry as I felt? I was the one everyone kept interrogating! "Yea, well, I learned I wasn't a virgin, okay!" Let him stew on that for a while.
He shook his head looking impossibly sad, not shocked or surprised that I had just belted that information out. He was supposed to shut up for a moment and then leave. But he just brushed my words aside as if they were less important then the dirt on his shoes. "You're stronger then that, Ginny. You're the strongest person I know, stronger then me. I couldn't do the things you do, put up with the stuff you do. I think you're lying to me. What sent you running from Malfoy?"
There was no stopping my brain now, and a little prickle crawled up my spine. He'd put the thought in my head, and it wouldn't leave, not now, maybe not ever. I could see Malfoy's face clearly, the raw desire that sent chills up my spine mixed with the rigid restraint that I admired. And every time he looked at me it was a different combination of the two. From the moment he showed up at my birthday dinner, I knew but couldn't admit it.
That night, when he told me to stay in my room until morning, I knew, and my heart reached out to him. Even asleep I couldn't deny the knowledge that he loved me. So instead I tucked it away in a little corner of my mind where I was unlikely to find it.
"I-I learned that-that Malfoy loves me. He loves me a lot." I stared him down, desperately hoping he would leave it at that and go. I needed him to leave or my whole world might shatter.
"And that lead you to run away from him?" Harry didn't drop the subject, and he didn't leave.
Anger burned through me, a burning that started in my stomach and stretched to fill my head and toes. "I spent so much time in that house hurt and confused and lost! Do you know what it's like? He was warm and friendly one moment. I wanted to tell him everything! But then he'd turn so cold I'd want to run and hide from the chill. He would put on this air of-of superiority and I felt so-so disgusting! Could you live with that?" I demanded of him.
Harry just looked down at me, pitying me with that horribly sad smile. "Ginny," he had the low soothing tone, the kind one used with small children and skittish animals. What he said didn't matter, he just want me to calm down, to not be angry anymore. And it worked until I recognized the expression in his face.
He had the same look about him as Mary Ellen, but they were both wrong. I wasn't a helpless case. I didn't need their over rated help or their annoying pity. I didn't need to have my every move watched and my ever word recorded to make sure I wasn't going to do something foolish. I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself.
I was a goddess.
A coolness trickled through me. "Harry," I interrupted the speech that I hadn't been paying attention to in the first place. "Thank you for coming to visit, but I need to work, not worry about something that happened in the past and can't be changed. Perhaps it was time you left."
As he walked by I could see the hurt my words had caused, but I felt justified in saying them. For so long I'd let other people look at me and talk to me as if they knew best. Because they just didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't know what it meant to give up one's memories or to be ostracized from society voluntarily. But they all thought they did, and they all though they could help me. Their words and actions were meant with the best intentions. But they simply couldn't. They could try, but in the end it had to fail.
Everyone thought they knew the best way to take care of me or the best way for me to live my life. I might listen to their advice for a little while, but in the end it didn't help. And everyone did it. No one could avoid endless stream of worthless help, with the possible exception of Draco. But then, he seemed to think it was his life's purpose to push me towards every extreme.
Why did it have to be so messed up? Why couldn't everyone just treat me like I wanted to be treated?
When I arrived home that evening, I'd managed to gain control of myself. It wasn't often that someone managed to get me riled up, but it was happening with an alarming frequency. First Draco, now Harry, who would be next? The minister? Luckily the house was quiet. Dad had some meeting to go to and wouldn't be back until much later in the evening. Mum had probably gone to visit a neighbor and lost track of time.
All of which left the house completely to me.
Or maybe not.
"Don't give me your lip, Potter. I just want to know how she's doing." What was Draco doing in my home?
"You know you really messed her up, right? She left because you had her spinning in circles. Do you treat all emotionally unstable people like that?"
Emotionally Unstable? I followed the sound of their voices to the kitchen. Harry leaned over and crouched down next to Draco's head, which was floating in the fire. They both looked angry, but Draco's face might have just been flushed by the heat of the fire.
"And how would you have handled the situation, Potter? Think you could have had a bit more grace about it? What if it had happened to Luna instead of Ginny, how would you have deal with the whole thing?"
Harry sat back on his heels, looking more then a little stunned. "That was a low blow, and you know it. With Luna, there's no comparison."
"Imagine if Luna were alive and couldn't remember how much you loved her or how much she loved you. Imagine that she's barely accepted that you joined the Order and renounced the Dark Lord. And now, after three years of having to watch her from a painful distance, you can touch her, smell her, talk to her. Imagine my joy at seeing Ginny." Draco scoffed. "How would you have been any different then me?"
From my spot at the door way, I had a perfect view of the tears falling from Harry's open eyes. He wept freely if only for a short time, just a few tears. Could I do that? "Just seeing her would be enough for me. I had to watch her die, you know, watch her as she wasted away from that damn curse." There was a tremor in his voice. "Every day I mourn the loss of her. For me it would be enough to simply see her."
"Fine, make me out to be the greedy bastard." Draco scowled. "But I don't thing you could have kept your hands off of her. Could you really leave her alone to face her own personal demons? Could you really resit the urge to hold her close and protect from the nightmare she has to live? Because that's what you would have to do."
His reply was so soft I almost missed it. "No."
"It was hell for me to watch her everyday, to know that she was right there within grasp, to know that I could comfort her. But if I did, it would drive her away from me. How would you handle it?"
"Well I certainly wouldn't sleep with her! That certainly sent her running from you!" Harry yelled. "What kind of fool are you?"
I started to shake from my spot by the door. Why where they talking about me? Why was Harry spilling everything into the open? He didn't have the right to confront Draco like that! I didn't need anyone to fight my battles for me. If people would just stop doing that, there wouldn't be any battles to fight!
Draco ground his teeth together. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
"Oh yes you do! I deserve to know just what you did to send her to pieces. So when Molly and Arthur ask, again, why she came home, I'll have answer for them."
"The answer? You want the answer? Well here it is. I'm not like you Potter; I wasn't strong enough. I thought I was, but I wasn't strong enough to not touch her! I've lived for three years fighting that temptation, and I wasn't strong enough to resist any longer. There's your damn answer! Blame me, everything's always my fault anyway."
Harry turned so that I couldn't see his face, but his tone told me all I might have seen. "I don't blame you for what happened; I would have done the same, I think." His voice was so soft and delicate I had to strain to hear it. "She's been asking about Lance now."
And there was silence.
"But-but it's only been a week! How could she remember that quickly?" Draco couldn't have sounded more stunned. "Dumbledore said even if she did it would take years."
Harry began massaging his temples. "I have no idea, but I think she wants to remember now. Instead of fighting against her memories, she's almost inviting them in. God, it's going to be so bad when she finds out. I can't imagine what she'll do when it comes back to her. He's dead, and—"
"Potter, get a hold of yourself. We're just going to have to help her through it. You can relate to her. You've already dealt with the death of Luna. You'll know her pain. She'll listen to you; you're the only one who has been in her situation." But I head the worry in his voice. I heard how much he didn't want me to remember. And I was afraid.
"She won't listen to me." Harry shook his head. "She won't listen to anyone."
"We'll just have to find someone she will listen to."