"I sat there, all night I sat there, trying to feel something. She was my wife and she was dying and I couldn't feel anything for her. I know that things started to go wrong for us God knows how many years ago. When we found out she couldn't have kids, I don't know, she just changed - we changed. She suddenly became all house proud… Everything had to be clean and neat and tidy. Well, you only have to take one look at me. With my job. I'm a street copper, that's where I belong. But that wasn't good enough for her now. She wanted me to go for promotion, to be ambitious, to make something of myself. She wanted something to be proud of you see, and what Ginny got was me. She came to despise me in the end. I know she always used to – her and most of her family. I used to dread going home to see that look of disappointment in her face. So I stopped going home. You know, I'd use any excuse – not enough Aurors to cover a shift... Need a senior Auror to supervise a team of Cadets… Anyway I uh… I met someone else" Harry snorted in resignation at the thought of his happiness with Astoria Greengrass and sipped his drink sadly. "When don't you in that situation? I made up my mind to leave her, you know, and the very day I plucked up courage to tell her, the Healers called me at the Ministry. She got a magical and incurable form of cancer. Every test that she was given said the same – 18 months. Ginny always had trouble with her stomach… She always thought it was nerves. Anyway, she wanted to know. She hoped she could cope. She went to pieces. She clung to me for the first time in years - her whole body shaking. 'You will look after me Harry? You will look after me Harry? You'll look after me, won't you?' I said 'I'll look after you. Of course, I'll stay and take care of you'. I went out and got so drunk. I was still drunk when the call came through about this nutter with a hostage and a Muggle weapon. Before they could stop me I was moving in on him. You know what I was thinking? All I was thinking was 'Go on you bugger, shoot me because I don't give a damn one way or the other'. And for this act of outstanding heroism…? They gave me another bloody medal to add to my somewhat expansive collection. I think that was the happiest day of her life, you know. She was standing next to me in my suit at Buckingham Palace – getting the medal from the Queen… I'd finally done something, in her eyes at least, to make her proud of me. I wasn't even there when she died… And I wasn't even there when she died. She'd have quite liked that. 'You even let me down on that Harry - can't trust you to do anything'"

"Did you love her?"

"At first, yes… but I found out that magical marriages are until death of the other party. Divorce is so rare in this world that it needs an Act to get it through"

"Is that why you saw who you did?"

"Mostly… The other reason is that most of her family were drugging me with potions. I had an old and trusted friend of mine look into it – turns out drugging somebody with potions is legal in that respect" and Harry sighed, shook his glass and downed the rest of the Firewhiskey. "At least it's not too late to have a family life now"

"Astoria?"

"Yeah… I love her totally. She's like me, actually! Told she had to be something but always wanting more, to be great and to be better and all she could be. I think… I think I could be happy at last…"

A/N:

I shall leave it up to you to decide who Harry was talking to in this chapter…