Disclaimer: All characters viewed within are property rights of JK Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Warner Brothers, and a slew of other brand names. I have no intentions of seeking any money from this. This is strictly a "What if?" situation, and not meant to make any money. So please don't sue. I don't think my parents could handle the legal fees.
A/N: Sorry about the delay between chapters. Between Nanowrimo, Germany, starting at a new college, a computer crash, and several interesting discussions with a llama trainer, it's taken forever. The next one won't. And that one will actually advance the plot. This one just covers some stuff that needs to be covered…like what exactly happened to Ginny…
PS – to the person who complained about me ragging on Americans…I am American. I'm just writing like the characters would talk.
Chapter Ten: Decisions Through the Tiger's Eye
"You just—you just went in and snatched him? Just like that?"
Nymphadora Tonks, known only by her surname to those closest to her, had only dealt with the Tunnel in small ways. She had been offered a top spot upon its inception, but had turned it down to head a platoon of Aurors. As far as Harry was concerned, she was doing a fine job: her platoon was the one that was always mentioned in The Daily Prophet as the first one in and the last one out on all of the tougher assignments. If Tonks was anywhere near as scarred as Mad-Eye Moody, Harry couldn't tell. Scars just didn't matter to a metamorphmagus.
"Yes," Harry replied, shrugging as if it were that simple. He pulled his ankle up onto his opposite knee and glanced around at the bare walls of Tonks's closet-sized office. She hadn't bothered to decorate, but he figured that she wasn't there much anyway.
To tell the truth, though, capturing Draco Malfoy had been far from easy: the man kept Malfoy Manor almost as tightly warded as the Hutch. It had been an adventure working past all of the jinxes ingrained in the stones of such a stately manor—and then Malfoy had been ready for them. The assault team that Ron had assembled had come out unscathed for the most part, but it had been a five-minute battle while Malfoy and some sort of bodyguard had tried to protect themselves.
The bodyguard had been Stunned and left there, and they had hustled out of there with Malfoy's inert form suspended in the air between Bill and Harry. Malfoy was still Stunned, but they had left him sitting up in one of the many interrogation rooms that the Tunnel had set up in buildings all over London. An Auror had to be present for the interview, and only a Tunnel member had access to the headquarters. So they were going to keep this strictly confined to an interrogation building.
It was Harry's job to convince Tonks to come witness the interview, so that Malfoy's statement was legal in any British wizarding court. She had done similar favours for the Tunnel before.
Right now, though, she was looking at him with wide eyes, either perplexed or impressed. He couldn't tell. "You illegally broke and entered and then snatched an upstanding citizen of the wizarding community—"
"Upstanding citizen? The guy's a prat." Harry fought the desire to snort.
He learned then exactly why every one of Tonks's subordinates obeyed her without question as she levelled a cold look at him. He instinctively sat up straighter. "Prat or not, he's still a free citizen, and you just broke into his home and kidnapped him."
"We caused no permanent damage to the home, or its owner." Harry didn't mention the bodyguard. "We just want to question him, find out some facts about what exactly is going on behind the Nottingham Typhoon, and put him back in his house. Really. That's all."
Instead of looking appeased, though, Tonks just grimaced. "Potter, you realise just how illegal that is? That's a citizen's arrest, and quite an ambiguous one at that! I can't take a statement from that."
"We're not imprisoning the guy. No handcuffs, nothing. He's just sitting…out cold…in a room. We'll wake him up, give him something to drink, pretend like we're Aurors, and then return him to his home with a Confundus draught. Standard operating procedure." He hated the fact that they had to use regular procedures, but both Ginny and Hermione were adamant. No matter how much they had hated Draco Malfoy in school, he was innocent until proven guilty, and they had to respect that. "Look, we'll fill out all of the necessary paperwork for you and everything. All you have to do is sign your name."
Tonks chewed on her lip, a positive sign. He'd been pitching business ideas for the twins for years now. He hadn't been very good at it at first, but now he recognised when an associate was about to cave. Finally, Tonks looked at him levelly. "I'll do it on one condition."
"Name it." He couldn't technically offer anything, as that fell under Ron's jurisdiction, but he wasn't going to tell her that.
"I've got a case I need some help with. Had my lads on it for months, with nothing. Your Tunnel people might be just the ticket. I watch your interview, sign your paperwork, and your buddy Weasley offers to help me out." She didn't have to say which Weasley she meant, even though she called all of the Weasley brothers by their surnames. Even when she'd dated Charlie Weasley for a short time, she hadn't used his first name.
"What kind of case?" Harry wanted to know.
Tonks shrugged. "A classified one."
"All right. You and Ron can haggle out details later." Standing, Harry reached into his trousers pocket and withdrew a small card, slightly smaller than a standard business card. He extended this to Tonks. "Keyword to get to the building."
She made a noise that might have been a chuckle as she read the card. "The twins' idea?"
"Ron's, actually." Harry pointed his wand at the Floo grate and muttered the familiar incantation for flames. Helping himself to a handful of Floo powder, he stepped into the flame and shouted, "Troll bogies!"
Tonks was somewhat more graceful with her landing than Harry was, but they both made it without too many incidents in the Floo network. The grate opened immediately into a small room, easily recognisable as a reception room. There was a shabby sofa and two battered chairs shoved into a corner for the effect, but these were ignored by the cluster of people standing by the one decoration in the room: a large window, easily three meters across and two meters tall.
"Oh, you're here," Ginny said as Harry indignantly brushed soot from his magic-flak jacket. He was still dressed in his gear from the earlier mission, even though Ron had already de-briefed those who weren't Weasleys or Harry. "You made it just in time. Bill and Hermione are about to start." She gestured towards the window.
"Bill and Hermione are conducting the interview?" Tonks peered over Fred's shoulder to get a better look. "That's Bill and Hermione?"
The set-up of the interrogation chamber was like any other, Harry imagined. A short table took up most of the space in the room. On the side facing them was Malfoy, who was still Stunned and drooling a little for his troubles. He looked very much like the rat-faced boy that had attended school with them, even though he was almost as tall as Harry, and just as broad in the shoulder. Bill and Hermione, both Polyjuiced to look different, had their backs to the window, as they sat across the table from Malfoy.
"Took your time, didn't you?" Ron frowned at the pair of new arrivals.
"I need a moment of your time, Weasley," Tonks told him, ignoring the gruff comment.
Ron just waved his hand at her. "Whatever it is you want in exchange for this, consider it yours." He waved his hand again, this time to warn everybody to be quiet, and pushed a red button alongside the window. "Go ahead."
"Here we go," Ginny muttered.
Hermione stood and turned as Bill charmed Malfoy awake, presenting her profile to the viewers outside the window. Harry nearly raised an eyebrow. She had transformed from a bushy-haired brunette to a sleek blonde with striking blue eyes and a considerably narrower build. Hermione would always be on the lighter side of average, but she nearly looked like a Veela now. She began to pace as Malfoy sluggishly blinked out of his stupor.
"What the—where am I?" He was quick to lose the sluggishness once he realised that he didn't recognise the room. His eyes bolted from Hermione to Bill, in disguise as a large black man not unlike Kingsley Shacklebolt. "Who are you? Why have you brought me here?"
"Patience, Mr. Malfoy," Bill told him in a very deep voice. "Your questions will be answered shortly. I am Auror Lieutenant, Second Class Jim Barrens. My partner is Auror Admiral Twiggy Blackburn. We'd like to ask you some questions."
Immediately, Malfoy's chin came out in a stubborn jut. "I'm not answering anything without my lawyer. You've no right told me like a common criminal—"
"Mr. Malfoy, you're hardly common, and we're hardly holding you." Hermione flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder in a practised move that had all of the men in the room raising their eyebrows in surprise.
"Shut it," Ron snapped at them. "That's my woman you're ogling."
"She's practically a Veela. Didn't think she had it in her," George muttered behind Harry, who elbowed him for posterity's sake. "Ow. Git."
Inside the chamber, Malfoy was rapidly becoming more vocal in his protests for a lawyer. Tonks shot a dubious look at Harry, who shrugged and nodded at the room, telling her silently to wait until Hermione and Bill finished their goal. He'd seen them convince worse people than Malfoy to talk, after all. Ginny, who hadn't seen Hermione and Bill in action, looked on a bit nervously while everybody else in the room waited it out. She gnawed on her lip until Harry shot her a reassuring look. Raising her own eyebrows in return, she loosened her shoulders and bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet, much like an athlete about to face a long race.
"Even though I know he's a bloody prat," Ron muttered, sidling up to Harry's side, "either my memory's deceiving me, or he's just worse every time I see him."
"I think the git's just got worse."
"Ah. Yes. Wonderful."
It would always amaze Harry exactly how well physical threat could manipulate a wizard who knew, quite logically, that his ability to use magic had dealt him the upper hand. They'd left Malfoy's wand on his person (charmed, so that Malfoy wouldn't know it was there); if Malfoy ever tried to sue over the interview, one of the lawyers (Ron employed several) would equably point out that he had been able to defend himself the entire time, and had chosen not to, furthermore. A couple of threatening looks from the Polyjuiced Bill was all it took to convince Malfoy that co-operation was a much better idea than complaining.
"What do you want from me?" he demanded waspishly of Hermione, who had been elected to do most of the speaking for the pair. "I haven't done anything wrong."
Hermione was faced away from him, almost speculatively. She tossed a lofty look at him over her shoulder. "Do you consider lying to be wrong, Mr. Malfoy?"
"I fail to see how my opinions on morality hold any water here, Admiral Blackburn." One thing Malfoy knew how to do, Harry realised as he watched now, was how to act as polished as the millions of Galleons left to him by his dead father dictated. He was furious to the point of being pale, but his posture was perfect as he sat in the chair, facing Hermione. "As I have stated before, I have done nothing wrong. That is not a lie."
Hermione whipped her head around to stare at him, her blue eyes boring into his. Her expression still severe, she shifted her gaze to Bill. "Jim? The evidence packet?"
It was hard to miss the minute flinch Malfoy gave at the word "evidence." That action alone caused Harry to grin. Their first breakthrough after what seemed like years of bank statements and other paperwork had finally come, and it had come in the form an instinctive reaction from a man he'd loathed since their first meeting.
His movements hard and sharp like a professional Auror, Bill set the suitcase with the evidence inside on the desk and opened it with a decided click. By the time that he began pulling out manila evidence files, Malfoy had regained some of his colour. He looked on impassively as Bill unloaded the contents all around him, setting the stage. His eyes lingered for an extra few seconds on the money clip contained within the plastic evidence bag, and stopped on a stack of photographs taken at the Claw, Tooth, and Scale Dragon Home.
"And at what exactly am I to look, Admiral?" he asked snidely. He picked up the photographs and flipped through them with an industriously bored look on his face. "Looks like somebody couldn't properly fireproof a bunch of old rubbish. What does this have to do with me?"
"The photographs you are holding," and Hermione's voice was clipped authoritatively, "are of the Claw, Tooth, and Scale Dragon Home. Obviously, it burned down some time ago. It has been abandoned since. If you will look at photograph serial number oh-two-four, you will notice a most peculiar artefact found at the Dragon Home."
Malfoy flipped to the appropriate picture and raised his eyebrows. The fact that his eyes once again flickered to the money clip evidence bag didn't escape Harry. "It looks like just another piece of rubbish to me, Admiral."
"That's where you're mistaken, Mr. Malfoy. That 'piece of rubbish' is actually a linear transportation facility, charmed for the sole use of transporting magical currency from one place to another." She rattled off two sets of co-ordinates. Malfoy blinked several times in quick succession. "The beginning co-ordinates were for the Dragon Home. You might be surprised to find that we tracked the charm to your address, Mr. Malfoy. Would you like me to go on, or would you like to confess now?"
"A magical transportation facility is hardly a crime, Admiral. But do continue. I'm quite curious to know what I've actually done wrong, since you seem utterly convinced that I've committed some unforgivable grievance against the Ministry." Malfoy folded his hands into a steeple and swept his eyes over the sea of evidence all around him.
"If he starts flirting with her," Ron growled, where the participants in the interrogation couldn't hear him, "I will kill him."
"Down, boy," Fred was quicker than Harry in reaching his younger brother, and clamping a steely fist on his shoulder. "She doesn't look like Hermione right now, and we need that information. So just shove it for a minute."
Ron shrugged Fred's hand off, but his face was still mutinous.
"Then you admit," Hermione continued in the room, "that this device belongs to you?"
If Malfoy was one thing, it was smooth. Harry gritted his teeth as his old school rival said, "Oh, not at all, Admiral. I've never seen it before in my life."
"Very well." Hermione pursed her lips as Bill stood up and moved behind Malfoy, leaning against the door with his arms crossed. The move did not get by Malfoy; he glanced over his shoulder once, a flicker of nervousness overcoming him. It was gone when he returned his look to Hermione, though. "If that is how you wish to proceed, so be it. In front of you, Mr. Malfoy, are several files pulled exclusively from the files of Gringotts bank."
Malfoy's eyes stabbed accusingly at Hermione. "I thought Gringotts didn't release its files to anybody."
"I'm an Auror Admiral, I can get any sort of clearance I want. And I wanted these." Hermione laid her hand atop a particularly voluminous file. "Like I was saying, these are all bank statements pulled from Gringotts bank." She pointed to another one. "This is yours. I also have here with me statements belonging to Samuel Werner, Theodore Gideon, Ulysses Davenport, and Davis Davenport, as well as the funds account for the Nottingham Typhoon. I believe you are one of the team's monetary sponsors?"
"Supporting a Quidditch team is also not a crime."
"Unless," George muttered outside, "you're Ron and get kicked out of three Chudley Cannons games in a row for trying to attack the referee." Harry, Ginny, and Fred sniggered into the backs of their hands as Ron's jaw tightened.
Hermione lifted one eyebrow at Malfoy now. They could see her profile; her lips were pursed, one eyebrow was higher than the other, her eyes were the picture of pure scepticism. "Extortion, Mr. Malfoy, is."
Immediately, Malfoy flushed. "You're accusing me of extortion?"
"The bank statements prove it all, Mr. Malfoy. In each are several transfers to Claw, Tooth, and Scale Dragon Home. What we think happened is that the vault fell in your control after your father's death and after Sam Werner gave up his ownership of the home, and that you have been using a servant or cohort to ferret the money from the vault to the home, a natural and logical progression, don't you think? From there, the money is transferred to your personal safe in Malfoy Manor. I have to admit, it's a brilliant way to launder money."
"Admiral," and Malfoy's voice was tight, restrained, "I'm a Malfoy. Malfoys have always been one of the wealthiest wizarding families in all of Great Britain. We do not need to, as you say, launder and extort."
"You make a good point. However, the war changed that, didn't it? Your father's death and lack of magical insurance drained most of your account." Hermione pointed at the file once again. "Your mother's spendthrift habits have not aided, either. Neither has your gambling addiction."
"She's good," Ginny muttered to Harry. Even Tonks was watching the interview with a morbid sort of fascination now.
"My personal habits are not privy to the Aurors investigation, Admiral Blackburn." Malfoy started to rise to his feet, but Bill moved quickly into the sideline of his vision. Trembling with fury, Malfoy slowly sat down again. "I will be speaking to your superiors about this, mark my words."
Hermione's expression was downright chilly. "Noted." Deliberately, she picked up one of the Styrofoam cups on the table and took a long drink. Harry glanced at his watch. They must be getting close to the time to refuel on the Polyjuice Potion. "I understand that you're a busy man, Mr. Malfoy, so I won't mince words. We know that something is happening concerning the Nottingham Typhoon. If you come clean, we'll see about working you a deal. Exactly what is this Quidditch team hiding? And why are you blackmailing your business partners?"
"And here's where it gets interesting," Harry muttered to nobody in particular.
"Buggering git. Son of a—"
Hermione just looked resigned as Ginny paced the headquarters, her work shoes nearly wearing treads in the floor. The redhead was cursing up a storm, but nobody had tried to stop her because everybody felt like joining in.
"Bloody dead end," Ginny continued, shoving both hands through hair that was still charmed dark red. "Why can't we just use Veritaserum next time? He would have told the truth that way."
"Because we need to make sure a transcript of that interview gets to the Aurors, and because of the Wizarding Rule of 1719, all interviews taken under the influence of Veritaserum are null and void in any wizarding court," Hermione supplied tiredly from the corner where she was pulling off the Auror robes. Underneath she wore a conservative jumper and a pair of Muggle jeans.
Ron rolled his eyes. "One idiot tampers with a batch of Veritaserum and we have to pay for it for the rest of our existence," he muttered.
"Digby the Dark just proved that it's far too easy to tamper with Veritaserum, a conclusion they were rapidly beginning to suspect on their own." Hermione pulled her hair, back to its normal bushy brown, into something resembling a plait and deftly tied it off. "Ginny, stop pacing. You're giving me a headache."
The twins had gone back to work in their shop, and Bill had headed back to work. Unable to follow them to the headquarters because she didn't officially belong to the Tunnel, Tonks had Floo'd back to her office, but only after she and Ron had haggled out some details for whatever mission he would be aiding. In spite of his difficulties with the Floo Network, Harry had volunteered to fetch some carryout, leaving Ron, Ginny, and Hermione alone in the headquarters.
Ron was at his desk, a piece of furniture that contained what seemed like decades of growth—parchment, paper, used and new quills, empty ink wells, ink spots to go along with the ink wells, knickknacks, and various devices that he used to keep in touch with all of his agents. While the American Tunnel was set up more like a Bureau department, Ron ran the British Tunnel from that desk, trusting the many, many devices Hermione had charmed for him to keep him in touch with the men and women in the field. A second desk met perpendicular to his and groaned under the added weight of even more magical contraptions. It looked not unlike a Muggle office—Hermione had had the brilliant idea a few years before to purchase a slew of Muggle office products and charm them to work for whatever needs the Tunnel had. It was entirely illegal, but Ron had to admit, it got the job done.
Hermione crossed to the modified printer now as Ginny found herself a chair, moodily sat down. "Is this the transcript?"
Ron just made an affirming noise as he scribbled furious on a sheet of parchment.
"Did we put a lie-detector charm on the room this time?"
"Yes. Twice."
Hermione read down the roll of parchment that the printer produced, and sliced it off with her wand when it was done printing. "Lie-detector charm?" Ginny asked curiously as her friend scanned the page. "So you let me whine about Veritaserum, and yet you had a lie-detector charm on the place the whole time?" She looked moderately peeved.
"It's not the same concept at all," Hermione informed her absently. "With Veritaserum, you have to actually answer the question. With a lie-detector spell you can just remain silent. It only tells which statements are lies." To prove it, she pointed at several lines in the parchment that had been printed in red ink. "And this statement here proves that Malfoy was blackmailing all of them, exactly how I said it."
"What's that?" Ginny asked as another sheet of parchment came out of the printer.
"The transcript we're sending to Tonks, the one without the lie-detector spell written on it." Deftly, Ron yanked the sheet free of the printer, rolled it up, and dropped wax on it to seal it. He deposited that onto the stack of bills, letters, and statements going out, and reached for a fresh sheet to begin writing another furiously scribbled letter.
"Where's the fire?" Ginny wanted to know.
Hermione was still scanning the transcript. "Oh," she said distractedly, "there was a breakthrough in the Fizzing Whizzbee scandal over in London. He's moving on it while he can."
"Lovely." Raising her eyebrows, Ginny left them alone and headed up to the locker room, the only free Apparition point in the building. One could Disapparate from a sixty-by-sixty centimetre plot next to the Glass Table, but never in. Nobody was ever sure of the headquarters' co-ordinates, so if you wanted to come into the headquarters, you had to Floo in. Harry, for one, absolutely hated the system, but he'd never said a word about it. Besides, the only reason he didn't like it was because he hated the Floo Network on principle.
The locker room was on the next level up, a room that was magically hidden from the apartment building's occupants. Although she had only been to the headquarters two or three times during her stay in England, Ginny was able to make her way into the room by memory alone. She peeled out of her magical flak jacket and carefully hung it up in her assigned locker.
The room contained a row of grey-green lockers along each wall, tall slim compartments used for storing all of the necessary Tunnel equipment. Ginny imagined that the set-up within the hitwizard locker room was similar—each locker contained magical flak jackets, sturdy boots charmed for all climates, wand holsters, charm capsules, and a small piece of wood, about as long as her hand was wide. It was Hermione's greatest device. Field agents took the wood piece along with them, and it turned into the perfect tool for whatever their needs: screwdriver, knife, quill, pen, fork, even toothpick. Hermione had created them sometime during her seventh year. Ginny was never without hers, even though it was supposed to only be carried while in the field.
Terry and Euan had lockers next to hers, for they were the three newest members of the British Tunnel. Ginny raised her eyebrows. Terry had stuck a picture of the Weird Sisters on his, Euan the logo of the Nottingham Typhoon. Almost everybody in the locker room seemed to have something personalising his or her locker…except for Harry and Ginny. She snickered to herself. Maybe she'd put up a photograph of Harry on hers as a joke. It might even make Harry turn red.
The thought of her and Harry as an item made her pause in the action of stripping out of her boots, as it always did. They really were an item. It had moved surprisingly fast, so quickly that Ginny sometimes stopped and just blinked at the changes that had overtaken her life since moving back to England. They'd hit their first big rough patch, had their first argument and everything. Well, first argument wasn't exactly what it was, Ginny reflected, grabbing her work shoes out of her locker and sitting down on the bench to put them on. It was more like a first war. If there was one thing she and Harry knew how to do, it was argue. They both came from backgrounds that gave them stubborn streaks kilometres wide.
She wasn't sure they would last through the rough patch. At times, it would just overwhelm her: knowing she'd spent hours in Dermot's company, knowing that a simple slip could have meant Harry's death. Harry was so tightly drawn into himself, and even he and Ron hadn't fully managed to make up yet. Things were just so tense all around. Something had to break soon.
"Ginny?"
Because she'd heard Harry coming, she didn't jump, merely turned. "Hey." The sight of him holding white carryout bags made her frown. "Wait…those don't look Floo-stained."
Harry actually smiled. "They're not. I Apparated into Ron and Hermione's flat. They don't have an Apparation lock on it anymore—times when they need to leave quickly, you know."
"Ron and Hermione's flat is in the same building as headquarters?" The thought nearly made her head spin. No wonder Ron and Hermione were able to spend so much time there. "Has it always been that way?"
"Yep. Officially, though, it's just Hermione's flat. If your mum or any official Ministry members ask, that is." Harry shook his head and set the carryout bags down on the bench by the door, crossed the room to sit by her. "What's the matter? Is it the Malfoy interview thing? If it is, don't let that get you down. I've seen Hermione work miracles with less than what he gave us. We'll figure out just what's going on with the Nottingham Typhoon."
She looked at him out of the side of her eye. "It's really sweet of you to try and cheer me up about that, but that's not it."
"Oh." Harry looked as though he wasn't quite sure what t do with this information. "What is it, then?"
"It's everything." Ginny shrugged. "You and me. You and Ron. You guys still haven't talked this Dermot thing out yet, and it's just…hanging there. You guys have been best friends for over a decade now. Why can't you just get over it? I mean, it's not obvious or anything, but you two really need to sit down and talk about what happened. We all did some really stupid stuff that day."
Harry cleared his throat, and wouldn't meet her eye. "I was letting him cool off."
"Harry, if he cools off any more, he'll survive better in the Arctic than the common penguin."
To her surprise, this invoked an actual smile, although Harry still wouldn't look at her. "I guess that's your way of saying things have been a bit frosty lately?" he asked, finally looking over at her with a twinkle in his green eyes that she hadn't seen in over a week.
Ginny groaned. "Harry, you're good at a lot of things, but puns just aren't one of them. I'm sorry. Even you've got to have some failings, and that appears to be one of them."
She could try to predict his every move, had once been able to, but now he would endlessly surprise her. To her credit, she didn't squeak in surprise when his hand closed around her shoulder, or when he moved to cloud her vision. She did tense up when he kissed her, but relaxed when it quickly moved from a gentle kiss to an ardent promise of something more…
"All right, you two. Break it up. Nobody wants to see that before dinner."
Ron's rude interruption had both springing apart like guilty teenagers, but the redhead only shook his head and stole the takeout bags from the room, grumbling under his breath as he went. "Guess we should go get some food before he eats it all," Harry said, his cheeks a bit pink. "Although I kind of don't want to. That was nice. We—we haven't done that in over a week."
"You're cute when you're shy." But Ginny stood up and brushed off her slacks. "As much as I want to stay up here and continue, you're right. Ron will eat all of the food if we leave him to it."
"So? We've got food back at the Hutch. And they won't miss us for a few minutes."
It was, Ginny thought, an extremely good point. She shrugged coyly and then grinned. "A few minutes, though. I like Chinese food, so we'd better make this quick."
"It's a good thing I got Thai food, then. I get you to myself for longer."
"Next time you tell Ron we're sleeping together, could you not do it while I'm on the same planet?" Harry asked later as he unbolted the front door to the Hutch.
Ginny's laughter pealed out. "I told you he wouldn't even hear me! He was too busy shouting about the Cannons."
Since what he was convinced was his near-death at Ginny's hands during a rather interesting dinner, Harry had been understandably paranoid around all things Weasley. While he didn't discredit the notion that Ron could have easily tuned Ginny's statement out in his fury over the Cannons loss, he cared too much for his mortality to fully embrace it. "Would you quit worrying!" Ginny laughed as they entered the Hutch, shedding their raingear. Sometime during dinner, buckets of rain had started to drench the streets of London. Both were wet and bedraggled for it. Even with the rain cloaks, their outfits clung wetly to them. "He's hardly going to challenge you to a duel for my honour. I'll be the first to tell you that I lost that a long time ago."
"If I knew it would only be a duel, I'd be fine," Harry replied, taking her cloak and hanging it beside his on the cloak hanger.
Ginny preceded him into the kitchen and immediately snatched up the towel she'd used that morning, slung over the back of one of the dining room chairs. She began to rub it through her sopping hair, never breaking her mirthful eye contact with him. "And just what would you expect him to do?"
"I dunno. He's been married to Hermione for awhile now. I trust he'll come up with something creative." Seeing nothing remotely appetising in the icebox, Harry began to paw through the paltry contents of the pantry. "Why'd you tell him we were sharing a bed? You're doing this to give me grey hair, I just know it."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Ginny chided, finger-combing her hair. Abandoning all pretences of modesty, she peeled out of the drenched robes, revealing a peach tank top and Muggle jeans underneath. The clothing, while considerably dryer, was still damp. "I think you'd look perfectly rakish with grey hair. Or dashing."
One hand still on the pantry door, Harry looked over his shoulder at her. "Which?"
Her face was the picture of confirmed innocence as she rifled through the posts that had been delivered in their absence. "Rakish or dashing? Either."
"But not both?"
"Even you have your failings."
"How kind of you to remind me of them. Again." Abandoning his quest for sustenance in the pantry, he grabbed one of the envelopes, checked the postscript. "Why isn't Neville home? He's usually in by this hour."
"Neville's meeting his ex-wife for dinner to discuss something about the divorce, remember? He's been dreading it all week. Oh, for heaven's sake, Harry, get out of the wet robes before you give yourself pneumonia."
Raising his eyebrows, Harry obeyed, stripping down to the Muggle clothing he'd changed into after dinner. "A drying charm would have worked just as well," he pointed out, depositing them on the counter with a squelch. "I owe you for that comment to Ron. You scared about three years off of my life with that."
"Oh yeah?" One eyebrow arced up in a non-verbal challenge. "And just how do you intend for me to pay?"
He was quick enough to catch her off-balance, his arm snaking out and wrapping around her shoulders. She didn't give a single thought to escaping, however, when his lips found hers. He meant to tease her, just a playful kiss, but she kissed him back with such ardour that he nearly forgot himself right there and started ripping at her clothes like some demented character from the soap opera shows that Mrs. Weasley listened to on the wireless. With a great deal of difficulty, he stopped the kiss, pulling back and away from her. He had a hard time focusing his eyes and realised, somewhere in the heat of the moment, Ginny had grabbed his glasses.
She grinned and put them on when he blinked at her. "Wow, Mr. Potter, you really can't see, can you?"
She was a blurry mass of red hair and freckles to him. "No," he admitted, smiling sheepishly, pushing wet hair behind her ear. "I can't."
Carefully, she set the glasses on his nose, and then leaned back to get a good look at him. He watched her, amused. "Yeah, you looked funny without them, anyway." She let out a very unladylike oath as Harry, deciding that they needed to be somewhere other than the kitchen, scooped her up as though she weighed no more than a small sack of potatoes. "Harry, what on earth are you doing?"
"Getting out of the kitchen. It's inappropriate to ravish you in front of the food."
"To ravish me?" Ginny burst out laughing, a feat that didn't make it any easier for Harry to hold onto her. "Well, look who's all prim and proper now." If anything, the look Harry gave her then showed just how far from proper his intentions truly were. Ginny giggled. "Well? Are we going to stand here all night? Comfortable as this is, I imagine it might be taxing your strength."
"You sure are bossy," Harry remarked as he headed toward the sofa in the living room.
"And you're randy."
"Well, can you blame me? There's no food, the Quidditch game is over, I don't want to look at anything having to do with the Tunnel for a week, and you're pretty." Without any ado at all, Harry dropped her, laughing as she shrieked and landed on the couch. He plopped down next to her and reached past her giggled protests, pulling her to him.
He liked to think that he had come far since his (rather pathetic) first kiss with Cho Chang. After her, he'd had a string of girlfriends, none of them very serious. Ginny would be the first woman in four years that had lasted for more than a couple of weeks, save for Monique (it seemed a requirement for Quidditch stars to date a French supermodel at some point or other, and Monique was his own particular flavour of disaster). He'd had his share of embarrassing moments when it came to snogging: outright boredom, the one girlfriend that had wanted to hold deep discussions in lieu of snogging, an unmentionable story involving cream cheese and the most outrageous woman he'd courted. But things were different with Ginny.
For one thing, she kissed like she meant it. A positive side effect was that he didn't feel like a major heel when he was kissing her, which had happened before. She seemed to enjoy it just as much as he did, even though she laughed when his kisses moved down her neck (he especially didn't mind because it inspired her to bite his ear). Neither seemed in any hurry to deepen it, though his hand did sneak under her shirt, tugging at it. The sheer sensation of bare skin against bare skin was electrifying, dragging them both farther into each other's embrace.
There was too much clothing in the way. Harry trailed a line of kisses down Ginny's neck, working at the buttons on her blouse as he did so. His fingers fumbled, and she shuddered.
Immediately, his hands stilled. "Are you okay?"
"It's nothing," Ginny was quick to assure him, but she squirmed a little. He peered hard at her face. "Really, Harry. My back was in a bad place. I'm good now."
Maybe it was the fact that he'd spent so much time in her company, or because he understood panic so well, but he was able to detect it hiding in Ginny's voice. Outwardly, she looked as composed as a woman could be in such a situation, but Harry could see it. "You're sure?" he asked, starting to ease off of her. "We don't have to do this. I won't mind if you don't want to."
Ginny paused for a second before her expression became considerably exacerbated. "Where on earth would you get a silly idea like that? I'm fine." To prove it, she pulled his head down to hers.
It definitely wasn't his imagination that she shuddered again when he peeled the shirt away from her. Unsure now, he kept going, hands roaming…
Until the shuddering didn't stop.
Harry jerked back, lifting his head. The panic wasn't in his imagination anymore—Ginny was crying, silent, huge tears that had her shaking. He rolled off of her and onto the floor hard enough to jar his knee. "What is it? What's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
"No—no, it's nothing you did—" Still, she scooted up to a sitting position, drawing her knees tightly to her chest and contracting into a very small ball. Her entire face was red, and she didn't bother to swipe at the tears. Scared now, Harry moved back onto the couch and reached for her. She flinched away, and he dropped his hand. "I—I can't do it—I'm sorry—"
"That's okay," Harry soothed, dropping his hands into his lap.
But Ginny shook her head. "No, it's not."
Harry stared at her, wondering exactly where she'd found that absurd notion. "Sure it's okay if you don't want to—" His mind blanked of all polite alternatives. He cleared his throat. "It's okay if you don't want to shag. We've only been dating for a couple of months."
Once again, Ginny shook her head, still refusing to look at him. "It's not that."
He felt fifteen again, faced with a crying female and not sure what exactly to do about it. So he pushed his hands through his hair and stared at the coffee table, as though it could provide some answers. "Then what is it?" he finally asked, looking back at Ginny.
She just shook her head miserably and curled up even tighter.
Fighting the urge to sigh, Harry wordlessly stood up and left the room, heading into the kitchen. Was it something he had done? Was his kissing really that horrendous? His bloodstream was still jumping with lust and confusion. To calm down, he planted both hands on the edge of the counter, stretched out his back, kept his head down while he took a couple of deep breaths. It took a minute, but eventually he calmed down long enough to think straight and ponder his options.
He shook his head as he crossed to the cabinet that he and Ron used to store the things that Hermione disliked. Without Ron living there, the whiskey bottle had started gathering dust. He wiped it off, rubbing his thumb over the label, and pulled two equally dusty glasses off of the top shelf. He rinsed those off in the sink, shook them to get rid of some of the water droplets, and took all three items into the den.
Ginny looked up from her agonised ball when he set the whiskey on the coffee table. "I hate that stuff," she sniffled, her voice deepened by the tears.
"Good." Harry poured it first into one glass and then into the other. "It'll help more that way."
"Getting me drunk won't help anything."
He shrugged. "Noted." He held the glass out to her anyway. "Drink up."
She stared at it like it was poison, but at least the tears had stopped. In fact, she looked more curious than miserable now, intrigued at his strange behaviour. "I'm not drinking that."
"You know, when I got out of Hogwarts, I had a lot in my head," Harry observed, ignoring her. "All this stuff just swirling around in there. It made it hard to think. I spent so much time trying to think that I stopped talking, basically clammed up. Sure, Ron and Hermione dragged me out to do stuff, but I was pretty much a walking corpse for all the talking I did."
He continued to hold the shot glass out as he talked. "You could tell Hermione was getting tired of it. She just had this look on her face all the time. You know—that one we decided looked exactly like McGonagall." He got the smallest of smiles at this comment, although Ginny was still wiping at her cheeks. "So one night, she comes over to our old apartment. The dive near Diagon Alley we had for two years. Ron's not home and I'm sitting next to the wireless, listening to the Cannons play. So I can tell Ron about it later. And she marches right in and plops this big bottle of firewhiskey in front of me and says, 'I don't care if I have to poison you to do it, Harry Potter. You're talking to me tonight.'"
"She got you drunk?" Ginny asked, morbidly fascinated.
"Not even. A couple of shots and she had me telling my entire life story." He closed his eyes at the memory. "She was brutal. Had me crying like a baby before the hour was up. I told her stuff that I kept secret since my first year, and not all of it was very good. But she just let me talk, asked questions whenever I didn't want to."
"So you just talked?"
"For six hours. When I woke up the next morning, I felt like Fred and George had used me for Beater practice, my throat hurt, and my pride was sore. But Hermione shows up at ten o'clock and says, 'Get dressed. We're going shopping, and then you're going to go talk to the Chudley Cannons coach.'"
He set the glass on the table in front of her, picked up his own. The burn was something only Muggle whiskey could inspire, but he didn't care. "So you asked what happened to change me, and that's it. Hermione made me talk. Now it's your turn."
Ginny stared at her glass for a long time before she said anything. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the crying, her nose dyed red. She looked haggard, her hair mussed from Harry's hands. Finally, she picked up the shot glass, gave a shrug, and knocked it back. Immediately, she writhed, coughing wetly. Harry rescued the shot glass from meeting its match on the hardwood floor. "That tripe," Ginny coughed, "is disgusting!"
"That's the point," Harry said, smiling. "Feel up to talking yet?"
She glanced at the bottle, looked as though she'd cheerfully jump off a cliff instead. "I guess."
"You could have another shot if you wanted…"
"No—no, I'm good."
Still, there was a lengthy pause before she spoke, and she fidgeted. Finally, she gave in. "I'm sorr—"
He held up a hand, cutting off her apology mid-word. "I forgot: Hermione had only one rule. I wasn't allowed to apologise. You're not, either."
It earned him a scowl, but he didn't care. Finally, Ginny took the whiskey bottle, poured herself a shot, knocked it back. This time she didn't cough; she merely wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand and scowled. "The last person I slept with was Dermot."
Harry's sudden headache reminded him exactly how hitting the ground from a very steep dive felt. Dermot. Of course it came down to Dermot. One couldn't have a serial-killer stalker for an ex-boyfriend without there being repercussions. Strong as she was, Ginny was no exception.
"It wasn't like it was a one-time thing, either," Ginny continued, her voice dull. "We lived together for several months before I started getting anywhere near the truth. You know what the sad thing is? If I hadn't come so close to figuring it out, he might have asked me to marry him. And I—I would have said yes." She reached for the whiskey bottle again, but Harry moved it out of the way. It wouldn't help either of them if she got soused on that knowledge. "I thought I loved him."
It wasn't just the fact that she'd been forced to flee for her life that night in nothing but a towel, Harry realised now. The person who had hurt her and was still hurting her was somebody that she had trusted enough to want to start a new life with. It was almost enough to make him lose his own faith in humanity. He couldn't begin to imagine how she felt.
"Tara gave me about six months and then insisted I started dating again," Ginny continued. "The first time I dated, it was this investment banker bloke. Stan something or other. He was…charming." She twisted her hands together. "It didn't go past one date. It was like that for months. I'd go on dates and find something wrong with all of them, some flaw or other. He talked too much. He liked peas. I hate peas." The admission nearly made Harry smile. "Finally, there was one whose little annoying habits I could stand. He stuck around for about a month."
"Does Mystery Bloke have a name?" Harry prodded.
"Nigel," Ginny said after a minute. "His name was Nigel. He was a lot of fun. Liked to dance. It wasn't like he was my all and everything, but we at least had a good time together. Until he wanted to sleep with me."
The thought made him jealous, but his face didn't change.
"I told myself it was coming. I even think I convinced myself that I wanted it to happen." Ginny pushed at her hair with both hands, belatedly trying to finger-comb it. It was still damp from the earlier rain, although Harry had forgot any discomfort. "And then, we went to his apartment…and I couldn't even make it through the door. I just…I kept seeing that night in my mind. It played over and over again for like two days after that. I'd lie down to go to sleep and then it would just start all over."
She fell silent, her hands stilling and falling uselessly into her lap. "Are you seeing it now? That night?" Harry asked quietly, not sure exactly what to say.
She shook her head. "Just bits and pieces, and only because I'm thinking about it."
"Then what's the…"
"Problem?" The last thing he was expecting was a hollow laugh, but there it was. "I don't know. That's the funny thing—the scene wasn't playing in my mind at all. Just…fear. I was scared I wasn't going to stop seeing it again."
"So you're afraid…of being afraid," Harry surmised, remembering his own fear of Dementors. "You're scared of the feeling of being hurt."
Ginny visibly winced. "When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous."
Harry agreed: when put like that, it did sound ridiculous. But he'd seen the very real fear and panic in Ginny's eyes moments before. It didn't take a specialist to see that she was still dealing with the emotional scarring, even though she probably wouldn't ever admit it to herself. Harry poured himself a shot, contemplated it a minute. Finally, he downed it, set the shot glass back on the table. "It's not ridiculous. It's human."
Ginny slumped back. "We get over one problem and I throw another obstacle in our path," she muttered, her body limp against the back of the couch. "What a pair we make, eh?"
"What a pair we make." Slowly, he stood up and stretched. When he glanced at the clock, it was to realise that the hour was later than they had anticipated. "Should probably get some sleep. The Davenports are going to be out for blood tomorrow."
"They're always out for blood."
It took Ginny a couple of minutes to move from her slumped position on the couch, but eventually she picked her way to their bedroom door, her movements slow and wearied like a warrior returning from battle. Instead of going inside, though, she just leaned against the doorframe and looked over at him. "Look, Harry, I know you were looking forward to what nearly happened tonight. And I want you to know that it's not you. It's all me. In my head."
Harry made no reply at first, so Ginny started to head into the bedroom, a look of dejection heavy about her. Finally, Harry cleared his throat. "I wasn't lying when I said it was okay earlier," he told her. "It's fine. We'll take it slow. I'm not going anywhere for awhile."
Ginny just smiled sadly at him.
Twenty minutes later, sitting at the table with a bag of crisps and actual firewhiskey (which wouldn't have worked on Ginny due to the fact that she needed copious amounts of magical substances for it to affect her bloodstream), Harry was still deep in thought. The debate in his head broke, though, when Neville entered, trying to be quite despite juggling an umbrella, a briefcase, and what looked to be a manila folder. He dripped water all over the floor when he came into the kitchen. "Evening," he greeted Harry glumly.
"Evening," Harry replied just as glumly.
Neville took his time depositing the objects in his arms onto the counter, puzzling at Harry's drying robes beside the oven. Finally, he shucked off his rain cloak, and shook his head. The hair that had been plastered to his head stuck out in wet spikes. "Care to share, mate?" he asked, nodding at the firewhiskey.
"Get a glass. There's plenty." He was halfway to drunk and would pay for it in the morning, but he didn't care. And he didn't mind having a drinking buddy. Neville looked as though he needed it.
"Thanks."
For a long stretch of time, neither talked. Neville was frowning fiercely at his firewhiskey, taking sips from it occasionally. Occasionally, one of the glasses would send up a lick of flame, a curious trademark of firewhiskey. The kitchen was silent apart from the noise of the flames and the sound of the men fidgeting occasionally.
"So," Harry finally asked after awhile, breaking the silence, "how was dinner?"
"French." Neville shook his head. "Even after she's left me, she treats me like my money pouch is bottomless. Which it isn't. Bloody governmental taxes due soon and she still makes me pay for a twenty-Galleon meal."
"Hasn't changed a bit, then?" Harry asked sympathetically.
"No, I think she's got worse."
"Ah."
Silence fell again as both men took a drink. "What about you, then? Why're you out here, drinking yourself into a stupor?" Neville inquired, swirling the whiskey around in its glass and sending up tiny spurts of flame.
"My girlfriend," Harry said, staring at his glass morosely, "is afraid to sleep with me."
"Ah."
"You?"
Neville stared at his drink, with the sparking green flame hovering a few millimetres off of the liquid and the tips of the flames just reaching the rim of the cup. "My ex-wife," he finally said, "is taking me to the cleaners. For pretty much everything I own. And she's got a better attorney than I do."
"I think I finally understand why they say women drive men to drink so much," Harry remarked, shaking his head.
Neville sighed. "I'll drink to that."
With that, they did.
