Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season 10, Round 7
Team: Holyhead Harpies
Position: Beater 2
Prompt: Anniversary
Optional Prompts: (word) dazzling, (color) rose gold
Word Count: 1,873
Warnings: Mild language, references to past character deaths
Notes: Rose gold primarily symbolizes luxury, but also can symbolize love, which is the interpretation I chose to use for this fic. Interestingly, gold roses symbolize new beginnings and hope for the future.
2 May 2003
Harry gazes at the memorial wall at the base of the Astronomy Tower. It's been five years since the Battle of Hogwarts, but the ache has only lessened a little. There hasn't been a single day where he hadn't thought about those who had sacrificed their lives for the greater good during the war. The spot where the wall is erected had been a deliberate choice — everyone had agreed that it should be where Dumbledore had fallen.
His eyes trace a path across the names, lingering on those most familiar — and painful — to him. Fred Weasley. Albus Dumbledore. Lavender Brown. Colin Creevey. Remus Lupin. Nymphadora Tonks. And then…
Lips parting with a sharp inhale, Harry's hand reaches out of its own accord, touching the name James Potter, and then his fingers travel to the name below it, Lily Potter.
Harry squeezes his eyes shut as he's transported back to the day he and Hermione had visited Godric's Hollow and found his parents' gravestone. There had been many visits since then, but that particular visit is etched permanently in his brain — it had been the first time. And now, the words engraved on their headstone make much more sense. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
It had never been about the Death Eaters. As Hermione had said, it had meant living on after death, in the minds and hearts and souls of those who live. In tributes like this.
"Harry?"
Harry opens his eyes, dropping his arm and turning. It's Ginny. She looks beautiful, her rose gold dress shimmering in the sunlight and her hair pulled back in a braid. Her expression looks tired, but she is radiant nonetheless.
"I thought I might find you here," she says, stopping in front of him and tipping her head up to meet his eyes.
Harry smiles wryly. "You know me well. I just needed to…escape, I guess. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Hermione and the others organized this, but everyone was just looking at me, and…"
"You don't have to explain." Ginny takes one step past him, gazing at the wall behind him. "It never gets any easier, does it?" she murmurs.
She'd gotten to the heart of his ache. Harry turns around again, but this time takes her hand in his and squeezes it comfortingly. He knows which names she's looking at too. "They're still with us," he says, voice thick with emotion.
Ginny nods, but she doesn't look at him. Instead, like Harry, her arm raises and her fingers glide across one name in particular. Her family. Fred.
"Mum still calls George Fred sometimes," she says quietly. "Her eyesight isn't what it used to be, and sometimes George is standing in a way where she can't see his missing ear, and no one has the heart to correct her."
Harry says nothing. What can he say? Both of them are silent for a few moments, immersed in their own thoughts.
"I wish I hadn't dropped the Resurrection Stone in the forest," he says suddenly, desperately, as a fresh wave of grief and regret surges through him. "I wish I'd — I'd had the chance to say…and you had the chance to…and everyone else too…"
This time, it's Ginny who squeezes his hand, and Ginny who doesn't know what to say. What can she say? She murmurs words of comfort, deliberately not revealing her own opinion on the matter, and Harry is filled with a mixture of relief and bitterness — the latter aimed at himself. At the time, he hadn't regretted the action, but after the war, when they'd buried the dead, he'd spent a long time agonizing over whether or not to search for the Resurrection Stone. A part of him had known that he would never have found it — and that same part is the knife embedded in his gut.
"I know what you're thinking," Ginny says, and Harry is jerked out of his thoughts by the sharpness of her tone. He twists his head to look at her, only to find her looking up at him with dazzling ferocity. Her eyes are blazing. "You made the right decision, Harry."
"But," Harry murmurs, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes, "if only I had figured out the riddle sooner, or hadn't dropped it in the forest, then maybe we could have —"
"Stop!" Ginny says loudly, cutting him off mid-sentence. "I understand where you're coming from," she continues more gently, taking one of his hands between both of her own. "It's hard, it's so fucking hard. Every day I look at Mum and Dad, at George, and think, What if they had gotten to say goodbye? But then, I see them smiling again, starting to laugh, and despite Mum's occasional…confusion, they're starting to heal. Maybe…maybe it's best that you dropped the stone. Getting to say goodbye might have helped right afterwards, but if we had the stone now…it would only open up old wounds and make it impossible to move on."
Harry swallows heavily as Ginny's words marinate in his head. Part of him wants to protest still — he'd expected Ginny to be harboring feelings of resentment, that he'd let go of the stone, and had robbed her and her family of the chance to say goodbye to Fred. That he'd deprived Teddy — oh, how that had plagued him — of seeing his birth parents. But Ginny's words bleed through these thoughts, filtering out his misgivings, and he breathes deeply.
"You're right," he says shakily, touching his forehead to hers and closing his eyes. "Thank you."
They stand there for a while, just soaking in each other's presence before Ginny whispers, "Should we head back inside?"
"Yeah." Harry reluctantly pulls away, but Ginny threads her fingers through Harry's once again, lending him silent strength. Harry grips her hand tightly, returning it, and the pair of them start making their way back to the Great Hall — back to the celebration.
(If he's quite honest, he doesn't want to go back — he doesn't want to endure all of the staring and the talking and the attention, he'd had enough of that as the Boy Who Lived — but now, something unspoken has developed between him and Ginny, strengthening their relationship, and it'll all be a little bit easier.)
The organizers had really outdone themselves with the decorations for the war anniversary celebration. Rose gold streamers line the tall walls, and dazzling golden lanterns float high above them, looking almost like stars against the midnight-blue ceiling.
"I got inspired by the Chinese lanterns," Hermione explains softly to Harry. "I had everyone write a message on parchment slips — don't worry, it's enchanted parchment, it won't disintegrate — and put them in lanterns."
"That's lovely, Hermione," Ginny says, sounding as though she has a lump in her throat. Harry just nods in agreement, not trusting himself to speak.
"If you would like…" Hermione hesitates before producing a couple of parchment slips. "If you want to write something, or…"
"We can," Harry says, surprising himself. He glances at his wife, and when she nods, he takes one of Hermione's proffered parchment slips. Ginny takes the other.
Hermione wisely decides to give them space, wandering away to find Ron, while Harry's mind spins. What should he write? Who does he write to?
He and Ginny procure a pair of quills and inkwells, and Harry dips in his quill, hovers over the parchment, and…his mind goes blank.
Ginny is already scribbling away, eyebrows knitted together in concentration, and Harry doesn't want to interrupt her. Involuntarily, his eyes drift around the Great Hall, taking in everything.
He sees Neville and Luna, swapping stories about their adventures in the years between the war's end and this celebration. He glimpses George and Lee Jordan, heads together, whispering about something. He spots Ron and Hermione conversing with Seamus and Parvati. And then there's everyone else, reminiscing and laughing and something suddenly dawns on Harry.
He turns back to his parchment and begins to write.
After a while, the party starts to die down and people start to file out of the Great Hall, saying their goodbyes and sharing their last laughs. Harry himself is feeling quite drained, his throat quite dry, and he'd been separated from his wife long ago. Now, he looks for her, picking her out in a cluster of redheaded Weasleys. At the same time, Ginny turns and makes eye contact with him, flashing him a dazzling smile, and Harry's heartbeat quickens.
"Why are you smiling like that?" he mouths and Ginny's smile transforms into a smirk. She breaks away from her family and crosses the remaining space between them, wrapping her arms around his midsection. Pleasantly surprised, he returns the hug.
"I need to tell you something," she says, her voice muffled against his suit jacket. "But not here. Can we go outside?"
"Sure. Should I be worried?" he jokes.
Ginny gives him another one of those disarming smiles, which answers his question. Harry lets her lead him out by the hand, not stopping until the Black Lake glitters before them, the pale light from the moon turning the calm waters white.
Beside him, Ginny audibly breathes in. Harry shifts weight between his feet, bursting with impatience, but not enough to press her. Finally, Ginny says, "I've been debating on how to tell you this for a while. Not because I was worried about how you would react, but because I wanted to wait for a perfect moment. But sometimes —" she slides a glance towards him, "- there is no perfect moment. We just have to come out with it."
Harry chuckles nervously. "Come out with what?"
Ginny guides their intertwined hands to her stomach, and suddenly, suddenly, the expression on her face in the Great Hall, the words she's saying right now, while moving their hands onto her stomach, it all makes sense. The truth of her words starbursts into reality, and —
"Harry, I'm pregnant." She beams up at him, and Merlin, she's beautiful, glowing, dazzling, and everything else fades around them. His world narrows to that spot on her stomach where their hands are laced together atop the rose gold fabric.
"You're pregnant?" he breathes, dizzy with giddiness. "Y-You're — you mean —"
"We're going to be parents," she says, her eyes shining. "I'm about five weeks along. I don't know the gender yet, but if you wanted to, we could ask about when — Harry, are you okay?"
Harry had sunk to his knees. "I'm okay," he croaks. "More than okay. Merlin, I'm — wow. We're going to be parents." I'm going to be a father.
Ginny gets on her knees too, so that they're still face-to-face. "Are you okay?" she repeats softly.
Harry smiles. "I'm okay," he tells her firmly. "I love you. I love you so much. I love you both so much. You and the baby both."
He has so much to work through. But he has so much to look forward to, too. This is only the beginning.
(He remembers what he'd written on his parchment slip. Mum, Dad, I wish you could have seen the world without darkness. It's beautiful and full of new beginnings. Thank you for all you have given to it.)