Sunday night
Gryffindor Common Room
Ginny climbed through the portrait hole and was not surprised to find most of the older pupils still gathered in the common room. She resumed her seat next to Sam as James rejoined his friends. Most of the Gryffindors had put away their books and were indulging in last-minute gossip before the beginning of another week of lessons. Ginny was worn out by the emotions of the day and more than ready to call it a night when James turned down Nate's offer of a game of gobstones, saying he was going to take a shower.
She let him get almost to the stairs before calling loudly, "Don't forget to wash behind your ears, Jamie!"
He flashed her a two-fingered salute. Ginny was halfway to the boys' dormitory before she was conscious of moving.
Louis blocked her path. "You can't go up there."
"I've been in the boys' dormitories loads of times!"
Louis winced.
"For Merlin's sake," she said impatiently. "I'm his mother, not some boy-crazy teenager. Get out of my way, Louis."
"I really can't do that."
Ginny crossed her arms and fixed Louis with the same glare she used to give him years ago when he woke a sleeping baby or tricked the younger boys into doing his chores. He shifted his weight uncomfortably but didn't move. She pointed up the stairs.
"Did you see what he did? He only did that because he thinks I can't follow him."
"You can't."
"Why ever not?"
Louis looked pained. "Please don't make me explain that, Aunt Ginny."
She sighed. "Fine. Go upstairs and tell him to get down here, now."
He hesitated.
"It's me or you, Louis."
"The dormitory is the one place James has in this whole castle to get away from you. Can't you give him a break?"
Ginny simply looked up—way up—at her nephew and let him read the answer in her expression.
She was prepared for James to ignore her, or at least keep her waiting, but he reappeared just a couple of minutes after Louis left.
"Do you want to talk here or outside?" she said quietly. James had always hated it when she pulled him aside to discipline him in public.
He glanced at the people still scattered around the room. "Outside, I guess."
She stalked towards the portrait hole, pushed it open, and led the way around the first corner (because the Fat Lady was a notorious gossip). She turned to face him with arms crossed and brows raised expectantly.
"I'm not sorry."
Ginny gritted her teeth. Why, why was he so set on antagonizing her?
"You're not sorry you made an obscene gesture in my direction?"
"No," he said defiantly, but Ginny could see the tiniest hint of an anxious little boy behind his eyes.
"But I suppose you would be sorry if I took your broomstick."
He shrugged. "If you like. You always do whatever you want, anyway."
Ginny looked up at him, at the wide stance, the rigid posture, the face turned away from her, and knew rowing with him now was pointless. She didn't know what to do, exactly, but she knew she wasn't going to get anywhere tonight.
"Go to bed."
"That's it?"
"What do you expect, James? You're too big to turn over my knee, it's too late to withhold pudding, and I yelled at you in front of the entire school less than a week ago, so I hardly think a private dressing down will have much effect. You've been rude and disrespectful despite my threat to take away your broomstick, so I really don't see how doing so would improve your attitude. Go to bed. I expect to see you there by the time I can check the map." Without waiting to see if he obeyed, she turned and walked away.
()()()()
Louis waited on the boys' stairs. "What the hell was that?"
James shrugged.
"I half expected you to show up without a hand," Louis said, eyeing both of James's. "Or giant bat bogeys all over your face, at the very least."
Ginny's favorite jinx was legendary. James made to go around, but his cousin stepped in front of him.
"If either of our dads hears about this, you are dead."
"Whatever."
"For Godric's sake, James, what the hell is wrong with you? I know she's been a right pain, but flipping off your mother? Your mother?"
"Piss off," James said, pushing past.
Louis caught his arm. "Look, I know the meeting was rough. I'm sorry. I didn't think it was fair to make all the Gryffindors take extra patrols again or to require one of the other houses to do it."
"It's not fair to make Caitlin do it again when she was hurt worse than anybody." James jerked his arm free.
"Then stop being such an arse and earn some good will and get McGonagall to put you back on duty," Louis said in exasperation. "Aunt Ginny probably wants to go home almost as much as you want her to. Stop giving her a reason to be here."
"Just piss off, Louis. You're not the boss of me."
James slammed his dormitory door shut, yanked his robes over his head, abandoned them on the floor, and kicked off his trainers, ignoring the clatter when one of them rolled under Evan's bed. He continued stripping off, wanting nothing more than to go to sleep and forget the last three days ever happened.
"Oi!"
He turned to find his best mate pulling James's vest off his head. "Sorry," he muttered, wadding it into a ball and throwing it into his trunk, where it landed hard enough to make a muffled thud against his clean robes.
"Calm down, would you?"
James shook out his pajama shirt with a snap. "This is a disaster," he said, sticking his arms through the sleeves and pulling it over his head, forgetting he had planned to shower. "She is an absolute disaster, and I can't get away from her for even one second because I'm stuck in Gryffindor Tower, and she's in league with the Fat Lady!"
"You're just making it worse for yourself," Cameron said, picking up his and James's robes and putting them down the laundry chute.
"Worse?" James stopped, bent over with his pajama trousers half on. "How could this possibly be worse?"
"I don't think she would be going round calling you 'Jamie' and cutting your meat for you if you would just talk to her."
"You don't know my mother."
"Neither do you, apparently. The ruder you are, the clingier she gets. Seems to me the fastest way to get her out of here is to do what she wants."
James shoved his bed curtains back and climbed inside. "She wouldn't be happy no matter what I did."
Cameron sighed and sat down on the edge of his bed facing James. "Look, maybe you can talk to Al, see if he'll meet her for lunch or take her for a walk or something, give you a break. Surely she wants to see her other kids too."
"Don't count on it."
Cameron pushed off his bed to stand over James. "Why are you being such a git?"
James sat up. "What?"
"Your mum left her husband and her job to come up here and hang out with a bunch of teenage boys because she was worried about you, and you've been downright hateful."
"Well, how else should I be?"
"I don't know, maybe grateful? There aren't a lot of mums who would go to that much bother. I know mine wouldn't. She's too busy traveling the world and posing for photographs."
"My family's in the papers all the time!"
"No, your family is in the papers when they do something newsworthy, like sponsor controversial legislation or solve crimes or host a charity auction. Your mother writes about Quidditch matches, she doesn't create scenes at clubs or send write-ups of her parties to the social editor. Your mum brings you to King's Cross and picks you up every term, James, not just at the beginning or end of the year, and most of the time your dad is there too! I could push somebody off the bloody Astronomy Tower and my mum wouldn't send a Howler, but yours is actually interested in you, and you're treating her like shit!"
James stared at his red-faced friend in shock. Louis was one thing, but Cameron had never yelled at him. He knew Cameron's mum was—well, flighty was how Cameron usually described her—but James had never really thought about how many times Cameron had been alone on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, or how little post he got, or how he never passed around pictures from Christmas or summer holidays.
"How do you get to King's Cross?"
"Knight Bus," Cameron said shortly. "It stops at the alley behind the station."
"I—I don't know what to say."
"Say you'll stop being such a jerk and be nice to your mother." Cameron busied himself laying out his robes for tomorrow.
"You sound like my dad."
"He must be a smart bloke." Cameron looked up with just a hint of a smile.
James returned it in full, eager to stay on good terms with Cameron, who had stuck by him all weekend.
"Is it safe to come in now?" Evan stuck his head around the dormitory door. Nate and Sam were behind him.
"Yeah, yeah. Cam was reading me the riot act, but he's done now."
"We heard," Nate said. "Your mum's not that bad. As mums go, I mean," he added hastily, catching James's incredulous expression.
"She's really nice," Sam said. Which, coming from Sam, was like an official announcement with horn and drums.
"To you, maybe," James grumbled.
"She likes Quidditch," Evan said. "And she understands it. How many mums do you know who can talk Quidditch like that?"
"You should see her play."
"Godric, can we? That would be brilliant."
James shrugged. "I'm sure she'll follow me to Quidditch practice if McGonagall ever lets us start up again."
"She knows more secret passages than we do," Cameron said. "That's cool. Come on, even you have to admit that's really cool."
Of course it was, but James merely shrugged.
"And she can cook! Those biscuits she sent last Christmas were amazing," Nate said.
"She was nice enough to send enough for all of us," Sam said.
"What is this, the Ginny Potter Admiration Society?"
"Not to mention she's—"
"Don't you dare say she's pretty," James warned.
"Actually, I was going to say she's—" Evan raised his voice to be heard over James's throat-clearing. "Hot."
"She's my mum! And she's old!"
"She can't be that old," Nate said reasonably.
"She's forty!"
There was silence in the dormitory as the boys processed this unwelcome news.
Evan was the first to rally. "Well, she doesn't look it. Thirty-three, thirty-five, tops."
There was an eager chorus of agreement.
"She's married!" James insisted. "To the wizard who defeated Voldemort. Do any of you really want to tick him off?" He ignored the inadvertent reminder that he had just done something guaranteed to anger his dad and pressed his point. "And he's an Auror, and so is my uncle Ron. She has five older brothers! Who wants to mess with that?"
"Your dad did," Evan said, and the rest of the boys snickered.
"Yeah, well, he's Harry Potter."
"I thought it was six," Sam said.
"What?"
"Her Who's Who in Quidditch biography says she grew up with six brothers."
"She did. Uncle Fred died in the war. Here at Hogwarts, actually."
"Shit," Nate said, looking stricken. "I talked about him, about my dad going to school with him and George."
"It must be hard for her to be here," Cameron said quietly.
James stared back at him. "Yeah," he said slowly, thinking of this for the first time. "Yeah, maybe so."