Chapter 5: Intervention
He awoke with her scent on his skin.
Dapple early morning sunlight percolated across the bedspread and around the room, the glare just strong enough to feel as though it was stabbing into his eyes; sunrise was arriving earlier and earlier as these late spring days grew steadily longer. Turning over on the mattress, Harry took a moment to bask in Ginny, still slumbering away. Her nightdress still rested high over her hips, and part of the bodice still hung loose, revealing a decently curved and firm breast. He smiled goofily at the memory of them furiously bucking against each other last night, even as she had pleaded with him to be quiet.
Leaning over, Harry pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "I love you…." he murmured.
Ginny stirred and rolled over, mumbling something unintelligible, but she did not wake. Harry stole quietly out of her bed they had shared. Dressing just as silently, he felt less guilty about what he and Ginny were doing together in bed and more terrified that sooner or later they were going to get caught. Godric only knew how very traditional Mrs. Weasley would react if she learned he and her only daughter were reunited and even sleeping together. Harry winced: or Ron, for that matter….
He tiptoed out of Ginny's room, eyes darting about on the landing in the hopes that no one was up and about to spot him. He surefootedly traversed one flight of stairs to the next landing above, studying the closed door to Ron's room, from which he had snuck out last night. He could hear steady and even breathing, punctuated by a few apneic snores, coming from the other side, and all without even having to press his ear to the jamb. Good. The bloke was still asleep.
Plodding down the stairs to the kitchen, Harry wondered offhand if Ron and Hermione were shagging about in bed. Knowing how practical the bright witch could be, somehow he doubted Ron was getting any, the poor fellow. Waiting until marriage seemed just the sort of thing Hermione would do.
Speaking of… Harry arrived down in the kitchen to find the table empty except for a note from Hermione, hastily scrawled onto a spare bit of parchment. He scanned it quickly, immediately deducing that it was meant for Ron: EARLY START. WENT TO CASTLE TO VISIT LAVENDER. I LOVE YOU ~ MIONE.
Harry shook his head with a small smile and eased himself into a chair. To the shock of nearly everyone, Lavender Brown had made it through that first night following the battle. There was a periodically running story in most of the papers updating the public on her condition along with the other wounded; the Daily Prophet had even featured a front-page spread. Where that particular publication was concerned, moving as fast as possible away from the propaganda it had been churning out until recently was the only prudent course of action and besides, everyone loves a good hero story. Interim Minister for Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt had even discussed conferring awards upon the wounded, listing Lavender's case as a prime example.
"Fancy a cuppa?"
Harry jerked sharply, startled and he glanced up to find the dark-haired girl, Audrey, standing beside the sink. Merlin, he hadn't even realized she was there! She smirked at his discomfort. "Merlin, for a death-defying hero, you sure are jumpy…."
Harry ducked his head humbly, shyly. "I don't consider myself a hero…"
"Tough luck, buttercup. There's an entire magical society out there that would disagree with you." Audrey approached the table and passed him a mug. She hadn't asked how he took his tea, but Harry decided as a pick-me-up, just about anything would do. He didn't want to come off as persnickety – Merlin only knew she probably got enough of that from Percy!
"Are you shagging Percy?" His train of thought had somehow given itself voice upon his lips; Audrey choked on her tea mid-sip and coughed.
"What?" she smiled, bemused.
Harry flushed and coughed himself. "I…. beg your pardon. Way too early in the morning…."
"Indeed. On that alone, plus the fact that you still look as though you haven't slept, I think I'll let it slide." Audrey smirked and lifted the mug to her lips. "Which I suppose begs the question: who are you shagging?"
Harry's face burned as red as a Weasley's hair. There were only a couple of women staying in this house who he could be sleeping with, and process of elimination being what it was, he had to consider if Audrey already knew just who. Yet he refrained from saying 'None of your business' – even as it wasn't – lest he give Audrey an out to clam up herself. Her lingering presence around the Weasley compound these last couple of weeks had left most everyone curious as to the nature of her and Percy's relationship.
Seeming to take pity on him, Audrey swung herself into a chair opposite Harry, clutching her tea mug between her fingers. "We met working in the Order of Mercy," she began.
"The what?" Harry blurted. Audrey smiled.
"I'm surprised you haven't heard of it, though I suppose in our line of duty, that's just as well. Call it an offshoot of the Order of the Phoenix. We're more into subterfuge, espionage work."
Percy? A spy?... Harry couldn't help but grin. He never would have believed it! He almost said so, but refrained, for fear of offending Audrey for the second time in as many minutes.
"Perce was undercover inside the Ministry for some of it. The risks he took…" she shuddered, though her smile was one of admiration. "It was really brave."
Harry's smile broadened. He found that he liked this Audrey. "And what sort of work did you do?"
"Were you ever taught in Muggle primary school about the Underground Railroad?"
Harry nodded. "That was a network in the States, really, to fight against slavery."
"Muggleborns and Squibs needed a way to flee, too, especially in the winter months when things were really bleak. I helped get them forged papers, absconded Portkeys, so they could get out of the country." She chuckled tightly. "It wasn't easy…"
This time, Harry was conscious about weighing his words carefully. "How'd…. how'd you get into that? Are you…. Muggleborn yourself?"
Audrey nodded. "Born and raised, least until I was 11. After school, I worked for the Squib Placement Agency until the Voldemort Ministry shut those programs down, so the transition into Order of Mercy was…. somewhat seamless. Fleur recruited me."
"You know Fleur?" Harry blinked. He thought back to how Bill's wife had been hovering near this girl and Percy the morning following the Battle.
"We met in my sixth year, when she came to Hogwarts for the Tournament. Been best mates ever since."
"Funny. I don't recall seeing you at the wedding." Though in truth, he could be forgiven for that – there had been so many guests trying to flee at the ceremony's chaotic end.
"I had to be there incognito. Percy wasn't taking any chances, so he brought me along as his date under disguise." She shrugged. "We eased into a relationship really slowly – if one of us got captured or tortured, we didn't want to be the other person the Death Eaters would use to get to us."
Harry nodded. "And now?"
Audrey smiled. "Let's just say you'll be seeing me around here on a fairly permanent basis from now on."
Harry's green eyes expanded. "Wow. Er – congratulations. Has he proposed?"
Audrey shook her head, though she didn't seem to be sweating these details. "There is an understanding. We'll get there," she promised in a murmur.
A yawn precluded Ron plunking down the steps. He was scratching his butt, causing Audrey to bite her lip while hiding a giggle. The redhead's eyes landed on his best mate first.
"Morning, all. Jolly lovely day!"
Noticing his blue eyes scanning the kitchen, Harry wordlessly handed Ron the note from Hermione. Ron sank into a chair, shaking his head in wonder even as his face betrayed something that might have been guilt.
"Bother! She could have woken me up; I could have gone with her… I…. I should go with her…" he looked pained.
Setting aside the implication that his best mates were possibly sharing a bed, Harry nodded in agreement. "Next time," he murmured.
"Yes. Just who is Lavender, I'd like to know?" Audrey mused aloud.
Ron bit back his own retort of 'None of your business,' opting instead for a sigh. "Old…. old flame of mine. She was wounded in the Battle."
"And yet your girl is going to see her for you? My, my, Ronald, your brother is right – you are a git!" Harry blew his lips through a raspberry of a guffaw, failing to hold in a snort. Ron attempted a half-hearted glare.
The front door opened, and Luna breezed in, come to pay a call. "Good morning, everyone."
"Come to give a neighborly Yoo-Hoo, are we, Lu?" Ron gratefully steered the subject away from his shortcomings as a boyfriend…. and ex-boyfriend, as the case may be.
"Neville will be along. We wanted to bring some flowers for Mrs. Weasley."
"Stay for breakfast!" Harry offered.
Luna smiled in acceptance and thanks, moving over to the sink to wash a spare mug for tea. The others could hear her singing on the edge of her breath, just over the running of the water:
"Tra la, it's May! The lusty month of May! That glorious month where everyone goes blissfully astray!..."
Ron leaned into Harry, muttering. "Now there's a bird who looks as though she's been mounted, and no mistake!"
"Hark, who's talking?" Harry shot back. "Made Hermione an honest woman, have you?" Ron turned a delicious shade of pink and shifted away, grumbling darkly. So the lassie was holding out on him! He felt bad for Ron, but cheering him up by way of comparing notes was out of the question. Harry still wasn't sure how to broach the topic of how he and Ginny were now back together… and judging from last night, doing better than ever.
Neville arrived, bearing flowers. Spooning Luna from where she was still at the sink, he bent and kissed her sweetly on the mouth, Luna's grin one of being blissfully at peace. Ron, Harry and Audrey listened to Neville's reports on reconstruction: repairs to the castle were moving along nicely, and he had been by at least a few times a week to help with the building site. Harry and Ron promised to come by when they had the time.
One by one, the other Weasleys gradually trickled in. Almost as if to make a point, Audrey grabbed Percy by his nightshirt collar and greeted him with a deep kiss good morning. Ron, Harry, Bill and Charlie all roared with laughter at how thunderstruck Percy appeared.
Ginny was careful to take a chair for herself; had she not been, Harry suspected she would have ended up in his lap the way she no doubt wanted to.
"When you are heading back to Romania, Charlie?" Neville asked conversationally.
"Soon, it'll have to be. There are still a few dragons that escaped the ranges and need to be recaptured."
"Was the fighting that bad out that way?" Ron quipped.
"The Death Eater regime was looking to recruit from every corner they could."
"But there were no dragons at the final battle!" Harry's jaw dropped.
Charlie grinned smugly. "Exactly. Voldemort was arrogant enough to forget one thing: dragons can almost never be domesticated when out in the wild." Ron and Harry shared a surreptitious look, Gringotts flashing through their minds. Charlie now slapped his palms upon the table. "Which brings me to what must be done, preferably before I leave:" he leveled all his siblings and the various guests with a pointed stare. "We need to talk about George."
Everyone eyed each other silently, warily.
"The bloke has hardly left his room, and the only reason he showed his face at the funeral is because Bill and I dragged him there."
"Has he been to the joke shop?" Percy wanted to know, Audrey perched on his lap. "Businesses are starting to reopen again. Knockturn Alley is the safest it's been for commerce in years!"
Charlie nodded. "Right now, that's about the only place he goes, but I suspect it's just another escape to be by himself. I haven't heard of a reopening for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes – have you lot?" The others shook their heads.
There was a sudden bang as the door burst open and Hermione arrived, looking haggard. Ron waved her down.
"Hi…." she murmured tiredly, stooping and kissing her boyfriend softly on the lips. The lovers spoke in low tones that Harry only heard because he was seated right next to them.
"She's all right….. She's asked about you…." Ron made an odd noise in the back of his throat and hugged her, pulling his girl into his lap, even while ignoring the stares from most of his brothers.
"What did you tell her?"
"Later, darling…. Later…." Hermione crooned.
"…. Fleur and I have been inviting him over to Shell Cottage, even for just a change of scene…." Bill was muttering.
"What's going on?" Hermione chittered, having dropped in en media res.
Ron pursed his lips grimly. "An intervention, love."
One evening several nights later, most of the Weasley brothers, accompanied by Harry and Neville, approached the darkened edifice of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.
The plan to stage an intervention in this way had been met with some resistance. Ginny had wanted to come, but her eldest brothers had waved her off. Harry hadn't necessarily agreed with leaving Ginny out of it, but given his place in the extended family, he didn't feel it was within his right to speak up. Plus, Bill and Charlie sort of intimidated him. He hoped his girlfriend wouldn't hold any of that against him.
Ginny had then tried to counter by wondering aloud why they weren't staging an intervention for their mother, too – Mrs. Weasley had been a sporadic presence at best for most of May, hardly coming out of her room either so that it had been left to the children to do the daily chores of the household.
"There'll be time to talk to Mum yet, but that will require more finesse," was how Percy had put it.
George, on the other hand, would receive no such quarter.
The group of half a dozen men prepared to break into the joke shop quietly. "They had an apartment. Upstairs," Bill whispered.
The moment Alohamora was uttered, alarms began to wail. Ron hollowed as a booby-trapped stink bomb blew up in his face.
"Ruddy put them out, you fools! Put them out!" Charlie bawled, hissing.
By the time they did, though, there was still no sign of George. Percy grimaced.
"He'd have been down here immediately if an alarm went off…." Sharing a disturbed look, there was suddenly a stampede as all six men thundered their way up the steps to the loft.
They burst into the apartment, Bill at the head, to find George lying on his bed. Scores of beer bottles and spirits lay strewn about, and only when the bleeder turned his head dazedly did he show that he was not, in fact, dead of alcohol poisoning.
"What do you lot want?" George slurred, unintelligible.
"We've come to help you, mate," Charlie stated gently, inching forward.
George growled and turned away, ornery. "Don't ruddy want your help!" He sounded lost in his own grief.
"I think you right well do, lad," Percy countered. "More than that, you need it. We understand there's no timetable for grief, Georgie, but that doesn't mean you can stay shut up and wasting away in bed. It's been almost a month, little brother. Time to get on your feet." There was a pause, before he added. "Fred would have wanted you to go on living."
From where he stood, having now surreptitiously circled the bed, Harry could see himself in the background of the mirror, into which George was staring. The man's own reflection, etched with pain, stared back at him. For an identical twin, George had to feel as though he was seeing a ghost whenever he so much as looked at himself.
"Fred isn't here….."
It had to be hard judging if someone was suicidal, but Harry had to imagine that George was on the verge, he had clearly been drinking so.
The six men locked eyes. "Get him," Charlie quipped. With that, Neville, Harry and the other four Weasley brothers grabbed the surviving twin and jumped him.
Shouts of commotion went up as George struggled and kicked and thrashed, and there was a scramble towards the corner washroom.
"Put him in the tub! Put him in the tub!..." Neville was barking out orders, back in the mindset of the general he had been.
"To him, lads!" Harry called.
"That's it – off with his clothes!"
"No, no, leave it! Leave it! We'll wash him, socks and all!"
"LET ME LOOSE, YOU FOOLS!" George bellowed, eyes blazing with more rage and life than they had seen from him in weeks, the little they had seen him at all.
Neville was still shouting. "Put him in the tub! Put him in the ruddy tub!..."
It took nearly all of the men's combined strength to more or less sit on George, holding him down as Percy turned on the showerhead, full-blast.
The forced bath imposed upon George was more of a dunking than a washing, and the surviving twin coughed and spluttered, roaring. "You'll all pay dearly for this!"
"Not ruddy likely," Ron snorted. For his part, Harry simply hoped they wouldn't have to.
After many minutes, George had quieted. He was soaked through his clothes, his auburn curls plastered to his forehead, and though his eyes still flashed, he was calming and had halted in his wrestling.
"There!" Bill huffed. "Now will you at least listen?"
George nodded warily.
"We know you miss Fred – we all do – but Fred would have wanted you to live for him. You can start by reopening the shop you both worked so hard to build."
George faltered. "I…. but who would take….?"
"Fred's place? Nobody could, more generally, but as to the shop…. Well, I've been looking for a situation," Percy offered up. "Audrey and I will be finishing our work with the Order of Mercy soon, hopefully by the end of the summer. Bill's already back at Gringotts."
A ghost of a smile squirmed its way onto George's lips. "You're blooming joking, Perce…"
Percy straightened, rearranging his expression carefully under the stares of all his brothers. "I tell you, I surely am not."
"Percy in a joke shop!" Ron chuckled tightly. Everyone shared a nervous, relieved laugh.
Charlie ran a tired hand over his face. "I'll write to Lee Jordan and tell him you're ready to take him back on staff. I'll owl Angelina for you, too. They both have been worried sick about you."
George slowly nodded. "OK."
Charlie grinned. "Then it's settled."
"Charlie?" At his brother's turning, George smiled weakly. "Thanks, mate."
Charlie shrugged. "What's a brother for, if not to give you a good boxing round the ears?"
"Or a bath," Neville snorted. Everyone chortled.