Last Call

Harry visited Ginny Weasley one more time.

They had a few dates.

And Harry found her well… self-absorbed. Not that she wasn't a good Seeker – she was, and the Harpies were lucky to have her. But there was more to life than Quidditch.

Harry caught up with Ginny again, at the Burrow, on her 'day off.' She was out in the orchard, slaloming through the trees, then doing quaffle shots into a stationary hoop, She chatted as she threw quaffles and summoned them back.

"Oy, summon them back. Save me changing hands," said Ginny.

And she kept at it for an hour, discussing the Harpies, her team membership, and how she saw the league going this year.

When she stopped, Ginny rubbed her elbow. "Bit gimpy. Should put some heat lotion on it" she said. "Get the quaffle will you?" she said.

And in the end, he stopped asking for dates.

Harry settled back into the couch, and Greengrass, who was there for another potions session, waited a respectable interval before asking "What went wrong?"

"Look, I dunno. She's not convinced I'm Tom any more."

"Well that's nice," said Daphne mildly.

"But she wants me to be hugely impressed by Quidditch."

"You played Quidditch at school. And were rather good at it. She is shaping up to get League MVP if she keeps playing like this," said Daphne.

"Which is hard work," said Harry.

"But it doesn't impress you much."

"She could have got MVP straight out Hogwarts if she tried harder." said Harry.

Daphne laughed.

Harry waited for dignity.

"So you basically think she's not training hard enough?"

"She's overtraining," said Harry firmly. "Tendon inflammation consistent with overtraining. Typical bloody quidditch player."

Daphne snorted. "Medically inadvisable huh?"

"What's so hard about sticking to a medically monitored training regimen? But no, she has to do extra training, chasing that MVP status," said Harry. Possibly judgementally.

"Well, maybe she considers it worth the risk," said Daphne.

Harry sulked briefly, then quaffed more daydream potion. The steel drums swelled, and all his troubles melted away.

-=0=-

The next year, it was time to pick a specialisation, and Harry signed up for general practice, to be glowered at by the head of Teaching.

For some reason, he found he was still doing 'supervised healing sessions' with Greengrass. But he had less nightmares, and she looked less and less disturbed. You could hardly tell she had such a bad life now.

Teddy got bigger, obviously, and Harry found himself taking Teddy to the zoo, the London Eye, and various muggle parks. All you had to do was make sure he had a woolly hat on, and they could have great adventures. Jogging had become a habit, and he slept most nights – well he slept when he could. He certainly had less nightmares. He had the odd embarassing dream about female patients, well patient, but as long as he said nothing about it, he was fine. Ministry invitations to commemorate events, though, he returned unopened. Harry Potter was his own man, and while the Shacklebolt Ministry was rebuilding and seemed less corrupt, he also knew about the way the Greengrasses had been fined into the poor house, and they'd done basically nothing, which had him suspecting that lots of families that had just made the bad decision to do nothing, had lost out. He'd certainly lost most of his vault to the goblins, for all the Kingsley and Percy had promised to 'fix it.'

Somehow, it was two years later, all of a sudden, and Harry had actually finished his healer training, passing with the best marks in General Practice, if not in the entire class, and was stuck with two tickets for the graduation ceremony. He gave Andromeda Tonks both, and she handed one back. "I'm not taking a small boy to a long, boring ceremony. Give one to that nice Greengrass girl."

"We are not anything," said Harry automatically. They really weren't. Well, she was an outpatient, if anything, and the treatment was experimental, and people would be judgemental about it. Let alone the way she might possibly have MAD. Or, he admitted to himself in the wee small hours, MAN.

"I'm well aware," said Andromeda. "But you can't give the Minister one, she's already attending, and that takes care of her de-facto husband as well. You might as well give it to your house-guest."

"Nothing goes on," said Harry hastily.

Andromeda nodded sagely. "Quite."

On the other, um, two handfuls, Mafalda Prewitt had erm. Well, he was getting money from tenants, and it was a decent amount. He's taken to her dinner, once, and then to bed.

"I don't normally sleep with customers" she said.

Harry nodded, his face buried in her bra.

"And I don't shag customers," she added, as Harry removed the bra.

Forty minutes later, she lay on his bed, naked, panting. "Cousin Ginny is a fucking idiot" she said. "Could I interest you in a long-term relationship, if it had a bit more eating out in it?" she asked.

Harry chewed the idea over, so to speak.

The next morning, Mafalda took the top sheet to go have a shower. Harry felt quite philosophical.

She was attractive, very friendly, clever, and…

Well, from the noises in the walls, had just turned the shower on.

-=0=-

And for some inexplicable reason, after the ceremony, as they all milled about with their families and friends, Daphne Greengrass kissed him. Not on the cheek, but on the lips, and Harry decided that she tasted of flavoured lip gloss. Possibly Strawberry. Well, it wasn't wet, at least.

Harry didn't think anything of it till several hours later when Mafalda Prewitt came to visit, threw a newspaper at him and called him 'A lousy shag and a rotten, lying cheat.'

"I 'm not, I didnt!" said Harry.

"I'm not bloody blind, Potter. Gorgeous blonde kisses you in public! You must have thought I was a bloody idiot! And don't think that I don't know that you were just pretending to shag my cousin when you shagged me!"

Harry left before she kept yelling, apparating off to stare at a lake, and didn't go home again for a few hours. She'd limited herself to writing 'Cheat' on the mirrors in lipstick, which was trivial to clean up. Probably because she was a lawyer.