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What it comes down to	By : melinda1293 Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 115219 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 48
- 49
Epilogue 5. New Beginnings

Ginny’s final year at Hogwarts was drawing to a close, with only the Quidditch final and her N.E.W.T’s ahead of her in the coming days, which had either kept her in the sky with her teammates for hours every night, or in the library studying hard with all her other seventh-year classmates. The stress of those demands, coupled with her Head Girl duties left Ginny eager to see the end of it.
It was in the library one glorious spring afternoon weeks after the Easter holidays that Harry had found her sitting with Hermione at a table, surrounded by a stack of books. Her hair had been pulled into a messy ponytail, her face pressed close to her parchment of notes when Harry came up to them. Plucking up the courage, he asked her to attend the Memorial Ball with him. She was so stunned that she almost couldn’t answer. Staring at him open mouthed, Ginny gaped like a fish and only closed it when she caught sight of Hermione’s knowing grin spreading across her face from directly opposite her.
“Excuse me,” Hermione said tactfully, closing her book and getting up from the table to give them some privacy. She nodded her head at Harry in approval as she passed, smiling reassuringly while color bloomed in his cheeks.
Trying to quell the thumping of her heart at her excitement, trying not to make too much of his invitation, Ginny attempted to compose her features. Harry couldn’t very well go with Ron and Hermione, after all, and he couldn’t ask Luna again, either, because she was going with Dean. That left Ginny as the only other close female friend Harry had.
“I… I’d really like it if you’d come with me,” he said uncertainly when she still hadn’t responded, fidgeting nervously with the cuff of his robes. “Unless you’re already going with someone else, that is.”
“No,” she replied, finally finding her voice. “I mean no, I’m not going with someone else,” she added hastily, trying to clarify when his shoulders sagged, mistaking her response for rejection. “That would be wonderful, Harry. I’d love to go with you.”
“Really?” he asked in obvious relief, sinking into a chair next to her as if his legs wouldn’t support him any longer. She could see the anxiety flooding out of him. “That’s great. I was worried for a minute there that I might have to murder whomever you’d already agreed to go with to get you to come with me, instead.”
“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?” she asked with raised eyebrows, lips quirking in amusement.
“Yeah, I suppose,” he replied with a shrug. “It seems to be my natural impulse these days. But there would be and inquiry with lots of awkward questions, probably a trial and a stint in Azkaban. Still, it would’ve been worth it.”
“You should probably learn to control that particular impulse, Harry.” Ginny suggested and then smiled at him.
Harry smiled shyly back before changing the subject. “So, what are you working on?”
“Charms,” she answered. “Do you want to study with me?”
“Sure. I'd like that.”
That’s how it began again for them, finally. Suddenly, Ginny found herself alone with Harry, sometimes for hours on end, getting to know each other again without the constant hovering presence of Ron or Hermione. Ginny didn’t know what to make of it at first. It wasn’t as if the three of them had had a row, or some kind of a falling out, or anything. They were as warm and friendly with each other as ever, but still, something was off. They didn’t appear to be as close, separating themselves from each other both physically and emotionally. The change made Ginny cautiously hopeful.
When he’d left on his adventures with Ron and Hermione, Ginny had been worried about Harry meeting up with some wandering Veela. It never occurred to her that the real threats for Harry’s affections were the companions he chose to take with him: her brother and one of her closest friends. At first, she was angry, hurt by what she saw happening between them. But in the end, she knew she couldn’t deny Ron and Hermione. Harry belonged to them. He always had.
He was The Boy Who Lived, the hero of the Wizarding world, The Chosen One. He belonged to everyone, to all of them. They had all claimed a piece of him. Ginny just wished that a piece of him still belong to her, too, but he had closed himself off to her that day at Ron’s birthday party, and she didn’t know why, what she'd done wrong.
She knew she might always have to share him. She’d accepted that. But selfishly, she wanted the best part of him. She wanted his heart, wholly and completely. She might be jealous of the others, but she could’ve lived with it, she told herself. She’d take whatever he could offer her as long as he gave his heart only to her. Sometimes, she thought she might still have it in the way he looked at her, but he wouldn’t let her get near him, shying away from her slightest touch. His rejection stung, but she couldn’t walk away from him or stop trying. She was still hopelessly in love with him. So she kept waiting.
Ginny had waited for him to come back to her since the first time she saw him at ten years old as he boarded a train for Hogwarts and left her standing on the platform holding her mother’s hand. Of course, at ten, she’d only been infatuated with The Boy Who Lived. Now she was in love with Harry, the man she’d come to know. Not The Chosen One, not the hero, but the quiet, selfless, stubborn, troubled man.
The Harry she knew before he left with Ron and Hermione had been emotionally starved, socially awkward, sometimes moody and quick to temper, reckless, impulsive, and thick as a post when it came to girls. But he was also brave and loyal, shy and modest, with a quirky sense of humor. A risk taker, and a rule breaker, Ginny had loved him for all those traits. She’d tried to offer up a defense against him, but there simply wasn’t one. There never had been. Not for anyone who’d ever met him, certainly not for her.
The Harry that had come back after the war was much different, yet still the same, too, in so many ways. Just not with her. He was almost a stranger, emotionally at least. He was much darker, much more introverted and even more nervous around her, not allowing her to get too near him. But whatever his flaws, whatever his burdens, she would always love him, always wait for him to come back to her in the end, even when that dream had seemed hopeless.
When she saw him lying lifeless in Hagrid’s arms, her heart had shattered. She thought her long waiting was finally over, the dream cruelly ended. Sure that she would never again see him walking back towards her. But the wait wasn’t over. And then she’d endured watching him walk past her to Ron and Hermione day after day, leaving her to stare after him again and again this past year.
Then suddenly, when she thought their last school year would come to an end, and they would go their separate ways forever, he walked up to her in the library and asked her out. And she couldn’t have been more shocked to see him, or any less prepared for it than she had when he’d appeared out of the blue one morning at the Burrow the summer before her first year at Hogwarts. Struck just as dumb as if she were still eleven years old again, Ginny couldn’t have made a bigger fool of herself than if she’d stuck her elbow in another stick of butter in front of him.
Luckily for her, he’d been just as nervous. But it was nothing compared to how nervous she felt the day of the ball. It was their first official date, she supposed, even if perhaps they were going just as friends. Ginny wanted it to be perfect, terrified that something would go wrong and ruin it, sending him fleeing from her, once again.
All the Hogwarts staff (with the exception of Bill, who was with Fleur and their newborn daughter Victorie, who’d been born that very morning), the students, their family members, Ministry employees, former Order members and Hogsmeade residents were in attendance. The castle was wall to wall wizards and witches all dressed in their finest.
“You look amazing,” Harry had told her, staring wide-eyed at her as she came down the stairs from the girl’s dormitories.
Ginny had chosen a gown of emerald green to match his eyes, which also complimented her hair, and Harry wore tailored dress robes of the deepest charcoal grey. Both wore their Order of Merlin medals around their necks at the request of the Ministry, Harry with great reluctance. Hers sat just below her collar bone, accentuating the cut of her gown as the round gold medallion rested on the slight swell of her breasts with just a hint of cleavage peeking over the top of the fabric.
“And you look more handsome than ever,” she replied. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill a few people myself today to keep the horde of witches off you. I hope I can do it without completely destroying my hair. It took me hours to get it this way.”
Harry chuckled. “Well, I’ll try to steer us clear of them, then. I’d hate to see that masterpiece destroyed.”
“Do you like it?” she asked nervously. Her hair was braided in multiple strands so that it felt like she had hundreds of individual plaits in varying widths covering her head. It had been pulled up off her neck, woven into an intricate chignon at the base of her head with long strands of her flame red hair loosely curled to frame her face.
“I think I like it best when it’s down and flowing over your shoulders with you in a faded t-shirt and jeans, like at the Burrow, but you do look amazing. It was well worth the effort.”
Reaching the bottom step, Ginny stood eye to eye with him. Something about the look on his face made her think she was seeing the Harry of old again, and she relaxed at last. There was no fear or panic in his eyes, just emerald green orbs staring calmly into hers. Smiling, she reached up to brush a piece of lint off his shoulder and was pleased to see that he held his ground and didn’t flinch away from her touch.
“And I like you best at the Burrow, too, with drool on your shirt and tiny sticky smudge marks on your glasses, holding a fat little baby and looking happy and content. Not nervous and uncomfortable like I know you’re probably going to be today, but you still look ridiculously great right now.”
“Hopefully more great than ridiculous,” he quipped dryly.
“That remains to be seen,” she replied, lips quirking as she took his arm. “No pressure though.”
“I’ll do my best not to embarrass you, then,” Harry said soberly, though he was fighting a grin.
“Oh, you could never embarrass me, Harry. I have Ron for that.”
Snorting softly, Harry led her to the portrait hole.
The anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts was proclaimed a school holiday, dedicated to the remembrance of all who’d lost their lives to protect the school. In all, it was a beautiful and somber affair. The afternoon was devoted to speechmaking and the placing of a commemorative statue in the courtyard. Made of bronze and life size, it depicted a fallen wizard, his head in the lap of a female student who was looking down at him, a hand at his face as if stroking his head to comfort him. A third wizard was standing over them, wand raised in his right hand, his face tilted to the sky with his other hand at the girl’s shoulder. A Centaur stood behind them, shielding them with his long, powerful body, bow strung with an arrow and raised facing the left, and on the girls other side stood a fierce house elf, clutching a knife in his raised fist, poised to strike. It gave Ginny chills to see it, bringing back the terrible memories of that night when she’d fled from her own grief at Fred’s death to sit, almost in that same pose, comforting the injured and dying in the reprieve between battles. That girl could be her, was her in that moment.
A plaque at the feet of the standing wizard listed the names of all those persons and magical creatures who had fallen in defense of the school. Ginny read them all, feeling a twinge of pain for every name she recognized, including her own brother’s. God, she missed him. A year on and it still hadn’t gotten any easier to think about Fred.
Harry slid his hand into hers when the emotion of it hit her. It was so uncharacteristic of him these days, so much like the old Harry he used to be. She squeezed back gratefully, but did not look at him, afraid he might let go.
A formal dinner in the Great Hall was planned for the evening followed by dancing and finally, a fireworks display at midnight provided by Weasley’s Wizard Weezes, which lasted for the duration of the time of the short second wave of battle. Sparks showered down on them like the rain of spells that fell over the Hogwarts grounds that night. It told the story of the battle, the magical fireworks forming into huge giants and then spiders, the night sky a riot of colored filled with sparks and loud explosions.
But then, all went quiet suddenly, they sky going dark as the smoke cleared, symbolizing the cease fire between the first and second battle, and to Ginny, Harry’s sacrifice and death. Then after a full minute of silence, the sky exploded again into the sorting hat for a moment before it burst into flames. Several people nearby her jumped or shrieked in surprise. Then it morphed into a large snake, whose head was sliced off by a sparkling silver sword, drawing a loud cheer of, “NEVILLE!” from the excited crowd watching below.
Neville stood a short distance from her beside his proud grandmother in her vulture topped hat. Ginny couldn’t help but turn to look at him with pride, like so many others. He looked horribly embarrassed by the accolades and the hearty slaps on his back he was receiving from those around him. Even in the darkness, Ginny could see his face glowing red. Looking at Harry then, Ginny found him grinning at her. She beamed back a moment before returning her eyes to the night sky, which was filled once more with images and sounds. She saw Centaurs, their golden arrows falling from the sky, each blossoming into a fierce, knife-wielding house elf, which drew an appreciative whoop from Ron, who was standing directly behind her.
It concluded with the moment Tom Riddle fell, finishing with an explosion of green sparks that formed the dark mark high in the sky, drawing gasps from the watching crowd. But before anyone could panic, it was pierced by a lightning bolt of red, which sent the crowd screaming again in wild jubilation.
“Oh, Christ!” Harry moaned into her ear, bending down to hide from the eyes of the searching crowd, afraid, perhaps, of being stampeded by a mob of adoring fans who’d been whipped into a frenzy. “Overdoing this thing a bit, isn’t he? I’m going to kill George!”
Ginny chuckled, but didn’t reply. Then Ron thumped him hard on the back of the head and Harry turned, scowling at him a moment before straightened back up. He rubbed the spot furiously as Hermione scolded Ron.
Her brother was still a giant prat, but he did look very handsome this evening. His dress robes were navy blue, the color of his own eyes, but what really set off his look was the beautiful accessory he had on his arm. Hermione looked simply stunning in robes of glowing copper, which complimented her gorgeous skin tone, the cut of the gown accentuating her tiny waist. Her auburn hair was done up in a loose bun with curls spilling out of it and down her slender neck.
It was no wonder that she’d captured both Ron and Harry, Ginny thought with a pang of jealousy. Hermione was both beautiful and smart, and while Ginny was not usually insecure about her looks or her brains, as radiant as Hermione looked tonight, she felt like she couldn’t compete.
The dark mark was being consumed by gold flames now, and she turned her attention back to it. Finally, Voldemort’s ruined mark was swallowed up by a magnificent glittering Phoenix, which soared through the sky over the grounds. It was a symbol of Dumbledore, but also of Harry, though very few people knew that. Singing a beautiful victory song, it circled the dark silhouette of Hogwarts castle, whose lights came on, illuminating every window as it passed before soaring over the lake and fading into darkness. Its blinding brilliance was burned into Ginny’s retinas, glowing red in her vision every time she blinked, lingering like the battle lingered in everyone’s hearts and minds. It was a truly spectacular display. George and Percy had outdone themselves, she thought.
“DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY!” Neville suddenly shouted into the reverent silence, thrusting his lit wand into the air triumphantly with his rallying battle cry.
The crowd responded, answering the call, and hundreds of wands were silently raised into the air, each tip aglow. Ginny’s heart swelled into her throat as she lifted her wand with them, and Harry beside her, did likewise. It looked like a sea of tiny stars had fallen from the sky and filled the courtyard. Then the crowd began to clap and then cheer, roaring as it built, the sound beating against Ginny’s eardrums. She clapped so hard that her hands stung, her eyes brimming with tears as she cheered.
Everyone gathered in the Great Hall after that and milled about or danced into the wee hours of the morning. Ginny and Harry finally went up to bed at about two o’clock. Ginny didn’t want the night to end, but her feet were aching. Slipping a loose strand of her hair between his fingers, Harry leaned down and gave her a goodnight kiss on the cheek at the foot of the stairs to the girl’s dormitories.
“Thank you for coming with me today, Ginny,” he whispered, gripping her hand in his. It was so warm against her skin.
“It was my pleasure, Harry.”
“Tomorrow…” He swallowed, and then tried again. “Tomorrow, if you want to, I’d like to sit down with you somewhere private and talk. I have some things I need to tell you.”
“I’d like that,” she agreed.
Bringing out a worn leather journal with them the next day, Harry sat her down under a tree by the edge of the lake. Ginny sat facing him in silence while he worked up his courage to speak. Finally, he looked solemnly into her eyes and began to roll up his sleeves, revealing to her, inch by inch, the terrible scars on his wrists that extended up the length of one arm. Tears filled her eyes at the shame she saw in his. Reaching out a tentative hand, she ran her thumb over the raised pink slash mark across his wrist that she’d only ever seen glimpses of before, yet she could not fathom the full extent as her eyes traveled up the crooked scar on his left arm almost to his elbow.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
Harry swallowed hard. Opening his mouth, he made several tries to form words. “Sorry… I… I’m dizzy,” he mumbled shakily. “This is really hard for me.” Then he took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before blowing it out as she nodded in understanding. Nervously stroking the cover of the journal once for strength, Harry slid from the back pages two envelopes addressed to him in her handwriting.
“I read your letters, Ginny. I read them over and over, but I couldn’t respond. I never would’ve been able to finish what I had to do if I had. But I’ve finished now, and finally recovered enough to give you my reply.” Looking up into her face, he held her gaze for a moment before he looked back down at his hands again. Taking another deep breath, he let it out slowly. “I… I want to come back to you, finally. I want to try again, if you’ll have me.”
Ginny’s heart swelled with happiness at those long awaited words that she'd feared would never come from him. Harry glanced up at her and she nodded her head, opening her mouth to speak, but Harry held up his hand to silence her.
“Please, wait. I want to be with you so badly, but I’m not the person I was before, Ginny. I’ll never be able to be that Harry again, and I need you to understand that. I have to tell you the truth about me, about what happened to me, and what I’ve done. Then you can decide if you still want to be with me, knowing the person I am now.”
“I still love you,” she whispered. She reached out for him, but he pulled his hand back.
“You may think you do. But you don’t know me anymore, Ginny,” he said sadly. “And you may not want to after I tell you. I’ll understand if you don’t.”
She nodded again, mutely, and he began to tell her about all that had happened after she’d last seen him after the wedding.
“The day Bill and Fleur’s got married, Ron, Hermione and I started on a long journey, a secret mission that Dumbledore had left for me. We couldn’t tell anybody then, but we were searching for Tom’s Horcruxes,” he began quietly.
He clutched the book in his lap like a protective talisman while he spoke and squeezed it as his hands began to shake when he got to the part about their capture. In a flat tone, he told her the unvarnished truth about the torture Lucius and the other Death Eaters had put him through, then about what Bellatrix and Rudolphus had done to him, and then Macnair and Rowle and Greyback. Then he told her about Snape and his attempt to save Harry, and about Harry saving him. Finally, looking terrified, his voice tremulous and shameful, he’d described what Bellatrix had made him do to Hermione.
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he recounted his awful tale, and Ginny cried for him, for all the things he’d given up or had stolen from him by Tom and his followers.
Wiping at his face, he then spoke of their escape and what he’d been driven to do to himself to end his grief, and about how Ron, Hermione, Madame Pomfrey, and Dobby, had nursed him back to heath, and then about Lupin’s revenge on Greyback. He told her about her parent’s visits, and then tried to describe to her how he’d felt seeing her at Ron’s birthday party, how hard it was to leave her again, and why he felt he had to.
“I did punch Ron for that,” he admitted in a moment of nervous levity. “You warned him in that Howler you sent that you would fatten his lip for him if he wasn’t already sporting one the next time you saw him. I did my best, but as you saw, I was pretty pathetic that night. I could barely stand on my own, still much too weak to do any real damage. In fact, I think I might have passed out right afterwards.”
“Well, you probably should have left him to me, but I’m sure you gave it you’re best effort,” she replied weakly.
The corners of his lips twitched up briefly before he went solemn again. He still had more to tell her.
Next, he explained about meeting Snape in the woods, and Draco on the muggle train. He told her about Ron finding out about him cutting himself, and then seeing Rowle and Bellatrix again in Diagon Alley. He admitted to her that he’d killed Rowle and described his assault on Bellatrix and of Pettigrew’s strangling of Ron. Then he explained how Hermione had rescued Dean, Luna, Mr. Ollivander, and Griphook, how Dobby died rescuing them, and how Ron and Hermione had stopped his second attempt to kill himself.
Then, finally, he confessed the details of the relationship that had developed between him and Ron and Hermione, which Ginny had suspected. You couldn’t watch the three of them as closely as Ginny had watched them and not see it, no matter how hard they tried to hide it or how subtle they were in their public dealings with each other. Still, it hurt to hear the truth from his own mouth, his admission stripping away the doubt she’d clung to about the true depth of their relationship.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I fought it like hell, Ginny. I really did. But then I just couldn’t anymore… not after Dobby.”
“Why did you fight it?” she asked quietly.
“Because I was still in love with you,” he admitted in a trembling voice, his eyes on his lap, unable to look at her. “I always have been, Ginny. But I needed them so badly, and I loved them deeply. I wouldn’t be here without them. They stayed with me when they shouldn’t have, helped me when I couldn’t help myself. Even after everything I’d done, they forgave me. Even as messed up as I was, they still loved me and wanted to take care of me… to be with me, to heal me, and help me see this thing through to the end.”
“Do you still love them, Harry?”
“Yes, of course. I always will, but I never stopped loving you.”
“And are you still seeing them?”
“No. I ended it once… once I was finally strong enough to stand on my own. I would never try to bring you into that. That’s why I couldn’t bear to be near you… why I was so distant.”
Ginny’s heart ached. He would not come to her, would not give himself to her until she was the only one, until he’d stopped having relations with anyone else. The bravery it took to confess his soul, to unburden himself and open up to her about all he’d done and suffered over the last year. It made Ginny love him all the more. She would forgive him anything, and deny him nothing, ever, as long as she lived.
“That’s good because that would be awfully crowded,” she replied, slipping her hand in his at last.
He looked into her eyes questioningly.
“And I don’t want there to be anything in between you and me, Harry,” she whispered. “Not ever.”
“You… you still want to be with me?” he asked, in stunned disbelief. “Even after everything I’ve told you, after everything I’ve done?”
“I’m hopelessly in love with you. And you’ve been so far away, Harry, for far too long now.”
“I have no words, Ginny… I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he whispered tremulously as she leaned into him to capture his lips, at last.
“There is nothing to forgive, Harry.”
“I don’t deserve you,” he breathed against her lips. Then his hand slid around her back to pull her against him while the other slipped into her hair to cup her head as he kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on to his trembling body, hoping he’d never let go.
He deserved so much more than her, she thought, so much more than anyone could ever give him. The trauma’s he’d suffered, the childhood that was taken from him, it was an injustice so great that Tom’s death didn’t come close to compensating for it. No amount of gold added to his vault or medals awarded him would make up for that, or repair the damage done to him. The wizarding world owed him so much more than that. They had their lives back at the cost of this one boy, who’d been shattered in the process.
For Ginny, that’s what it came down to. She wanted the rest of his life to be long and full of happiness. She wanted to watch his hair turn white and laugh lines to grow deep around his mouth and eyes. She wanted the life he’d given back to everyone, be one he wanted to live in, too. She wanted to spend the next hundred years of her life erasing the trauma from the first eighteen of his.
“You’re so handsome,” she told him wistfully, stroking his face.
“Please, you haven’t seen me, yet,” he said, gesturing to his arms. “This is just the beginning, and it’s even worse on the inside, I promise you. I’m a lot better than I was, but I’m still completely fucked up, Ginny. And I’m not kidding. My body looks like the result of some mad scientist’s experiment gone horribly wrong. Plus, with the career I’m choosing, I’ll likely end up looking like Mad Eye in the end.”
“What do zese scars mean to me?” she asked, in her worst imitation of Fleur. “All ze mean is zat my beloved is brave!”
Harry smiled. “And you’re beautiful enough for ze both of us, I zink.”
“Well, while we work on healing the ones inside you, then, I’ll look forward to getting to know you again while you reveal the rest of those on the outside to me one at a time.”
He went red. It was so damned beautiful.
“Are you sure, Ginny? I mean…You have no idea what you’re getting into, here. Maybe you should take some time to fully digest everything I’ve said and consider this more carefully.”
“Are you trying to scare me off?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“No,” he argued, shaking his head vehemently. “I’m trying to warn you, is all. I want you to truly understand what you're taking on. I’m a mess at the best of times, Ginny. But at least one week a month I’m going to go completely berserk, you know. I get moody and irritable—”
“I do, too,” she replied, cutting him off. “So that’s the first thing we have in common. Let’s just hope our time of the month doesn’t coincide, or we’ll likely injure each other with our tantrum throwing.”
Harry’s eyes widened in surprise. Then his face flushed and his mouth split into a lopsided grin before he snorted in amusement.
“But I’m warning you now, as well,” she added, pointing a finger at him sternly, which made the grin slide off his face. “If you get too unruly, I’ll ship you off to Bill’s so you two can howl at the moon together and leave the rest of us in peace. If Fleur has any of her more vicious ancestral Veela traits, I’m sure she can handle both of you werewolf pretenders without even breaking a sweat. And if she can’t, I’ll send along my mum to sort you out!”
Harry gaped at her for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. “Werewolf pretenders?” he questioned weakly after a few moments. Still chuckling, he wiped at his eyes before sighing and pulling her against him again. “God, I’ve missed you so much, Ginny.”
They sat together quietly for a few minutes. Ginny rested her head on his shoulder with her arms around his waist while he stroked her hair before he finally spoke again. “There’s more,” he whispered.
“Maybe it can wait for another time, Harry,” she told him. “I’ve had my fill of revelations for one day, I think. Nothing you could possibly say will change how I feel about you.”
“Are you sure?” he asked tentatively. “Because it’s about me and Draco Malfoy.”
“Oh, God!” Ginny groaned, burying her face in his neck. “Tell me,” she said with a resigned sigh.
Several hours later, after darkness had fallen, they returned to the common room hand in hand. Hermione and Ron looked up from their places in front of the fire, obviously waiting for them. Ginny caught Hermione’s eye and after a moment, smiled at her. Hermione returned a watery smile back and gave her head a small nervous nod. It was as close as they came to speaking about it for many years. The silent exchange was an acknowledgement of the truth and an acceptance of an apology, even forgiveness.
“You two missed dinner, and I don’t know how he knows, but Kreacher brought you up some sandwiches, Harry,” Ron said in greeting, pointing at a plate covered with a tea towel on one of the small tables.
“Blimey! I can’t ever get away with anything,” Harry grumbled in exasperation, but he looked pleased all the same. “How many are left?” he asked, walking over to retrieve it as Ginny settled herself on the couch.
“All of them,” Ron answered irritably. “Hermione wouldn’t let me touch them.”
“For heaven’s sake, Ron. You’d just eaten!” Hermione said incredulously.

The day of their graduation, the four of them were again sitting around in the common room in freshly pressed robes while proud family members milled about in the courtyard where chairs were being placed in rows for the ceremony. An hour later, they were lined up in procession with Ron behind her and Harry several heads in front. Ginny couldn’t believe they were here, that they’d finally made it. She was near the foot of the stairs when Harry walked across the platform and up to all the Professors standing on the stage, who clapped along with the crowd for him when his name was called. They all offered him their congratulations as he shook hands with each of them as he passed.
He paused at Bill who put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, breaking protocol by forgoing the handshake to pull Harry into him for a hug. He’d done the same with Hermione and Luna, and would likely continue with Dean as well. It was a precursor to what she and Ron were likely to receive on their turn.
Hagrid was weeping openly by the time Harry stood in front of him, and this time, it was Harry who broke protocol. Jumping up, he flung his arms around Hagrid’s neck and kissed the startled half-giant on the cheek, which caused an absolute uproar of cheering from the watching crowd. The imagery was a powerful reminder to everyone who’d witnessed those moments when Hagrid had carried Harry's body from the forest and then again when Harry had clung to Hagrid after Voldemort’s downfall. Ginny heard her own mother’s wailing sob over the crowd as Hagrid laughed and mussed Harry’s hair before putting him down.
Harry was still grinning hugely by the time he’d taken the steps up to the podium where the Headmistress stood waiting for him to hand him his diploma. Behind him, Ginny saw tears streaming down Hermione’s face as she looked on, standing on the stage with the rest of her classmates next to Luna, who was patting her hand consolingly.
“Harry James Potter, it is my great pleasure to present you with your diploma and to congratulate you on the successful completion of your wizarding education at Hogwarts with distinction,” McGonagall announced in a ringing voice.
“Thank you, Headmistress,” Harry replied shyly.
“The recitation of all your many awards for services to this school and its students is almost as long as the list of your transgressions since you first began residing within it,” she went on to the delight of the crowd, yet Ginny had never seen McGonagall work so hard to control her emotions and the trembling of her voice. “Suffice it to say that the students thank you, the staff thanks you, Hogwarts thanks you, and I thank you.”
She gave him a tremulous smile before handing Harry the rolled sheaf of parchment tied with a purple ribbon. Then they formally shook hands, before she pulled back and unexpectedly cupped his face. The crowd had gone completely silent again, and Harry stood perfectly still with his arms down at his sides, his face registering surprise and uncertainty.
“Madame Pomfrey bids me tell you that she will be glad to finally be able to give your bed in the infirmary to another needy student, Mr. Potter. She also asks me to give you this,” she added, leaning in to kiss Harry on the forehead.
He flushed with embarrassment as Ron wolf whistled, and the assembled spectators chuckled appreciatively. Then Harry looked over to where Madame Pomfrey was standing off to the side with the other Hogwarts staff, like Filch and Madame Pince, who were not instructors. She had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling at Harry, and he smiled warmly back.
“Then please tell her for me, that I will gladly relinquish it if she promises to continue to make house calls for her favorite patient. I’ll have the tea waiting.”
“I will,” McGonagall agreed with a pleased nod. “Hogwarts will miss you, Harry. I will miss you,” she confessed.
“And I’ll miss Hogwarts. It’s always been my home,” he told her earnestly.
“Perhaps one day you will return, then. I believe Professor Weasley is saving you a spot. Between you and me, defense was never his strongest subject,” she told him in a stage whisper. “I think he has his eye on Professor Flitwick’s job, someday. Bill always was a top student in Charms.”
“Well, thank you for the offer. Perhaps one day I will, then, should you ever have a vacancy and I tire of being an Auror,” Harry replied. Bowing to her then, he quickly kissed her hand. He then turned on his heels and took his place among his classmates to wait for the others.
“Show off,” Ron muttered behind her.
Ginny smiled.

“You steal my breath away,” Harry told her, looking up at her as they lay on a blanket, hidden in the tall grass of the orchard behind the Burrow on a sunny afternoon in early August, just days after Harry’s nineteenth birthday.
“That’s all right because you’ve taken mine,” she replied. “So you’ll just have to stay right here with me, and we’ll keep breathing for each other.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you anymore.”
But they would be leaving each other, and soon; Harry with Ron to begin their Auror training, and she to fall training camp for the Holy Head Harpies. Harry was staying at the Burrow now, though, having taken over Bill and Charlie’s old room, and Ginny planned to be back every weekend to see him, so she wasn’t worried.
He could have moved back into Grimmauld Place or even to a flat in London after graduation, but instead, he’s asked Ginny’s parents if he could pay room and board and move in with them, bringing along Kreacher. Her parents had balked at the idea of him paying, but he insisted on it as part of the deal. Her mother was so desperate to have Harry within coddling distance that they reluctantly agreed after ruthlessly haggling him down on the rent price.
Hermione moved back in with her own parents after graduation, but spent nearly as much time here as there to be with Ron, who had returned to his attic bedroom. George had moved back in, too, after the war because he couldn’t bear to live alone without Fred. Percy had also returned. Ginny’s three brothers, along with Harry, made so much racket helping to invent or test some new product sometimes, that it felt like all her siblings were back under one roof again.
Bill and Fleur were there almost every weekend, too, with Ginny’s gorgeous niece, Victorie, and Teddy, who was toddling now, was an every weekend regular. The smiling child could be found, under the watchful eye of his godfather, scaring Crookshanks out of the house as he skimmed along on his toy broomstick Harry had bought him for his birthday. Hermione left the clever feline at the Burrow because he so enjoyed chasing the garden gnomes, which helped keep the population under control.
In all, things were back to their normal chaos. Just the way Ginny liked it. Their lives were crazy, but she felt good about where they all were in them. In this lunatic world, normal (no matter how it happened to be defined) wasn’t a bad thing at all.
Harry pulled her down onto him, and her hair slid from her shoulders to spill all around his face when their lips met, hiding them like the curtains of his four poster. He looked enraptured staring up into her face when they broke apart. As if he’d never seen anything like her in his life, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, and how was she supposed to defend against that anyway? It was so utterly and completely Harry to think he had such a prize when he could have any witch or wizard he wanted. But he was Harry, and he simply never thought that way. It never crossed his mind, probably wouldn’t even believe it if they were all parading around nude in front of him, and some of them had attempted it!
God, he was handsome, staring up at her with those ridiculously beautiful eyes of his. Eyes that had captured her attention as a ten-year old child standing on a train platform, eyes that made her write horrible prose to be sung to him in a valentine card at eleven. Eyes that, even now, could melt her with a glance, could express everything he was feeling, the depths of his emotions reflected in those emerald pools.
“Oi! There you are.”
There was a whooshing sound from above them. Ginny squinted up into the sunlight as she rolled off of Harry’s chest.
“I’ve been looking all over for you two. You want a game of Quidditch?” Ron called down to them.
“Ronald!” she shouted back up at him, picking up a rock and hurling it at him furiously, but missing as he swerved his broom out of the way. “No I do not. You prat!”
“Come on,” Ron whined. “Stop molesting each other. Bill and Charlie are here, and it’s a beautiful day. Don’t waste it.”
“I wasn’t wasting it!” she growled outraged.
But Harry was already getting to his feet. Chuckling, he held out a hand to help her up. “He won’t stop pestering us, you know. We might as well. Besides, you can pay him back by pummeling him with goals,” Harry consoled her.
“I’m going to plant one right between his eyes and wipe that stupid smirk off his face,” she grumbled irritably.
“Don’t you mean in the eyeball?” Harry questioned innocently, a smile curling his lips.
She glared at him ruefully. “What has that troll of a brother of mine been telling you?”
“Nothing,” Harry said, arms raised in surrender as she scowled at him.
“Liar,” she accused.
“He just said that you sometimes make bizarrely specific threats when you’re angry,” Harry admitted when she continued to glower up at him.
Unable to help herself, Ginny chuckled as she got to her feet and slid her arm through his. Then she started up a loud chorus of ‘Weasley is our King’ for Ron’s benefit as they made their way back to the Burrow, thinking she might slip some U-No-Poo into Ron’s evening tea for good measure or maybe force him to chew a whole pack of Gum-Glue to cement his mouth closed. The complete git!
She’d bought Harry a new racing broom with some of the money from her signing bonus with the Harpies because he’d never replaced his Firebolt from Sirius. He’d argued vehemently against keeping it, but she’d stubbornly refused to return it, lying and saying that she’d gotten a great team discount, and finally, he relented.
He ran ahead of her to collect their brooms from the shed, but turned back to look at her when he’d reached the door. Smiling at her, he turned again, pushed open the door, and disappeared inside it while she waited for him to return.
She’d spent half her life watching him walk away from her, but he’d finally found his way back, found her waiting for him as she always would, forever. In the end, it was him waiting for her. He waited anxiously for her to return on the weekends to visit, bouncing on the balls of his feet, grinning at the door to the Burrow as she ran up the lane to meet him, broom slung over her shoulder. And he waited nervously for her now at the end of a flower petal strewn path as her father escorted her down the aisle.
Harry, as always, looked ridiculously handsome standing there in his dark suit, a hand at Teddy’s shoulder to attempt to control his giggling godson who was batting away flower petals that Victorie was tossing at him. They both looked adorable in their lovely wedding attire. Five year old Teddy in a tiny dark suit with hair and eyes that matched Harry’s, and Ginny’s four year old niece in a pale green, tea length gown with her strawberry blond hair pulled up like her mother’s.
Ron, George, Bill, Neville and Dean, (with whom Harry had grown extremely close during their last year at Hogwarts), flanked Harry in matching dark suits at the front of the crowded rows of guests, and Ginny’s bridesmaids; Hermione, Luna, Fleur, Angelina, and Gabriel wore the same soft green of the adorable flower girl. Ron and Hermione were returning the favor of being their best man and matron of honor when she and Harry had fulfilled the same roles at their wedding on Valentine’s Day the year before.
On the day that Harry had completed his Auror training, he had asked her to marry him in the kitchen of the Burrow in front of her whole family, who were gathered there, she thought, to celebrate Ron and Harry’s graduation from the academy. Ginny’s mother had jumped up and practically shouted ‘Yes’ before Ginny could even comprehend what was happening when she saw him get down on one knee and pull something from his pocket.
When Ginny did accept, Hermione burst into tears, naturally, and her father (who Harry had consulted privately before asking her) had been forced to hold his wife back to keep her from rushing into Harry’s arms ahead of Ginny. Soon enough however, her mother had her opportunity to hug her new son, whom she’d been desperate to claim since he was eleven. Sobbing, she’d engulfed him in a bone crushing embrace, planting kisses on his cheek, which Harry accepted with good humor.
While Harry was being hugged then by her father and pounded on the back by George, Ron leaned down and whispered into her ear. “He’s the only man who’s ever been good enough for you, you know.”
Touched and stunned by his words, she turned to look up at him in surprise, and he hugged her fiercely.
“And you’re the only woman good enough for him. Take care of him, Gin. He’s awfully special.”
Eyes watering, she kissed his cheek. “I will, Ron. The best I can. I swear it.”
He nodded, blinking furiously before clearing his throat. “Yeah, well. Don’t tell him I said he was special, okay?”
“I’ll take it to the grave,” she promised solemnly.
Harry’s cousin Dudley, whom Ginny had met only once previously, attended the wedding and chose to bring his mother as his guest, though she looked quite unsure if she wanted to be there or not. Ginny had never met Petunia before, and she and Harry were both quite shocked that she’d come. While Dudley was much more relaxed in the company of so many witches and wizards, he stuck close to her side, possibly because of the grip she kept on his arm. The only people Dudley made sure to steer well clear of were Hagrid, and George, which was only to be expected. They found his relatives at the reception sitting near Hermione’s parents, who were clearly the only other muggles at the wedding.
“Dudley!” Harry greeted his cousin happily with a handshake and a pat on the shoulder. “I’m so glad you could come, though I’ll have to say, this is a surprise.” He nodded cordially to the companion glued to his side. “Aunt Petunia.”
“She wanted to come,” Dudley explained with a shrug.
“Well, I…” she began, but then pursed her lips, looking around nervously.
“This is my wife, Ginerva Molly Potter,” Harry introduced them proudly, saving his Aunt the embarrassment of trying to explain any further.
“It’s Ginny,” Ginny corrected, throwing Harry a scathing look.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Petunia said quietly, taking Ginny’s hand with her own bony one. “It was a lovely ceremony,” she added politely.
“Thank you.”
“Would either of you like some wine?” Harry asked, gesturing to the bar where Abeforth was holding court with Dean and Neville.
“Do they have any of that butterbeer?” Dudley asked hopefully.
“I’m sure they do,” Harry assured him, grinning.
Dudley extricated himself from his mother then and walked eagerly up to the bar, leaving Petunia standing awkwardly with her nephew and his new wife. Teddy came scampering up just then, pursued by Victorie. He circled Harry’s legs once, arms raised, in unspoken request while he squealed with laughter. By the second lap around his godfather, Harry had grasped his wrists and swung him up onto his hip.
Petunia’s eyes widened as she stared at the child whose sweaty red face Harry was mopping with a handkerchief from his pocket.
“Come say hello, Teddy. This is my Aunt, Petunia.”
“Hullo,” Teddy replied politely, though somewhat distractedly as he was kicking at Victorie’s hands, which were trying to tug him down by his feet.
“Dudley never told me you had a son,” Petunia said in surprise.
“I don’t,” Harry replied, smirking in amusement. “Teddy’s my godson. I don’t know if you remember meeting his father, Remus Lupin. He was a good friend of my mum and dad.”
“My daddy was a wea’woof,” Teddy announced proudly.
“Yes, he was,” Harry agreed, grinning at Teddy and ruffling his hair. “The very best werewolf there ever was.”
“Rraaawwrr,” Teddy growled, curling his fingers as if they were claws at an alarmed looking Petunia. But then she shook her head in confusion.
“But… he looks remarkably similar to you.”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s just for the moment, I’m sure. Next time you see him, he’ll probably be sporting green hair and black eyes, instead.”
Petunia stared at Harry quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“Show her what you can do, Teddy,” Harry prompted with a smile.
Teddy looked up at Petunia, then wrinkled his nose in concentration and turned his hair and eyes the same color as Ginny’s. Petunia gave a little shriek of horrified surprise as Teddy grinned at her.
“Teddy is a Metamorphmagus. It means he can change his appearance at will,” Harry explained.
“Cool,” Dudley commented, sounding impressed as he returned to them with a mug of butterbeer for himself and a glass of wine for his mother, who took it from him gratefully, clutching it in her claw-like hands for support.
“It’s a rare gift. He gets it from his mother, Tonks. You met her once, too, at the train station. She was the one with the pink hair. Tonks was a brilliant witch and a great Auror.”
“Was?” Petunia asked.
“Yeah, both of his parents. My godson and I have a bit in common in that department. Teddy lives with Tonks’ mother, Andromeda, but he spends most weekends here with me and the Weasley’s. My new in-laws,” he added happily before kissing Ginny on the cheek.
“Down!” Victorie demanded, stomping her foot and frowning up at Teddy.
“No,” Teddy replied, sticking his tongue out at her and clutching Harry around the neck. “She’s twyin’ to kiss me, Hawwee!”
“Oh, no!” Ginny replied, wrinkling up her nose in disgust before grasping his little face and planting kisses all over it while he squealed in outrage.
Chuckling, Harry tugged off Teddy’s hot suit jacket and then put him down. “Go play, pup,” he said, swatting him on the bottom. “But stay close where I can see you.”
“M’kay,” Teddy agreed, though he was already scampering off, giggling again as Victorie gave chase.
“And let her catch you!” Harry called after them, smiling.
They spent their honeymoon sailing all around the world that whole summer (Harry’s gift to her) before settling into the small cottage by the sea. Aunt Muriel had invited them to live at Shell Cottage after the wedding, like Bill and Fleur before them. She and Harry had both tried to refuse the generous offer, but with no success. They adored it here, though.
Harry loved the ocean and the small cozy cottage. He loved transforming and soaring over the dark water with Zosimos at night, sometimes. Letting the current support them above the rolling waves while he sang and his familiar hooted a harmony beside him. The musical sounds wafted back to her on the salty air as she watched them from the shore, with Padfoot, their border collie, belly up beside her. He was actually Harry’s dog, given to him by Ron and Hermione on his twentieth birthday, but he was Ginny’s Animagus partner, like Zosie was for Harry. When she transformed into the fox, he would gamble along the shore beside her, barking at seagulls and chasing waves, his tongue lolling out and grinning like a loon.
Pad, or Paddy—known alternately as Paddles, Puddles, Mad-dog, Maddy, Moody, Pickles, or Bob (Ron’s nickname, of course)—was fiercely intelligent, rambunctious but gentle, and had a beautiful merle coat with one brown eye and one deep blue, like Mad-eye, which Ron said was the reason he and Hermione had chosen him.
Harry loved taking Paddy along on exploratory hikes, and building sandcastles with Teddy. He liked mucking around in the walled garden out back, and being able to tend Dobby’s grave. It had bothered him that the house had been left abandoned except for weekend getaways after Bill and Fleur moved to Hogsmeade. He loved everything about their life here at Shell Cottage.
Perhaps it would not be their permanent home. Harry occasionally talked of purchasing a place in Godric’s Hollow, and who knew, maybe someday, when they had started a family of their own, they might outgrow the three bedroom cottage. In her dreams, sometimes, Ginny pictured a dozen or so messy, ginger-haired, green-eyed little children, laughing with their father as he made their toys dance around the room for their amusement. But right now, she was content that it was just the two of them, sitting at the kitchen table in the morning sunlight, hair mussed and half dressed, sipping their morning tea.
They had Teddy every other weekend, as it was, besides Paddy and Kreacher, and she wanted a few more years with her career before they had their own children, though she could probably still play even nine-months pregnant. The Weasley named carried plenty of weight on its own since the war, but once she and Harry married and the name on her robes changed to Potter, her competitors hardly touched her for fear of her famous Auror husband angrily blasting them out of the sky. It was a reputation which was unwarranted, and embarrassed Harry, but followed him nonetheless.
Ginny slid her foot up the leg of his pajama bottoms, stroking him with her big toe while she ran a finger around the rim of her cup and watched him through the eyelashes of her half lidded eyes. Harry stared out the window at the rolling sea as if he hadn’t noticed. When her foot was nearly at his knee and wedged tightly into his trouser leg, his face finally split into a little lopsided grin. Reaching below the table, he tugged her foot out of his pajamas and pulled it onto his lap.
“We just got up. Don’t make me take you back to bed again,” he warned, the hoarse quality of his voice more pronounced, as it always was in the mornings before his damaged vocal chords got warmed up. Or maybe, it was from how much he’d used them last night. Either way, Ginny loved the sound. Slipping his fingers in between her toes, he examined his handiwork from the night before.
They’d been lounging together on the couch, Harry looking adorable as he painted her toenails. He’d changed the color to green, his tongue sticking out in concentration as he worked.
“They’re as green as a fresh pickled toad,” she remarked making reference to a long ago valentine card as she wiggled them under his nose.
Harry snorted. Then he wrote his name on her nails in gold, the ‘y’ miniscule on her pinky toenail. She had retaliated by painting his toes red and writing her name on his, laughing when he expressed concern about what his Auror mates would say if they were to see it. Crawling onto him then, she whispered that they would be more interested to see what she had planned to do with him later.
Over lunch the week before, Ginny had confessed to Hermione that she worried Harry might be missing what she could not provide him in the bedroom, though he’d never expressed anything but pure delight with their lovemaking. Still, she wanted to satisfy his every desire, to know all of him, worried that he was giving up something for her. Hermione had then embarrassedly told her about a spell she’d been working on for herself and Ron.
“There’s a device,” she’d told Ginny in a whisper. “A toy, if you will, with one half that slips inside you and the other that fits over you... um... clitoris. I’ve extended that part and charmed it to deliver the sensation to me from both ends when Ron and I use it. It’s absolutely brilliant, but a bit intense the first time. I don’t know how much Ron enjoyed it, but I was a complete mess in minutes.”
“You both still miss him, don’t you?” Ginny asked. It was the first time she’d ever broached the subject with Hermione.
“Constantly,” Hermione admitted with a sad smile. “I won't even try to lie to you about that. Harry is an exceptional man, Ginny. He's not someone you ever get over. You know that as well as I do. Everyone who has ever met him falls hopelessly and eternally in love with him. Even his enemies loved him obsessively and despised him for it. Desperate to kill the thing that made them feel so strongly, the power of his allure made them turn on each other in jealous hatred. Driven mad by their desire for him they wanted to capture him for themselves, hoping to enslave him to them so they could make him bleed for them if they couldn’t make him love them, or kill him to end their torment and ensure that no one else would have him. But Harry couldn’t give his heart to any of them, enemies or friends, because he’d already given it to someone else. What he gave us, me and Ron, instead was a gift, Ginny. He gave us each other and even gave himself to us for a little while, but his heart has always belonged to you. Always,” she said, squeezing Ginny’s hand as they both blinked back tears.
A package had arrived by owl the following day with a note inside from Hermione giving instructions on its use. Ginny had been dying to give it a try since then, but was unsure how to suggest it. The look on his face last night when she’d finally plucked up the courage to present it to him and explained its function, was hilarious.
“Just for the record, I want you to know that I am completely satisfied with our sex life as it is,” he assured her. “I don’t need anything besides you, and I don’t crave anything more than what we have. I'll admit that for a while, I was confused about my sexuality. I'd finally come to accept that I must be bisexual. But I'm only Ginny-sexual now. The only parts I’m interested in are yours. You know that, right?”
“I do,” she replied.
“Then why? Why would you think I need this?”
“I just want to please you, Harry.”
“You do! You always have. Let’s put this to bed, then.”
“I want to try, Harry. Please?” she begged, pouting at him. “Hermione said it’s wonderful.”
Harry groaned, wiping at his face in frustration before nervously looking the toy over again. “We don’t have to do this,” he whined.
“Are you afraid?” she asked, grinning at him.
“A bit, yeah,” he admitted worriedly.
Ginny kept looking pleadingly at him, but she didn’t continue to push. She watched as his eyes kept darting from hers, then back to the box, and then back to her again. Chewing his lip and wringing his hands, he finally caved.
“If I agree to this, will that satisfy you? Can we put it back in the box afterwards and never bring it back out again?”
Ginny nodded, grinning widely at getting her way. Despite his trepidation, Harry was agreeing to let her try.
“Christ! This is going to take some work to get prepared, you know. You’re going to have to be gentle with me, Ginny, unless you want to make me cry.”
“Just show me how, love,” she replied eagerly, standing up and pulling him to his feet. “No, Paddy! You stay, for now,” she added when he’d trotted up to them. Whining, he returned to his favorite spot in front of the dwindling fire and laid his head on his paws, glaring accusingly at them with his brilliant blue eye. “That’s a good boy,” she praised him. He thumped his tail in response, but still looked morose.
“You’re still going to respect me in the morning once I’ve let you have your way with me using that monstrosity, right?” he asked, as he walked ahead of her through the hallway towards the bedroom as if he were going to his doom instead.
“Mmmm hmmm,” she agreed, following. “I promise.”
“Oh, God. I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. I’m not going to have any dignity left when this is over, am I?” he remarked miserably, stripping off and crawling onto their bed before pulling the box towards him and turning the bright pink toy over in his hands to examine it while she closed the door. “And why does it have to be pink? Couldn’t she have picked a more masculine color?”
“We can change it if you’d like,” Ginny offered, stripping off her own clothes. “That’s one of the features. It also glows in the dark, vibrates, and goes from hot to cold.”
“Oh, fantastic!” he remarked sarcastically. “I don’t even want to know the details of the conversation you had with Hermione that prompted this.” He was still bemoaning her plans for him tonight, yet his eyes had darkened as he watched her undress, his body responding with enthusiasm despite his trepidation.
“No, you don’t,” she agreed, joining him on the bed when he reached for her. “I had to break a cardinal rule to never speak about sex with any of my brother’s wives.”
Sliding her hands over his shoulders as she kneeled next to him, she kissed him and he gripped her waist, his thumbs stroking her abdomen.
“But if it’s any consolation,” she continued as she pressed him back against the pillows, her hair spilling from her shoulders all around him. “I have horrible images in my head of my brother now that I can’t scrub clean as punishment. Still, if it’s anything like Hermione described, it will be worth it.”
And it had been. Hermione hadn’t been exaggerating, but if Ginny thought she would have the upper hand with Harry last night, she was badly mistaken. Harry had treated the protruding latex appendage as if it were the real thing. Demonstrating for her all his dormant skills, he brought her to her first orgasm with his mouth and tongue, then to her second by stroking it with the magic in his hands so that it took some time before she actually had the strength again to try it on him. He’d nervously talked her through how to prepare him first, but he was panting, his eyes nearly black with desire, his nipples hard and his body flushed with heat by the time she’d removed her fingers and positioned herself at his entrance. Whatever he’d said to the contrary, it was clear from his reaction that he had been missing this, or at least had the desire reawakened in him at the idea of sharing this part of himself with her.
“Slowly…” he groaned, biting down on his lip with his head thrown back so that the tendons stood out in his neck when she’d begun pushing into him. “Go slow at first, Gin. Let me get adjusted.”
She tried, but, God, he felt good because every time she sank into him, it felt like he was sinking into her, too. With every thrust she made into his body, she was thrusting into herself which left her in a state of near constant orgasm. When he’d finally joined her, she collapsed onto him in complete exhaustion unable to even move as he gathered up her sweat dampened hair and stroked her back until Padfoot had pushed open the door and clambered onto the bed with them. Snorting his displeasure, at their neglect of him and denying him his favorite spot between them, he nudged a wet nose into her side impatiently, making her squeal into Harry's ear.
Ginny considered Harry a moment, reliving the memory as she took in his features. His stubble covered chin, his sleepy eyes and tousled hair and then his bare chest, which had filled out quite nicely with the constant physical training at the Auror Academy and several years of her mother’s delicious cooking. Remembering how sexy he’d looked last night with her deep inside him, moaning as he bit his lips, matched her rhythm, and stroked himself to completion. The memory made her ache, her body flushing with arousal.
Pulling her foot out of his lap, she slid off her dressing gown and stood up. Harry groaned, his eyes darkening as they traveled over her naked body when she approached him.
“I don’t know, Harry. I think this table looks sturdy enough. We don’t have to go back to bed, unless you just want to,” she told him, coming around the table.
“My, God! You’re the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,” he whispered, staring up at her when she was standing next to him, groaning again when she straddled his thighs and settled herself in his lap. Pulling on a lock of her hair, he let it slip through his fingers, and then brushed the long strands back over her shoulders, looking just as enthralled with her as the first time they were together. He always did, as if constantly amazed that she would desire him.
She’d practically had to drag him, kicking and screaming, into her bed that first time. Honestly, it was enough to give a girl a complex. He’d resisted all her advances, and she’d been the one making the advances, throwing herself at him like some sex crazed harlot. Like the Witch Weekly fan girls that plastered his photos on the walls of their dormitories and giggled at him seductively in the corridors.
“I just don’t want to take something from you that I can’t give back. I keep waiting for you to come to your senses and leave, to get the hell away from me. That’s all,” he’d admitted in a strained voice after putting the brakes on their heavy petting one evening. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Believe me. I ache for you every time you’re near me, and all the time that you’re not.”
Of course, she understood why he was so hesitant. But she was determined. When he’d eventually agreed, and the moment occurred, he was still forced to take a shot of firewhiskey before he could relax enough to finally be with her. The encounter had been painful and awkward for both of them, hardly the romantic first time of her girlish fantasies. His experiences just wouldn’t allow it. Harry was terrified to touch her, to hurt her, shaking all over with fear.
He’d tried squeezing his eyes shut, turning away from her so he wouldn’t see the pain he was causing her as she gave her virginity to him, but she’d made him look at her. She wanted him to know who she was, that she wasn’t Bellatrix, or Hermione, that he wasn’t forcing her, that she wanted this for them, for herself. It was a terribly traumatic first time for them, both scared witless, but things improved dramatically after that.
He’d come into their lovemaking with many more skills and much more practice than she had, of course, but every new discovery for her or for him felt like the first time for both of them. He approached her every time with such wonder, almost childlike. It melted her heart to be with him. He already knew where to touch her and how to make her body respond, but they learned together how to make each other scream. He’d discovered all the secret places inside her that made her body sing for him, and she could bring him to orgasm with just her words and a single swipe of her tongue.
Last night had been another new discovery, but Ginny knew that it wouldn’t be the last. Even as they both lay recovering, Harry had changed his mind about boxing up Hermione’s gift and hiding it in the back of the closet. Instead, he suggested that she ask Hermione during their next lunch about the possibility of brewing up some Polyjuice potion so that they could see what it felt like for the other.
“Ron and Hermione are coming over today,” he protested weakly when she leaned down to kiss his neck, but his hands were already roaming over her back pulling her into him to rub his erection against her, which was tenting his pajama bottoms.
“This isn’t even fair, you know,” he hissed in her ear, that gravelly voice making her whole body tingle as he gripped her waist and suddenly lifted her onto the table as if she weighed nothing before kicking the chair aside.
“You’re right,” she purred in agreement. “We can’t just ditch them. I think they have something important to tell us.”
“Really? And what do you think that might be?” he asked absently, running his finger down her throat before leaning down to take a pearled nipple into his mouth, causing her to arch into him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as desire surged in her.
“I think you’d better prepare for your godfather duties to increase because I believe Hermione’s pregnant,” she whispered into his ear.
“Oh, my God!” he yelped, jerking back to stare at her, looking pole-axed by her words. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I do,” she said, grinning. “So we better hurry. We won’t want to miss that announcement.” Wrapping her long legs around him, she pulled him against her again. “And try to look genuinely shocked if you can, my love. You know how Ron will pout if you ruin his surprise.”

~ Fin ~

What it Comes Down To Lyrics, Isley Brothers

Here I am loving you, you’re like a dream come true

For so long I’ve waited for this time

Girl what you mean to me, in reality, is more than I ever hoped for

You will always be, more than right for me, each day I love you more

Well what it comes down to, this is all I want from you

Girl, same as you want from me, that can only be

Love and understanding

For what we have at stake, a little give and take

It’s better than demanding
- 48
- 49
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What it comes down to