Promises | By : recension Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Ginny Views: 2749 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, all characters items and worlds, do not belong to me but to WB and JK Rowling. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
If Ginny was honest with herself, her doubts had started not long after the war.
After the war, it was quite easy to sink into life with Harry. He had pushed her to finish school, he had pushed her to join the Harpies, and he had kept their relationship slow and reliable. Late at night he would whisper, "I will never let anything happen to you," against her ginger hair, hugging her gently in his arms. It was hard not to take comfort in that statement at the time. She was seventeen and so in love, truly in love, with the Boy Who Lived.
Harry preferred quiet nights, playing chess by candle light and exploring her body under the covers. For a long time she was content to share dinners surrounded by her brothers, and later, their own family. With Harry, their home was always warm and secure. Grimmauld Place scrubbed clean for a new generation and filled with Harry's promises.
All doubts Ginny had had of Harry not seeing her, the real her, were melted by his kisses and refrozen by those promises. "I will never let anything happen to you." The love she found in him as a girl simply did not grow.
Before she could see the beginnings of the cracks, she was engaged. Bundled like raw nerves in her throat was the confession that became increasingly important to say.
Hermione was making tea, and chattering about her latest project at the MLE but Ginny was miles away. Or perhaps she was present for the first time in a long time. The raw nerves erupted and she choked on the words as they bubbled up.
"I'm not in love with Harry anymore." She was breathless, and her eyes flashed to Hermione to gauge a reaction but all she saw was tea being poured, and Hermione's expressionless backside shifting to reach for the sugar bowl, carrying the tea service over with great care.
"Don't be silly, of course you do," Hermione finally managed, smiling but not brightly. On more than one occasion, Hermione had mentioned how happy she was to have a sister. A built-in girlfriend, she'd described it, though Ginny never found their relationship worked like that. "You've just got cold feet. When Ron proposed I was a wreck over thinking things. It's only natural."
Ginny took the explanation as a possibility. She had put off the engagement as long as she could–not wanting Harry's surname attached to her own, not wanting the prying eyes of press in their lives. It had been years since Harry had his name in the papers for something other than genuine achievement and they both rather liked it that way.
In hindsight, Hermione's explanation just became further evidence that the dismissal of her feelings was always first and foremost to protect Harry, and in the most twisted way she had become an object in his life even to her own family. Her emotions were so discouraged that when she found herself married to Harry it just seemed the way things would go. James followed not long after, and then all thoughts of unhappiness were paused.
The matter was complicated. Ginny loved Harry intensely. He was a compassionate man, kind and patient. The exact sort of father she wanted for her children, and her children adored him properly.
James was followed by Albus who was followed by Lily and in many ways Ginny had never been happier than she was cooking her mother's recipes and teaching her children quidditch. Listening to all the old war stories. An observer in the few years where her life had mattered, not just to others but to herself.
But Ginny, who had grown up with all the love in the world, found it difficult to match Harry in support or care. He tried so hard to give their children the life he never had. Unfortunately, it left Ginny to become the disciplinarian by default, the bad cop. Though she never mentioned it, she had always resented Harry for putting her in that position.
Her husband's arms wrapped around her as they watched Lily board the Hogwarts Express. Their youngest off on her first year of adventure. "Lily made me promise to come retrieve her if anyone is terribly mean."
"Typical," Ginny managed a smile, taking a deep breath as the train horn sounded. Lily was the clingiest of their children, and was completely and utterly her father's spoiled princess. The train began to pull out of King's Cross, and she and Harry waved in unison at all three of children until they faded from sight.
"I just told her what I always tell you," he said, kissing along Ginny's neck, breathing in the scent of deodorant and perfume as she continued to wave, "I will never let anything happen to you."
Something about the way he spoke the phrase made her ill. Something about the promise seemed immediately wrong. When she was seventeen nothing had sounded more right than to be held in someone's arms all through the night. Nothing sounded more right than the promise to be kept from harm, to be saved anytime something dark invaded her consciousness the way it had when she was young. It was more than a promise of happiness and it had meant more. With so many years having passed since the first time she had heard him utter it, the promise felt hollow and ragged.
If you promise to never let anything happen to me, then nothing will ever happen to me.
In the back of her mind, Ginny had always sensed there would be wild adventures with her and Harry. The early days of their life together–fighting evil and playing sport–felt like lifetimes ago. The most adventuresome thing they had done together in recent memory was a spontaneous shagging in the garden. It was so domestic that it pained her how common they were. The greatest wizard of his generation and his wife, getting their thrills from a shag in the garden. She had never thought this future would be hers.
She stopped letting Harry touch her soon after that. She was bored by his stories, by the way he chewed his food. It was hard not to see him as someone who had robbed her of her youth and her strength. Widening her hips and engorging her breasts with his children. Clawing onto her while they slept like she was a stuffed toy. She was suffocating in her own skin.
Harry tried to give her space as she pulled back. He claimed to understand what she was going through. He asked if she wanted him to have more hours at home. He asked if they wanted to have another child.
The sadness she had fought so hard to keep down began devouring her insides and she found herself craving solitude. She devoted herself to work, but she mostly used it as an excuse to get out of the house and to resign her childbearing. Harry, always maddeningly supportive, agreed it was for the best.
It seemed for a long while like she should accept her life as is. It seemed petty to want more out of life when she felt so grateful for many things. It seemed silly to think someone would notice her pain, or consider her feelings over her husband's.
Then again, life was full of silly things.
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