Archive of Our Own

*

In the cool entrance hall of the Burrow, Molly pressed an envelope into Ginny’s hands.

“I’ve kept these safe for Harry,” her mum said softly. “I wanted to give them to him for his birthday, but it was just so busy—“

The hair on the back of Ginny’s arms rose up; she was acutely aware of Harry, Ron, and Hermione just feet away in the living room, preparing to Floo to Grimmauld Place with the last of Harry’s few possessions. “Why are you giving this to me, then?”

Molly smoothed back errant hair from Ginny’s face, smiling faintly. She was thinner and greyer but there was still something buoyant about her, familiar and comforting. “Just slip it somewhere in the house. I don’t fancy him being sad today.”

The envelope seemed to burn between Ginny’s clenched fingers. “Mum—?”

“Oi, get a move on, Gin!” Ron hollered from the next room over.

Ginny slipped the envelope into her jeans pocket just as Molly propelled her into the living room, a warm dry hand on her elbow. “Don’t you yell at me,” Ginny said tartly, picking up her assigned box (food, courtesy of her mother, of course). “I can still beat you up soundly.”

Ron scowled, Hermione smiled warmly, and Harry just watched her with a quiet intensity, his arms latched around a large rucksack full of clothes. The back of her neck flushed, and she glanced back at her mum, who looked teary just the slightest.

“If you need anything, you don’t hesitate to come back, or go see Arthur,” Molly was saying, coming over to kiss Harry’s cheek and smooth down his unruly hair. “And I expect to see you for dinner on Sunday.”

Harry ducked his head, smiling slightly. “Thank you,” he said.

Molly patted his arm once, then stepped back. “Off you go, then.”

Hermione tossed the Floo powder into the hearth. The flames rose high and emerald, shimmering brightly in the warm summer sunlight. Shoulders moving with a deep breath, Harry stepped in, yelled out Grimmauld Place, and disappeared with a swoosh. Ron and Hermione were quick to follow, and Ginny rounded out the group, glancing back at her mother. Molly looked small in the empty room, flecks of grey shining through her hair, and though her eyes looked watery, she was tall and smiling, waving.

Before she stepped in, Ginny took a moment to slip the envelope into her box, to keep it safe.

*

Later, Ginny was all alone in the bedroom she and Hermione shared the summer before her fourth year, looking out the window. The sun had already set over the buildings, casting a weird orange glow across the hardwood. She could hear the others all the way down in the kitchen, cleaning up from the first official dinner in the newly re-minted Grimmauld Place. In her hand she had the envelope from her mother; the seal was open but the contents were still untouched. By the weight and feel of the envelope, it seemed to be photographs, and she couldn’t fathom of what.

Behind her, the floorboards creaked. “There you are.”

She turned at Harry’s voice, her fingers curling tightly around the envelope. “I haven’t been here for three years. Wanted to see the old room.”

Harry walked towards her, his glasses glinting red-orange in the setting light. Dust floated at will in the space between them. “It looks terrific. I’ll have to thank your mum, she did too much,” he said, sitting down on the window seat.

“It’s your home. You deserve to live in it,” she said, waiting a moment before sitting down next to him, her back to the clean windowpanes. “Where are Ron and Hermione?”

“They’ve just left. She’s going back for her seventh year, you know, and they’re absolutely going nuts over separating again,” he said, shaking his head.

I’m going back too, she wanted to say. Next week still seemed far off, but for now she couldn’t breathe, it seemed so oppressively close. Nearly every day for the last three months, she’d seen Harry, and though he’d been at times silent and taciturn, and disappear without warning, he had still been there, with openness about him she’d never seen before. She didn’t want that to change with the season and the term and her location.

“What’s that?”

She blinked, glancing first at him, then at the envelope in her hand. “Oh. It’s from my mum, for you.”

He reached out, slipped it from her grasp, their fingers brushing with sharp spots of electricity. “She does too much for me,” he said, and the wonderment in his voice caught her off-guard.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re part of the family,” she said.

Face reddening, he ducked his head. “Reckon so,” he mumbled. “What are—“

His voice died as he pulled worn and battered photographs from the envelope. Some had singe marks, some were missing pieces from the bottom or sides, but the figures were still moving, still laughing, still waving. She leaned over, her hair falling across her shoulder, and smiled slightly. “Those aren’t us, are they?” she asked, watching the top photo as a man with mussed black hair and glasses chased a pretty red-head woman across the frame, both on brooms. “I’d remember this—“

“It’s my mum and dad,” he interrupted quietly, his fingers touching the photo gently, with a kind of reverence. “I’ve never seen these before.”

Her stomach did a little dance, and she instinctively reached out to touch his arm, her fingers curling over his tan wrist. “He looks so much like you,” she said after a moment.

He looked at her then, just for a moment. “It’s part of why Snape hated me.”

“I just don’t remember seeing any photos of your parents,” she said, peering more closely at the Lily in the picture, who wobbled on her broom as James dove for her. If someone had given it a cursory look, it easily could have been a photo of her and Harry; it was nearly like looking in a mirror. “You look like both of them. It’s lovely.”

Slowly, he nodded. “It is,” he said, voice just edged with roughness. “I don’t really have any photos of them. Where did your mum get them?”

The air was thick and warm around them, purple edging along the shadows, into the fading light. “She didn’t say. All she said was that she saved them for you.”

He leaned just the slightest, pressing his shoulder to hers. His face was quite close to hers. “They look happy,” he said quietly, fingers searching out the next photo.

There were just a few, but they found Lily and James laughing, drinking in a pub with Remus and Sirius, posing in front of their front door in Godric’s Hollow. The last one was of both Lily and James in a clean white room, the sunlight shining in. Lily was tucked into bed, with James sitting on the edge next to her, as she held a small, sleeping baby with a starkly dark thatch of hair in the crook of her arm. They both looked tired but joyful; what struck Ginny the most was seeing Harry that small, and without his familiar scar.

“They look really happy,” he said again after a long stretch of silence, just the creaking of the house to fill the quiet. His voice was steady, but the grip on the photos was just slightly unsteady.

A hard lump settled in her throat, and she breathed deeply for a moment. “Of course they were happy,” she said finally, mouth crooking into a grin. “They had Sirius to laugh at nearly all the time.”

He cracked a smile, sliding his gaze to her. “You reckon?”

“Sirius lived for practical jokes. He taught Fred and George loads of new tricks that one summer,” she said with a smile. “He also seemed like he was ridiculous with dates. But that’s just my imagination, I reckon.”

“Lots to laugh at, then,” he said, looking back down at the photos. “Yeah.”

She realized then her hand still lay on his wrist, how close he truly was. Though there’d been time over the summer to talk and laugh and be friendly, they hadn’t been so close in months, over a year, really.

“Harry,” she said quietly, voice catching.

He looked up, his gaze and glasses catching the burnished light. Wetting her lips, she reached out and took the photos from him, setting them aside on the window seat. As he remained silent, watching her, she cupped his jaw in one hand, leaned in just the slightest, and kissed him for the first time in a year.

For a moment, he didn’t move and she tensed, their mouths still pressed together; then, as if something had been unlocked within him, he leaned in, gripping her at the waist and kissing her back, mouth warm and open over hers. She shut her eyes and breathed it in, heard the rapidity of his heartbeat matching hers. Her fingers crested over day-old stubble, the hard line of his jaw; he wasn’t nearly as gaunt as he’d looked when she’d first seen him at Hogwarts months ago, but he was still bony-kneed and lean, the same as always. His hand moved to the small of her back, pulling her flush to him as he murmured her name into her mouth, his other hand touching her hair, sweeping it back over her shoulder.

Flushed and warm, she moved her mouth to his cheek, breathing the dusty sweat and grassy scent of him. “I’ve wanted to do that since I climbed into the Room of Requirement,” she murmured against his skin.

His mouth moved, air puffing against her cheek as quiet laughter. “Me too.”

She tilted her head back, meeting his gaze, the blown pupils, wide behind the lenses. “We deserve a proper first date, I reckon.”

“I hear Hogsmeade is up and running. If it was good enough for my parents’ first date, it should be good enough for us,” he said, smiling slightly, his face still adorably red.

All the old ghosts of this old house seemed to breathe with her, the memories of a war not theirs, and a war that was all theirs. Despite the heat, she nestled close to him, her temple near his. His hands skimmed her body, his muscles tense, waiting for answers.

Again, she kissed him, at the quirked corner of his mouth. “Sounds like good luck to me.”

*