Chapter Six.
The paths not taken, and the problems with them.
"How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode."
-W. Somerset Maugham
London.2003.
Ron and Luna were not overt in their love. There was the casual touch, the whispered aura of peace in their movements and their easy smiles. They were not showy in their happiness. There was the laughter behind their words, the almost telepathic looks shared between them. Standing across the street, having spotted them sitting at the table, Harry and Hermione were dealing with a mixture of contradictory emotions.
It was in this state that the two of them made their way across the street. Luna saw them first, a warm smile working it's way into her features. She waved to them without fully extending her arm, like it was a secret hello just between the three of them. Ron turned in his seat to watch them approach, a broad smile lighting his features. When they had taken their seats Ron beamed over the table, a king on his thrown.
"I never thought this would happen again." He said, "All of my greatest friends in one place."
Luna took Ron's hand and squeezed it slightly, "We're very happy that you could make it." She turned to look direcly at Harry, "I don't imagine that you brought an umbrella."
Harry looked up then back to her, "It isn't raining."
"Does it have to be?" She smiled, a far away look in her eye, "I think they're awfully fun to save for when it rains."
"The living non sequiter." Harry smiled, "I've missed you."
Ron turned his gaze to Hermione, "Hello." He smiled, "I had gotten the feeling that you weren't speaking to me anymore."
"Popular idea." She answered.
"I'm glad I was wrong." He threw his hands on the table, "Now! With the pleasanties past us, let's get down to the nitty gritty. How the hell have the two of you been anyway?"
"Let the waiter know that I want the omlette." Luna said to Ron as she stood up, "I'm going to run to the ladies room."
"Let me know if it passes." Ron said off handedly.
"She inspects the bathrooms?" Hermione shot up an eyebrow.
"You'd be surprized what can sneek into a bathroom these days." Ron winked.
"Ron, buddy, I have to say..." Harry looked at the empty seat that Luna had vacated, "You two seem remarkably happy."
Ron shrugged dismissively, but couldn't hide the smile in his eyes, "We do alright."
"I'm glad for you, buddy" Harry patted Ron's shoulder, "Jealous as a snake, but glad all the same."
"You'll find someone." Ron said, "If you ever get back to looking."
Harry recoiled, "What?" His eyes narrowed, "Have you been keeping tabs?"
"I call Malfoy now and then. Sue me."
Harry gave Ron a love tap in the shoulder, "When did you get all sneaky and devious like?"
Ron rubbed his shoulder, "You do what you have to."
Harry gave him a solemn look, "I guess you do, at that."
* * *
New York City. 2001.
"I'm not leaving the city." Harry shouted across the living room, "I will not be scared off by some insane man and his designes on wrapping humanity in that insanity! I didn't back down when I was eleven, I won't back down now!"
"I'm not saying that we leave permanently, Harry." Draco stood before the couch, Amber behind him as always, "I'm only saying that we go for a little while."
"Aren't you even a little scared?" Amber rose from the couch as well, "It's dangerous in this city enough without worring that we might get murdered by madmen!"
"I'm not leaving." Harry turned his back to them, "That's final."
Draco exchanged a quick look with Amber, "I don't think we're going to convince him."
Amber broke away, throwing her finger out at Harry, "Why? Why on Earth would you put yourself at risk like this? What does it prove?"
Harry let out a ragged breath, "When you give in to the terror around you, you have let it win. You've let it own you. What does it prove? It proves that I'm not giving in. It proves that they haven't won."
"And you think that you staying is going to send that message?"
"You do what you have to. Nothing more and nothing less."
* * *
London. 2003.
Harry scratched hs neck just below his hairline, his mind searching for the words that his heart knew were the first step in releaving the weight around it. Lunch had gone well, laughter and joy and all points between. Ron and Luna had been the model example of a married couple, while Harry and Hermione had dealt with the dread silence between them by staying engaged with their gender matching counterpoint, though there wasn't a soul born on earth that could get out of sharing an inside joke with Ron or a curious bit of advice from Luna.
When the girls had decided to go inside Ron and Harry had stayed outside so that Harry could smoke, or that's what Harry had told them anyway. He knew that he had to ask Ron, he knew it was now or never, but never can be tempting when now is so damnably hard. Ron smiled an easy smile, the kind designed to put someone into a comfort zone. He patted Harry on the shoulder.
"You want to ask me something, Harry?"
"I do." Harry paused, "I'm just not sure how to phrase it."
"Start with a word and end with a question mark." Ron said helpfully, "I've found that works best for me."
"This is slightly more difficult than that." Harry replied, "It requires careful wording and a lot of beating around the bush."
"Does it really? Or is that just what you've worked it out to in your head?"
"That is a fine point. Also, it isn't even slightly helpful in any way."
"I try." Ron winked, "Look, Harry, if this is about Hermione. It's cool, we can talk."
Harry withdrew, "Not that I don't need a lot of advice and guidance and a stunt double in that area, I do, but this isn't about that."
"What is it, mate?" Ron had on his best concerned friend expression, the well worn one he had perfected over seven years of life and death adventure, "You can talk to me. You can always talk to me."
"Talking isn't really my strong suit, I'm more action oriented. I always screw up the talking part."
"There is a bit of truth there, I'll grant you." Ron cast a glance inside, "But the girls won't be gone forever, and I get the feeling this is a private sort of discussion."
Harry worried his hands together, pushed his eyebrows up, then down, and finally opened his mouth, only to close it four times before he worked up the courage to say what needed to be said, "It's about Ginny."
"Merlin's beard, Harry." Ron rubbed his forehead, "I would consider it a personal favor if you didn't bark up that tree for romance again. She didn't take it well the last time."
"It's not for that." Harry sighed, slumped his shoulders, "I think I need to apologize to her. I made a real mess when we parted, and I don't want to leave it there with her. She meant so much to me once, and I just feel like she decerves better than I gave her."
"Right on every point." Ron nodded, "But everyone is a git now and then. What do you need from me?"
"Right. Okay." Harry bent forward, hoping to keep the conversation even more private than it already was, "She's Hermione's flatmate, and it would be odd and a little awkward if I just showed up and Hermione was there."
"True."
"So what I need from you, if you can manage it, is to get word to your her that I would like to speak to her, tell her to come round my flat, the one I lived in before I moved. She'll know the place. Can you do that for me?"
"Harry, yes. Yes I can." Ron beamed at him, "I can do that for you. I think it's something that needs to be done for her anyway."
"Thanks, Ron."
"What're friends for?"
"Balancing out disporportionate numbers of enemies." He smiled.
"Yeah, that too."
* * *
London. 2001.
Ginny was staying awake, watching cartoons on the muggle television that Hermione had brought with her when they moved in together. She was trying to follow the plot, what of one there was at the very least, but her eyes would wander. First it was just to the floor below the Television, but soon it ended up on the picture. It always ended up on the goddamn picture.
The picture was of them at Hogwarts. Their last year their, really their last year together. Ron had Hermione wrapped up in his arm, Neville was laughing at a joke she couldn't remember who told, she was swooning over at Harry, who stood just out of frame. He had the ghost of a smile on his face, but his eyes were elsewhere. At that time his eyes were always elsewhere.
She remembered waking up and walking down the stairs from her dormitory to the common room one night. She couldn't sleep because the curtain on her four poster had been caught up in the wind and would constantly brush across her face. She saw a fire burning from the foot of the steps, which wasn't unusual, as it always seemed to burn when someone was around. Bathed in the light from the flame sat Harry, his back to her. He was sitting on the floor, deep in thoughts. A darkness seemed to cling to him, his shoulders holding a weight so much beyond his sixteen years.
She remembered the desire in her to reach out to him. To walk over and sit beside him, rest her head against him and share some of his solitude if she couldn't share his pain. She remembered thinking foolishly, If I could only show you the love you need. But she hadn't reached out to him. She hadn't sat beside him. And sitting there in her living room watching cartoons and pretending not to dwell on the picture of them, she realized that she hadn't been able to show him the love he had needed either.
She switched off the set and made her way to her bedroom. Hours later she heard Hermione come home. She had been the night away at her boyfriend's flat. Ginny kneaded the pillow below her head, she knew that things between Hermione and her boyfriend had been dicey lately, but she also knew that Hermione was the last person she wanted to talk to at that moment. The girl that had driven Harry away, the girl that had won him out from under her, the girl who would always be The Girl to him.
Ginny rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. She hated herself for feeling that way.
* * *
London. 2003.
The doorbell had rung four times before Ginny had gotten to the door. Her heart beat quicker with the transferred sense of urgency she felt from the rapid fire rings. When she got the door open there stood Harry Potter, and all of a sudden her heart didn't need any help beating faster.
She looked at him for a beat before he offered her a bottle of wine.
"I brought this for you." He shrugged, "It seemed like it would be a good thing to give to you."
Ginny rolled her eyes, she had become accustomed to how awkward the man could be in another life, now she was finding it hard to remember how she was meant to deal with it, "What do you want, Harry?"
Harry rubbed his elbow with his free hand, "Yeah. I deserve that. I just..." He paused and raised the wine bottle, "Can I come in?"
She leaned against the door, "Harry, the last time we spoke..."
"I know." His eyes moved to his feet, hair falling before his eyes, "I know."
"Okay." She stepped aside, "But if this goes to a weird place, you're out. Got it?"
"Got it." He smiled.
Once inside she took the bottle from him, pointed toward the living room and walked with it into the kitchen. He walked into the living room, working out what to say and how to say it in his head as he observed the apartment. There was a window caddy corner to where he was standing which afforded a wonderful view of a bust London street, he consiously chose to ignore it. There was a TV sitting on the floor, a throw rug before the coffee table in front of the couch. A small cushioned bench sat next to a bookcase, and he could imagine Hermione sitting there on stormy days totally engrossed in a book, her hair falling in her face. Next to it sat a large cd player and speaker set, he smiled at the thought of Ginny dancing about the apartment to the latest from the Weird Sisters like she had about the common room when they had dated. He took a seat on the couch, flipping the magazines and newspapers around to get a look at their titles and contents.
From the other room Ginny's raised voice floated into him, "What brings you to this side of the city?"
"I just want to talk." He answered.
Ginny walked in, rubbing her hands on her pant legs. Her eyes darted around the living room, looking for anything incriminating, before she met his eye, "I set the wine in the..." She shook her head, "What do you want to talk about?"
He grinned a sorry little grin, no teeth and pain in the eyes, "About how big an asshole I was to you and why you have every right to punch me in the face."
Ginny sat down on the reading bench, "I don't want to punch you in the face."
Harry's eyebrow shot up, "Really?"
She smiled, "Okay, a little. But go ahead and talk first."
"Okay." He shifted in his seat, put his hands out, thought better of it and put them back down, "Why don't you just punch me in the face." He closed his eyes, "It'll at least be less messy."
"Let's assume that I'm not going to hit you." She rolled her eyes, "What else have you got?"
"I'm sorry." He said gravely.
"You are at that." She smiled.
"I suppose I am." He rubbed his neck, "This is hard."
"You expected differently?"
"Yeah. Good point." He blew out a great amount of air and rubbed his hands together, "Okay, look: Thing is that I treated you badly and I shouldn't've and it's my biggest regret in how everything shook down before I left. I never wanted to treat you that way, I never wanted you to feel like I didn't cae about you, because I did and I do. You're one of my greatest and most treasured friends and I acted like you didn't matter and, really, that says some shit about me that I think is evident."
"Like what?" She probbed, perhaps enjoying the moment more than she wanted to.
"I'm a fuck awful human being and I didn't desreve your love when I had it."
"That's true."
He looked at her, "I just want to talk, Gin. Seriously. This isn't a set up." He hung his head for a second before raising his eyes to her again, "I don't want you to hate me, but if you do, well... I just need you to know that I never meant it to be like this."
She sat up on the bench and sighed, "Harry, I know that."
"You..." He blinked, "What?"
She moved her hair from her face, "I know you're not a bad person, and even if I didn't believe me enough people reminded me of that after our break up."
"I'm sorry."
"Not finished." She smiled.
"Sorry."
"Harry, You were in a bad place, you were eighteen and you didn't convey properly what you meant to say. And you know, fuck you for that, because it really hurt me in ways that you can't possibly imagine, but I do get it."
"I know..." He sat back, "I just had a talk that I should've had years ago, and I feel like what I need is to have a similar thing with you. So, if you want, can we talk?"
Ginny looked up to the ceiling, her eyes looking for clues to her answer and finding none. Finally she looked back down at him, sucked in a lungful of air, let it out, checked her hand for shakes and said, "Yes. I think we ought to."
"Do you have anything you need to ask me?"
"When you....said what you said, were you fucking her?"
"No."
"How much of it did you actually mean?"
"None."
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"Are you in love with me?"
He looked at her carefully, gauging her reaction, "No."
She nodded her head, "Did you ever?"
"I... I think so. Yes."
"What does that even mean? You think so?"
He shrugged his shoulders and met her eye to eye, "I think I was, once, years ago. I think... No. There was a time when you meant everything to me. When I would wake up and you'd be resting on my mind where I'd left you before I went to sleep to dream about you."
"What happened then?" She gripped the corner of her shirt.
"I don't know."
"Don't you bullshit me, Harry. You don't know? Someone doesn't go from what you described to telling me that I mean nothing to you without knowing what changed."
"Okay. Fuck. Okay." He slumped in his chair, "How do I even begin?"
"You could try the truth for a change." She narrowed her eyes.
Harry shrank into himself, "Are you sure you don't hate me?"
"I have my moments."
"No kidding." He ruffled his hair, "Okay, I'm going to tell you this, and when I'm done I would just like to remind you that we're working on the assumption that you won't punch me in the face."
"Deal."
"After the war." He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, "After the war everything about me was different. I had lived my whole life under one kind of attack or another, one threat to the next. Seventeen years of my life and I had spent that time with two souls living inside me. One morning I realized that I couldn't talk to snakes and it hit me like a ten ton weight."
"What?"
He turned his head to look at her, "I didn't know how much of who I was had been tied into who he was."
"You thought...?" She covered her mouth with her hand, "No."
"It wasn't exactly like you're thinking. Yes, for a moment in time I cosidered the idea that I maybe wouldn't have been attracted to you without the Voldemort influence."
"Oh Merlin." She whispered, "It makes so much sense. His diary, me and his diary. You and his soul, you and me and his soul. Oh shit."
"No, Gin." He waved his hands around in front of him, "No, it isn't like that!"
"You loved me because of Voldemort!" Her shoulders rocked gently with each intake of air, "It all makes so much sense. I... I don't knw why... I am so fucking broken that it took a monster inside you...oh fuck." She fell apart.
Harry lept from the couch to crouch in front of her, his hands wiping the tears from her face, "No, Gin. Listen to me, that isn't why."
"Of course it is! I was just so stupid to think it could have been anything but. I actually though-"
"No!" His scream brought a deafening silence in it's wake before she looked at him and he spoke softly to her, "No. It was the chamber of secerts when I first loved you, Gin. Riddle was saying how weak you were to let yourself be clouded by emotions, and I thought to myself that he was wrong, that you were so strong to have fought him, to carry that emotion with you morning and night and still be able to function. I'd never felt anything as strong as that."
"What do you mean?" She wiped the tears away with her wrist.
"I mena that I first loved you because I admired your ability to love. Voldemort thought love was a weakness and you, glorious, wonderful, powerful you. You knew it to be a strength before even I did. That's why I loved you."
"So why?"
He cast his eyes down, "That's more difficult to answer."
"I imagine so." She put her hand on his shoulder, "But please. For me."
"It wasn't a snap thing. I didn't wake up one morning and not love you. It was kind of slow. It was a back of my head thing."
"What was it?"
"I realized that I loved some one else."
"Hermione?" She asked.
"Yes."
"Of course." She sat back and crossed her arms, "Of course."
Harry leaned back, his body slack agaist his arms, "I've loved her since I was eleven years old and she told me that I was worth something."
"What?"
His eyes glazed, he was far away in his past, "No one, no girl, had ever said that I was good for anything, no one had ever assigned any kind of worth to me. I had come up in this life where everyone hated me for being alive and suddenly there was this girl... this girl with bushy hair and buck teeth and she thought I was special. That I was good, that I mattered. And my God, Gin. I loved her for that."
"But Ron liked her too."
"Exactly." He snapped into the present, "So I backed off. Occasionally it broke through, a moment here, and hugg there, and I could love the girl in some dark secret part of myself. But mostly I backed off."
"And when Ron and her finally broke up..."
"Not exactly." He smiled, "Because no person is an open book, and no story is as straight forward as it should be. Nothing is neat and because of that, no. I didn't make my move. In fact I rebuked her's."
"Why?"
"I don't know." He rolled his head to the side, "Guilt. I'm nothing if not guilty deep down to my core. There was the guilt about you, about Ron, about how I still sort of think of myself as this piece of shit no one can love. There was pride. I don't think I was comfortable with being second choice. There was this self righteous indignation about having to be caught between my best friends and their bullshit, and it felt like they were both trying to, I don't know any better way to put this, but it felt like they were both trying to win me in the divorce. You know?"
"Wow." She shook her head and smiled, "Think about this much?"
He chuckled, "For the past few years I've done little else. I've been stupid about this girl since I was eleven and she broke my heart over and over until finally it was one time too many. I just had to get away from it, and I didn't even realize that when you came to talk to me that day."
"Why did you say those things?"
"I honestly thought that telling you that was the neatest possible way to end things. I thought that if you hated me, if you actually hated me enough, that you wouldn't love me anymore. And that gem, that's the bit that I think I picked up from sharing a soul with Voldemort. I had actually convinced myself that hate could overpower love."
She ruffled his hair, "Silly boy."
"Gin, I know I hurt you. I know I don't really deserve to have you as my friend, or anything like that, but there you have it. I just need you to know how sorry I am about all of this."
"Oh, Harry." She smiled, "You deserve so much more than you've been given."
"Do you forgive me?"
"I do." She bit her lip, "But there's something that I need to know."
"What?"
"I've spent the last five years a complete mess because I still love you, and I know that it's retarded to feel that way after all of this, I know that. But I can't help how I feel. So what I need to know, so I can at least have that much closure, is if it's even at all possible for you to love me like you used to."
"Gin..." Harry shook his head sadly, "I'll always love you, I'll always admire you, but no. I can't love you like I used to. I don't know if I'm capable of loving anyone like I used to anymore."
She swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded, "Okay. I needed..." She wiped a tear from her eye, "I needed to hear that."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." She smiled warmly through her years, "Sorry doesn't fix anything. I think, and feel free to admire the strength this takes for me to say, but I think you need to stop saying sorry to everyone and forgive yourself a little. Or at the very least stop assuming blame that belongs to others."
"You're right." He smiled, "I do admire the strength that took for you to say."
"Good."
"So..." He sat up right, "Friends?"
"I think we're basically family at this point." She patted his head, "No one other than family can drag each other through so much shit and still love each other."
"You have a good point there."
"So I get to have the rather dubious honor of being the little sister that you had sex with that time."
"Well, that makes this a whole lot more uncomfortable." He smiled.
"Aunt?"
"Not any better, actually."
"Well, then the family analogy has it's limits, but it applies."
"Agreed."
Ginny stood up and wiped her eyes, "Let's go get something to eat. Sound good?"
Harry stood up and indicated that she go first, "Sounds great.