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The hammock was perfectly still, the evening golden and warm, the creaking of crickets somehow making it seem warmer, the last of the smoke from the barbeque in the air. Harry lay in it sleepily, happily, at peace, his hat pulled over his face slightly to keep the sun from burning orange into his closed eyes, his bare legs crossed lazily, drifting in and out of a dreamless sleep.
A steady, light thumping hurried towards him, and then he felt two small hands on his stomach, the hammock rocking ever so slightly as a small child clambered up onto his legs.
‘Evening, Lils,’ he mumbled, without lifting his hat to check.
‘All the grown ups are snoozing, we’re meant to be on holiday,’ she said impatiently.
‘We’re relaxing,’ Harry told her. ‘It’s too hot for us. And we all ate too much at dinner.’
She pulled the hat off his face, and he smiled at her blurry figure. ‘Where are your glasses?’ she demanded.
‘In my pocket, so I could sleep,’ he replied. She shuffled clumsily up, oblivious to her own elbows and knees and the way they winded him, until he was chuckling breathlessly as she sat on his stomach. Now she was close enough that he could make out her features, see the low evening sun catching gold in her hair. ‘You don’t want to go and play with your cousins?’ he asked. ‘Or Teddy?’
‘They’re all playing a board game and I don’t understand it, I’m too little,’ she said grumpily.
He was glad. Despite his interrupted nap, he didn’t want her to go. He gently raised a hand and held hers, playing with her little fingers. ‘Well, we can stay out here then, can’t we?’
She huffed, and he pulled her hand up to his mouth to kiss it. Then, quite gradually, she started to softly frown at him. ‘You know your scar?’ she asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘I know it.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘You touch it a lot,’ she said. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Yes, when I’m worried,’ he said. Now he frowned slightly. ‘I didn’t know you’d noticed that.’
‘I didn’t know if it hurted, and was going to say that if it did you should go to the Healers, and see if they can give you a potion for it,’ she said, and his heart swelled with love for his unrelentingly caring child.
He squeezed her hand. ‘No, it doesn’t hurt.’
‘Not ever?’
‘Not ever. Don’t you worry.’
She seemed satisfied with this, and she lay down on his chest, her sun-warmed hair against his jaw. ‘Good,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you know what we played today? In the pool?’
‘What did you play?’
And she was off, rapidly explaining the complex rules and intricacies of the game they had invented, detailing exactly what had happened and who had said what, and why Ted had been chasing them.
Don’t grow anymore, he wanted to tell her. Don’t get so big that I can’t hold you like this.
‘I love you lots,’ he said instead.
‘I love you too,’ she said distractedly, quickly returning to her far more important chatter. He closed his eyes as he listened, her excitable voice like a song.
From the villa, Ginny was quietly walking out, camera in hand, to secretly catch the memory Hermione had spotted from the balcony.